There are literally hundreds of thousands of online directories which provide free advertising for your local business. However, directory advertising online differs greatly from traditional – old fashioned – “printed” directory advertising.
One of the most popular and familiar printed directories is the yellow page directory. Hundreds of thousands of local business owners have relied – in some cases for generations – solely upon yellow page directory advertising to build and promote their business.
On the surface, it may appear that advertising in the old fashioned printed directory is exactly the same as online directory advertising. After all, you simply choose a category under which to list your business, design your ad and then rely upon the publisher to get the directory into the hands of prospective customers. All that’s left for you to do is to wait for the phone to ring.
In the past, traditional publishers of directories knew how to get their publications into the hands of prospective customers. In many cases, they would canvas a geographic area distributing the directories to every home and business.
However, distribution of content on the internet is different – and that seems to have taken the traditional yellow page directory publishers by surprise. As a result, many of the various online yellow page directories listings do not appear anywhere in the first few pages when prospective customers search the web for products and services.
Unfortunately, there are tens of thousands of online directories which are no more effective at getting “found” online than the publishers of the traditional yellow page directories. The results, some business owners have paid hundreds – in some cases thousands – of dollars to be listed in a directory that doesn’t appear on the first few pages of a prospective buyer’s search.
If your business listing doesn’t appear on the first few pages of a search for your products and services – new customers won’t be finding your business online.
The latest in online directory advertising is different – it’s called local search and many of these online directories are either created by the search engines themselves – or they are used by the search engines to create these valuable free local business advertising opportunities.
If you’ve had a listing in the yellow pages – chances are you have several of these free and valuable listings for your business. Unlike many online directories, this advertising appears front and center when a prospective customer searches the web for the products and services offered by your business. These listings are free – for now – and all you have to do is claim them.
To learn what you need to do to claim these valuable page one business listings – check out our Guide to Local Search where you’ll find lots of local business search directories just waiting for you to claim your listing.
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