Are Business Directories Effective for your Business?

Let’s not do it better, let’s do it differently

Steve Jobs CEO and Founder of Apple Inc., coined the phrase, to ask business what they are offering to the community that is really different.

Jobs and Apple made computing cool, that’s where they were really different. Every so often they offered us something that was just so new and exciting, and they were experts at explaining that benefit to you.

What is your unique selling point? More importantly is how well you communicate that USP into W.I.I.F.T. (What’s In It For Them?).

There are few new ideas that come to market. Most good business is based around enhancing what is already out there. The Mobile phone which has seen massive infiltration across the world was built upon Alexander Graham Bell’s original Telephone in 1876.

The technology around Mobiles resembles nothing of what the original idea contained, but, without the original ‘House Phone’ to pioneer the way, would we be using cell phones today?

The success of the mobile phone was well ‘mobile’. It went with you wherever you went. You could call your wife at the shop and ask what she wants. Business people can talk to customers from anywhere. House Phones stayed in the house, tethered to the wall socket. So the mobile phone is a new idea based around an original concept.

Leads4biz is based on the original idea of business directories such as the original Yellow Pages, that big yellow book that was delivered to businesses and homes, at no cost to the consumer, from 1886 when Reuben H. Donnelley created it. It was expensive to register and get an advert placed when I first started seeing it in the 1970’s, and was a sign you were serious about business.

In their heyday there was a waiting list to be accepted.

The Internet however has been pivotal in seeing the Yellow Pages circulation decrease massively.

Since the 1990’s online business directories have evolved. Some sites, like article directories, tried to manipulate search engines by creating a ‘boring, not much use’ 500 word blog post, syndicated to many sites, the same exact content, that offered no real benefit to anyone. Google’s algorithm called Penguin, the update that came out in 2013, changed all that.

Listing your business on a business directory is still a part of your online marketing strategy. To be effective however you must list on quality directories that:

Have been established for more than a couple of years
Is placed well on search engines for their keywords through organic S.E.O.
Never list your email or sell your information on
Will not publish spammy or worthless content
Has only organic user added listings and never uploaded databases
Is manually managed by people preferably with native knowledge of business in that country
Has follow links
Is a paid directory
Is manually kept up to date and checked regularly for any malware
Sees decent traffic
Has blogs and good written content
Has a decent social media understanding and reach

All these things are standard on leads4biz

One Caveat for business owners, is when you use a 3rd world country to do your SEO, they promise to add your business to multiple web directories like ours, and we can tell which business are using Indian companies for example; it is because the language used is not very native. for example:

“Greetings we are being the very best plumbers at the very best price in Glasgow”

Is this really how you want your business presented?

More importantly they register with a spare email address that they never check and often inquiries go to the office clerk, and they promptly ignore them, and it is the poor old online directory that gets the blame for never sending any real leads

Why are we different and how can your business benefit?

When you register your business on leads4biz , we check your content over to see you have the best S.E.O. keywords and the best images, to see if you are already listed, that you are actually in that country and that your business is ethical.

Then we publish and share your business to our 30,000 traffic and our 300,000 real people on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Pinterest, Reddit, Digg,com, etc. and this drives people in to see your listing, with easy to see calls to action to contact you. Around 5% of these page views should contact you.

We charge around 50 U.S.D. to join our site as a premium member BUT if you tell us 3 things your business is buying anytime, you go free! This creates sales leads and interaction. Sales leads are visible and accessible when you join as a Premium Pro Package.