One of the easiest ways to build inbound links to to your website is to sign up to online directories.
It seems that every month I get an email from a new directory offering me ‘the opportunity’ to list my business on their site “For Only £xxx a month!” The effectiveness of such sites is of course debatable but online directories do come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and the right ones can help bring in some good referrals.
Different Types of Directories
Online ‘Books’
Theses are the traditional book directories, or rather their online equivalents. Sites like this normally offer a basic free listing but this doesn’t always include a web link. This is a technique which the companies use to get your information so that they can up sell a premium listing to you.
Traffic wise, these are going to be the most popular of the directories and they usually have smart phone and tablet applications as well. That popularity comes at a price and in all honesty I’m not convinced that their effectiveness is equal to the spend.
Being larger, more expensive and of course more established, these companies do offer a lot more information in terms of traffic insights and analytics. One service that has come from the print days are special phone numbers which allows you to track how many calls you actually receive from your listing. You can also expect a break down of how many impressions and click throughs your listing is receiving.
Generally speaking these directories are working harder than most to get your business listed and offering more and more features and apparent benefits but if the cost is going to consume a large amount of your marketing budget then I would perhaps suggest that you look elsewhere first. Read More→
Michael has been working as a photographer for the last ten years. In that time he has shot over 100,000 peoples’ portraits and worked in four different continents. In 2001 Michael graduated with a degree in photography from Manchester Metropolitan University.