Top 20 Free Local Business Directories
Are you familiar with free local business directories?
Back in the day, business owners like us would run to the phone book companies to add our name, number, and address (perhaps even a visual ad, too) to spread our reach. These days, we run to online directories instead of those printed ones to expand our reach. I'm sure you can imagine why. When's the last time you used a printed phone book to do anything besides smash a spider or prop open a door?
Instead, waste no paper and still broaden your reach through online directories.
The trickiest part is knowing where to focus your attentions. There's a plethora of sites out there competing for your attention. Where's the best place to go?
The first thing you need to consider is the amount of time and money you have available. Yes, there are countless numbers of sites, but submitting your business to them takes time. I'll start off by sharing the top 20 free local business directories, and then sharing the place you can go to let someone else handle your situation.
Top 20 Free Local Business Directories *
- Google Places - Local directories through search engines are especially useful if you want to target the users of a specific search engine
- Bing Local
- Yahoo Local
- Mapquest Local
- Yellow Pages - Online version of the infamous printed phone books
- Super Pages
- Yellow Book
- Patch
- Best Of The Web
- Hot Frog
- Local.com
- Manta - A very social interface that allows business owners to get in touch with other professionals to increase their shared knowledge of experience, as well as tapping into local searches
- Yelp - Incredibly popular and powerful, Yelp lets you keep an eye on what customers say and think while providing custom listings and even special offers
- Moz Local
- Yext
- Merchant Circle
- Think Local
Now, this is just the tip of the iceberg. You can allow yourself to have profiles on these 10 sites, or you can tap into the tons out there (and create precious backlinks) by outsourcing your online directory submissions to a third party.
Yext PowerListings is more than just a third party system. Instead, it offers a complete interface for managing your submissions to over 30 business directories including many of the ones above and plenty more.
Basically, you can keep a detailed eye on everything happening with your business name to make sure you're looking good to searchers. It's one easy way to save yourself plenty of time while keeping a handle on everything else. Give it a look!
* I'd like to just note that the free listing is often a very basic listing. It's likely that each site will offer additional marketing options.