Many businesses have great websites, but are only found by people in the know looking specifically for your website.
Online Directories send traffic to our websites giving our websites greater exposure, increasing visitors and opening us to new customers.
They allow you to be found by people looking for your specific product or service and also come up in Google results.
Many of the Online Directories have FREE listings and are an excellent way to market our businesses beyond our existing customers and networks.
Yellow Pages
Yellow Pages have made a lot of changes in recent years and you can now get more in your free listing. Yellow Pages also have a great iPhone app so as well as being found in the White Pages and Yellow Pages books, online and at 018 you can be found on iPhones.
If you don’t have a listing go to www.yellowpagesgroup.co.nz/list_for_free.html
to set one up or call on 0800 803 803.
Finda
Finda is now owned by the Yellow Pages, but has its differences - the free listing you get and reporting is more comprehensive.
Try searching for your business at www.finda.co.nz and see what details there are for you. If you are not present go to www.finda.co.nz/account/register to sign up and create your listing.
With Finda you can also link to Facebook and Twitter.
Google Local Business (Google Places)
Google Local Business is another online directory which offers a comprehensive listing and great measurability tools. If you want to promote your office location Google will display it on a Map listing. Many people now search for businesses through mobile devices and through GPS use Google Maps to give them results in a local area. At a minimum, you will have another result in Google search results promoting your business. To set yourself up for Google Places go to www.google.com/places
Localist
Localist is a new directory being developed for Auckland businesses by NZ Post. If you have a P O Box you will have seen marketing at NZ Post. This directory is just in development phase but you can register your interest by going to www.localist.co.nz
One thing to keep in mind is not having identical descriptions across all your listings. The search engines look for duplicate content and if they see 2 pages with the same content they will only index one. This means you can miss having one of your online directory listings found. You only need to tweak some of the content, you don’t need to rewrite. A reworked opening paragraph is all you really need.