Do you own a small business, you likely spend a great deal of your time thinking about your marketing plan? A Local business directory can be a great addition to your current small business marketing strategy.

The concept of online directories is a pretty simple one. Local Business directories are very similar to the printed Yellow Pages in the real world; only these listings are only online. (Actually, Yellow Pages.com is now also one of the biggest online directories as well.)

A local directory is just a listing place for some websites. Any type of website could be listed in an online directory. Some local directories are huge and cover every topic that someone could create a website for, while others are very small and specific to a specific niche.

This means that local business directories will direct you to just about any website that you want to find. All you have to do is perform a search in the online directory for a specific topic, or browse through the various categories until you find the type of websites you are looking for.

When you perform a search you will be given a list of all of the websites that relate to your search term. You will be presented with a number of links to these websites and each link will have a short description of what you are likely to find on the website. You can read the descriptions and choose to click on the website that best suits you. 

Being listed in an online directory can give your small business more exposure. Exposure is important for all business marketing strategies. After all, the more people who are exposed to your business the more people are likely to utilize your business’s services. If online viewers aren’t able to see your website, they likely don’t even know it exists and they probably aren’t going to purchase your products or services.

Listing your business’ website in online directories helps your website to gain exposure. Millions of people use online directories every day to find things they are interested in. These are people who are actively searching for websites that are directly related to your products or services.

Being listed in an online directory can also boost your SEO efforts!  Online directories offer several search engine optimization, or SEO, benefits as well. Firstly, these online directories offer you more inbound links. When an online visitor sees your website link in an online directory, they will be able to click on it and be instantly re-directed to your website.

This is a great way to increase traffic. It is a great way to improve your status in the eyes of search engine crawlers, too. The more backlinks that a search engine crawler can find, the higher they will rank your website. This is especially true of authoritative online directories.

Being linked to a major local business directory, such as Google My Business, will give your website more relevancy in the eyes of Google’s search engine crawlers. This will result in a higher page ranking on the SERP. As you know, a higher search engine result page rank you get, the more people are going to click on your website link.