It’s commonly agreed upon that business directories are a great tool for businesses to increase their visibility, make connections and improve their local SEO. Unfortunately, not all directories are created equally. In fact, some directories are worth avoiding altogether. To make sure that you are listing in the right place, read on to learn more about the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Business Directories.
The Good Business Directory
High-quality directories are so named for a number of reasons. They strengthen trust with their visitors and feature many respected, relevant businesses. Human-edited directories are particularly great as it is a guarantee that each business has been specifically verified by an employee rather than an algorithm. This means that all the businesses listed are very likely to be genuine and of high quality. Therefore, listing your business in a directory with other high-quality businesses will reassure consumers that you are reliable and may encourage them to shop with you. These links are also attractive to search engines like Google or Bing and will increase your chances of ranking higher as your website is perceived as trustworthy.
The Bad Business Directory
Neglected directories. This directory hasn’t been updated or edited in years. It’s been forgotten about and isn’t much use to anyone. If the information isn’t kept up to date then viewers may be unable to contact the business as their details are likely out of date. This could consequently lead to the website losing viewers trust if the listings aren’t accurate. This looks bad on both the directory and the business, so you want to make sure that wherever your listing, all your details are accurate and are updated if they change.
Furthermore, many of these neglected directories are also not secure. If the website doesn’t feature a padlock symbol in the browser address then it will not be regarded as highly by search engines and is pretty much a guarantee of a lower quality site. Listing in one of these directories may even be bad for your business as search engines perceive you to be untrustworthy and won’t rank you as highly as other trusted sites with good quality links.
The Ugly Business Directory
Finally, the ugly, well they are just ugly. Many poor-quality directories are often badly designed. They are unattractive, have lots of pop up adverts, ads that look like they are business listings, they are difficult to navigate and then fail after you reach the end of the listing submission! This can be off-putting for consumers and will mean that your listing is unlikely to get very much traffic. With search engines like Google, poorly designed websites are often penalised and ranked poorly. Therefore, any link you receive won’t be highly regarded in SEO rankings and will not be much use in improving your visibility.
Therefore, although it can be useful to list your business in as many directories as possible for local SEO, there are some that will provide little benefit and may even lead to penalisation by search engines. To make sure you are maximising your efforts, look for a directory that is regularly updated and is preferably human-edited while trying to avoid any that are being neglected or are not well designed. Taking the time to list in good quality local directories can really pay off and positively influence your local SEO rankings, if you choose wisely. Why not list your business in Alba Business Directory today? We’re good, promise!
Published on Oct 19, 2020
