The UK Business directory. The death of content led websites?

Is Google killing off the UK business directory?

With Google soon to be displaying music lyrics direct to their home page negating the navigation to many established lyric content websites, does this mean the death of most content led websites?

If you need a business list of companies in any city or any country, you can go to Google direct and search for a company and be taken to their Google plus companies pages, even Wikipedia has a list of companies’ right? Why would you click to a UK Free business directory?

Well as an entrepreneur and business person that has been involved with online business for seven years now, my 2015 advice is; you better have something different about your business online or offline, to make people remember you and build brand recognition and trust.

You have to forget about your USP’s (Unique selling points) and start to climb over the desk and put yourself in your potential client’s shoes and ask WIIFT (What’s In It For Them) if you want to sell anything.

I see that online lyric content websites, where you put in song lyrics for a song you want to know what it is called, or you want to stop singing your absurd lyrics you have been singing for years, and find the proper words, are being killed off by Google.

Biz-find articles| Lyric websites

They are now putting entire libraries of songs direct into their search so you will not need to go to the song websites anymore. I also notice you can now get Sports scores direct on Google’s home page, league tables, and now even instant currency conversions.

Yahoo has been at this for years, takes me forever to get to my Yahoo mail avoiding all the’ link bait’ (Clever compelling headlines) they have on Yahoo’s home page.

Sad for those sites that have toiled for years and have oceans of content only to be killed off in weeks by the search engines hunger to keep you on their site, which I always was led to believe a search engines job was to make you leave their site as quick as possible to find what you were looking for and not return, maybe they are shooting themselves in the foot as far as PPC goes.

Online business like any kind of business needs a ‘loss leader’ as newsagents call it, where they make very little profit on newspapers you buy daily, oh and buy the way you need milk and bread for your breakfast whilst you are here, where they do make the money. Or ‘taste test’ as Bakers also call it where they give away some really sweet stuff free first to tantalise your sweet tooth, get trust and then hit you with their specials!

Let us never forget the Pepsi challenge; they knew Pepsi was sweeter in the first few mouthfuls so they just beat Coke hands down, so much so that Pepsi had Coke really worried for one moment in time!

Biz-find articles |Pepsi challenge

Nothing new, this is called reciprocation, the first law of Persuasion, and is as old as time itself, Online marketers call it a trip wire, where you give away a free e-book or gift of some kind to get your subscribers in a frame of mood to know you are selling stuff of value.

So what’s your trip wire? What’s your gift or loss leader? What are your specials behind your free taste test?

For us it’s quite simple, if we were to concentrate solely on a business directory we would have been dead in the water by now, our UK business directory for us was always the trip wire to get members and subscribers.

Biz-find articles |reciprocation

Our main aim was always to be a better Ali Baba and have a list of products and services wanted by our members to whom we sell to other members and site visitors.

We sell business leads period!

We are not so much a free UK business directory, that markets all their member- businesses to Netmedia’s massive social media reach, so they get more visitors to their page on our site all for free, oh no, that’s what we give away to get business to add themselves, and this attracts the traffic we now receive, which took years of free marketing of all the 3,000 businesses that since registered free on our site.

We receive around 70,000 visitors each month now, with no paid marketing whatsoever, that’s a testament to content marketing and the 2 million words in altruistic blogs we have written over the years.

Like most business, there are not that many things humans need that marketers don’t already know about, and have been selling for quite some time already, so to wake up tomorrow the first day of the New Year and say:

“Hey many people drink coffee? I know; I’ll start a coffee shop” well you are about 30 years too late!

It’s an old cliché but it still works: ‘What makes you different?’

If you have a content based website and it’s all about how much content you have; like a UK business directory, you had better have something else about your business because content based websites are going to be killed off just like the basic song lyrics websites. Your content has to be the tip of what you offer, your content should be your loss leader for a main product or service you offer that few, if any, of your competitors are doing.

If we just assumed that our UK business listings were enough, and the website visitor thinks this is a good site because they have so many companies, more for me to choose from, that would be very insular and backward thinking, what they are really thinking is:

“How can I get business from this site quickly?” or:

“How can I get a customer from this directory?”

For me the idea came from networking, I have attended many business networking events in UK and in South East Asia, were we now live. One such event; the organisers thought it would be a good idea for attendees to add their business cards to a board on the wall, if anyone needed their services; they added their card to theirs, and business would be reciprocated that way. I thought to myself would it not have been more effective if people added a piece of paper saying what they were looking to buy and people who could supply them stuck their cards on their requests? Changing the dynamic completely, and making it more exciting!

That is why we are not in the slightest bit bothered about Googles new way to kill off content led sites, as our business directory was never really about business listings content, it was about selling leads to customers.

So for your success in 2015 I want you to ask yourself every day: What’s your ulterior motive and WHAT’S IN IT FOR THEM, your potential client, and how can THEY use your site to get what THEY really want?

Buddha once asked a man what he wanted most, the man replied:

“I want happiness”

Buddha replied:

“Take out the word ‘I’ for it is singular and we are all one people, take out the word ‘want’ for there is no happiness in selfish desire, what are you left with?”

Here’s to 2015! I wish all my readers and all our Biz-find members’ true wealth and contentment in the New Year!

Alan