Benefits of Location-based directories

The benefits of location-based directories include providing marketing reach to publicize your company. However, there are many other advantages beyond extended exposure.

What is a location-based directory?

They are the platforms that list businesses within a specific location — by niche, class, or industry. The public information — such as contact info, address, hours of operation, social network links, images (and videos), and more — you determine. Examples of location-based directories would include the Better Business Bureau, Chamber of Commerce, Ning Places, and Google My Business. TripAdvisor, Yelp, and Facebook. However, there are so many more, ranging from dining-specific to health-care-specific, and everything in between.

The following are some advantages of listing your business in local directories.

Benefits of Location-based directories

Increase online presence

When your business shows up in directories, there are more chances of potential customers (A) seeing you, and (B) reaching out to inquire about your business products or services. While some online platforms may or may not be better for your particular business and industry segment, location-based directories augment and increase that online presence. Digital marketing agencies can assist in advising you and/or implementing to get your business listed. 

Boost brand awareness and reach

An extended online presence is a key component of building brand awareness. Today, it is almost necessary for any business to have a website and social media pages. You can continue building brand awareness by (metaphorically) pasting up as many posters and flyers around town as possible. Think of the posters as your website and social media page, while directory listings represent the flyers. Getting listed on an additional 50 – 80 online location-based directory platforms can enhance your presence by placing the company brand in front of as many eyeballs as possible. Users can stumble upon your company while searching a directory for something else — potentially resulting in an inquiry for more information and/or a sale.

Enhance local search

Location-based directories could have much better SEO rankings than your website. That is why if you search for some businesses, their listings (whether on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, or others) may very well appear with higher ranks than their websites do.

As such, getting listed on as many directories as possible and then interlinking your website with them will help the search engines better recognize your brand. Please consider the directories as the foundation on which your website (house) is built, as they relate to search.

And if your business is muti-locational you can create separate listings optimized with the specific location, and even the service area range that location offers.

Get reviews and feedback from clients

In the past, brand awareness was built on extensive advertising. Today, brand awareness and buying motivation are driven by reviews. Directories provide yet more online places to capture reviews. While you may prefer customers to review your business on one platform or another, you simply don’t know what their shopping preferences are or what directories they follow.

For example, many of our restaurant clients know that they need to be on certain platforms. These may include the more notable, such as Facebook, Instagram, Google My Business, and Yelp. Many overlook others, such as TripAdvisor (one of the largest restaurant-specific platforms), Yelp, Yahoo, Merchant Circle, and City Search. This matters because, according to Small Business Trends, 94% of diners check reviews before choosing a restaurant to patronize.

However, restaurants aren’t the only ones that miss some of these important directories, as there are dozens of location-based directories for a myriad of industry segments.

This helps to improve SEO and search algorithms because Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) depend on active, positive, reviews to be ranked higher. The more places clients can easily publish their experience and post photos of your business, the more exposure your business gets.

Therefore, it is key to develop a strategy for making your business accessible for review regardless of where people are searching.

Enrich your reputation

Reputation management is also an important endeavor, whether you handle it in-house or contract a firm to manage it. Positive reviews take care of themselves, but negative reviews require swift attention.

Should you receive a negative review, responding with recognition of the problem and what you will do to address it will let customers know you listen and come up with a solution to prevent the problem from re-emerging in the future. This builds credibility.

Supports SEO

As noted above, location-based online directories improve SEO. Listings enhance your business information and provide search engines with extra validation. Consequently, it becomes feasible to get on the first page of most search engines, particularly Google, using online business directory sites.

Syncing Location-Based Directories in a Single Dashboard

Maintaining manual updates to 50-80 directories when you want to change business hours or food menu items can be daunting. It would take hours. Fortunately, there is now Power Listings, an automated directory sync platform. This is especially beneficial for bars, restaurants, and pubs, as they can not only sync the business information but also their menus.

It is also beneficial for any business in the healthcare industry — hospitals, doctors, laboratories — as there are many healthcare-specific directories.

If you need consulting help, reach out to our sister consulting company. Or contact us directly. You can also check out other online automated operations and marketing tools on i2WEBSERVICES.COM