Local Directories Worth Being Listed In

Five hundred directories

The offer arrives by email or phone: for a fee, your business will be submitted to hundreds of online directories, and your ranking in Google will improve.

Meanwhile your name already appears on dozens of sites you have never visited, copied automatically from other listings, often with an old phone number.

Most of those directories are worthless. Nobody searches them, Google gives them little weight, and some exist only to sell listings to the businesses in them.

A handful are different. They are used by real customers, they are hard to get into, and being in them says something true about your business.

What makes one worth it

• Real people use it to find a business like yours.
• It shows up in search for your trade and your town.
• Getting in requires something, such as membership, a licence or a check.
• Somebody keeps it current, removing businesses that have closed.
• It asks nothing in return, such as a link back to it.

The third does most of the work. A directory anybody can join tells a customer nothing; one that requires membership or a licence vouches for you in a small way, which is the whole point of appearing in it.

The chamber of commerce

The local chamber's member directory is used by other members, by people new to town, and by anybody checking that a business is established.

Membership costs money, but the listing is rarely the main reason to join. The introductions, the events and the referrals between members tend to matter more.

If you are already a member, look at your listing. Many members never complete it beyond the name, so a full description, the right category, a working website link and current hours already put you ahead.

Trade associations and professional bodies

Most trades and professions have an association with a public directory, and customers use them when the stakes are high: a homeowner checking an electrician, a family choosing an accountant.

Where your trade has a licensing or certifying body, its public register matters too. Customers check it to confirm you are who you say you are, and the listing should match the name on your van.

These directories are hard to get into by design, which is what makes them worth being in.

Suppliers' dealer and installer lists

The most overlooked directory for many trades belongs to a manufacturer.

Makers of windows, garage doors, heat pumps, flooring, hot tubs and countless other products run find-a-dealer or find-an-installer pages, and people who have already chosen the product use them to find somebody local to sell or fit it.

Those visitors are close to deciding. If you are certified or authorised by a brand, ask your rep how the listing is managed, check what it says, and make sure it links to your site.

Local news and community guides

Many local news sites run a business directory alongside their stories, and community association sites often list services their members use and trust.

For businesses that serve visitors, the area's visitor guide is the equivalent: it is what people read before they arrive.

They are local in a way a national directory cannot be, and readers of local news trust them.

A worked example

A garage door company with four vans had, after a sales call two years earlier, been paying for an enhanced listing on a national directory. Nobody in the office could remember a customer mentioning it.

Meanwhile it was a chamber member whose profile held nothing but its name, and an authorised dealer for a door manufacturer whose dealer locator still showed the address it had left the year before.

The same old address appeared on most of the free listings, which had copied it from each other.

The company cancelled the paid listing, completed the chamber profile, and asked the manufacturer to correct the dealer locator, which sends it homeowners who have already chosen a door.

Then it worked through the listings showing the old address, starting with the ones that appeared when it searched its own name.

Keeping every detail identical

Every listing should carry exactly the same name, address, phone number and website address.

The name exactly as your sign shows it, without extra keywords. The address written the same way each time, unit number included.

One main phone number rather than a tracking number per site, and the website address as it actually loads, with or without www.

Mismatched details make customers hesitate, and they make it harder for Google to be confident that all these listings describe one business. The details on your Google listing should be the reference the others match.

The schemes to avoid

Packages that submit you to hundreds of directories mostly place you on sites nobody visits, and some of those sites exist only to trade links.

Directories that require a link back in exchange for listing you are trading links too. Google's guidelines name low-quality directory links and link exchanges among the schemes they warn against.

Be wary of calls about a listing about to expire, or invoices for a renewal you never ordered. Some are sales tactics, some are not legitimate at all; ask for details in writing before paying anything.

And nobody can guarantee a first-page position, whatever they charge.

Keep a list of where you are

The work that pays off later is a simple record: each directory, the address of your listing, the login, and the date you last checked it.

When the business moves, changes its number or adds a location, that list is the job. Without it, the old details survive for years on listings nobody remembers creating.

The counter-case

For some businesses the handful is very small.

A new business may not yet qualify for an association, a trade without a manufacturer's network has no dealer list to join, and a business serving a narrow professional market may find its customers never use local directories at all.

In those cases, a complete Google listing, an accurate entry in the main map apps and one or two genuinely local listings are enough to start.

Choose a few directories that real customers use and that are hard to get into, and keep every detail identical across them.

This month

1. Search your business name and note every listing.
2. Pick the ones customers actually use.
3. Complete your chamber and association profiles.
4. Ask suppliers about their dealer lists.
5. Correct old addresses and phone numbers.
6. Cancel listings nobody has ever mentioned.
7. Record every login in one place.

Step four is the step most businesses overlook. A manufacturer's dealer locator reaches people who have already chosen the product and only need somebody local to supply or fit it.

Keeping your main listing active between those updates is covered in Google posts for events and offers.

Frequently asked questions

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