Business Directories, who do you use and why?

Hi Guys

Thought I would try something. I typed in "video inventory london" into Google and my franchisee webpage was the 2nd listing!! (without doing anything) Though this might be skewed by the fact that my location is set to London. PLEASE can you guys google the above and let me know the result (incl what your location setting was)

I am trying to get my head around all this SEO and Google ranking business and was in a seminar the other day being presented by Warren Cass and he mentioned that Google searching is now being defined/narrowed to your business location. This does make sense for most businesses unless you are a multi-corporation and are targeting the world.

I think I will go back to all my networking and free listing websites to make sure that either London or West London is in my title and profile. I think this will create more useful hits through Google. What do you guys think? Am I oversimplifying the whole SEO thing?

I see videoinventoryagency at number three for Google UK on that search term.

Unless I know the listing will benefit my business, I dont see the point in paying a rip off price for a listing. Id rather invest the same amount in a advertisement in a local magazine or news paper which I know will get me some visits on my page and also a few conversions

I like organic building method. Means free link building.

Yep, the above list if pretty well known and established. Be careful to not just copy and paste text from your website in each business directory control panel. Duplicate content is such as big issue. Try The Business Index if your looking for a manually edited directory. The interface is really easy and functionality seems rich. Its at thebusinessindex.com

Well Tim, an 18 month thread bump! I was about to delete for self promo seo spam when I saw the IP was Dorset and I just love directories

So assume you run the business index. Out of curiosity, why are the links are no follow? Was that a concious decision?

Good to see someone else that has embraced schema.org

Hi Steve,

yes its mine. To be honest its quite new but sign up rate in the first few weeks has been great. The links are all rel=nofollow because I wanted a directory to scale and become known for unique content (not one that offers links). Plus you never know the type of business that will sign up. Im testing the waters to see the types of businesses that need advertising space -a huge variety of trades and categories so far.

I think schema is the future of organic search - when you drill down through the types of content is becomes so easy to markup almost anything. No matter how the net evolves, platforms, browsers, html standards etc.... it seems to me that schema s going to become a highly relevant ranking factor.

Tim

Fair play. I've always considered it a risky strategy if all outbound links are no follow, although it should lower the daily seo churn, it will also put a lot of businesses off. Plus the linking profile can be weighted the wrong way if all no follow, but there's plenty of arguments either way, and different schools of thought.

Big big fan of semantic search and have been using mark up for years, although only recently consolidated with schema.org (other than bread crumbs).

Best of luck, and always up for a directory discussion, no more self promo though

Once you've got a few decent posts, you can soft sell with a forum sig.

Like everything in SEO it is fairly subjective - especially when it comes to 'old' link building tactics.

Here is the criteria I use:

*note: this criteria obviously doesn't apply to sites like Yell and Yahoo listings.

(1) Relevancy - does the directory have lots of categories and sub-categories spread across many different products and services. For example - solicitors to kitchen fitters to a wedding dress shop. I will only submit to site that are dedicated to one product or services.

(2) Domain - use common sense with regards to domain. For example - avoid wwww.buildmylinks.com or www.boostrankings.com instead if a directory (even if it is fairly small) has a relevant domain for example - www.suffolksolicitors.co.uk*

*note: these domains are made up.

(3) Cost - never pay for links/directory listings (unless Yell or Yahoo etc.)

(4) Use SEO tools like DA and PR rank. I try to avoid sites with a -50 DA and -5 PR

(5) As with everything, use common sense. Do you think the directory will actually serve a purpose? Would it rank for a search term? Would you click on the link if you came across it?

Hope this helps

I can't say I agree with point 3! 

I think this has to be one of those never ending conversations, and bearing in mind this thread is 4 years old, with the amount of churn and changes in recent years, you can probably take most of it with a pinch of salt

But welcome aboard, why not do an intro and tell us about yourself (in a non self promotion kind of way)