As a small business owner, you are probably being told on a daily basis, from other business owners or sales people, about the incredible importance of online directories. You know that your business needs to be listed, that your listings need to be claimed, and that your business information should be accurate and consistent across the sea of directories online. But what’s the point? How do online directories benefit your business? Should you be paying for a service to help manage this? Moreover, if you do decide to pay someone to do this, how much will it cost?

Let’s shed a bit of light on what these directories are, what they’ll provide your business, and the return you can expect for resources put towards this project.

First, let’s talk about the directory listings themselves. Directories have mostly spawned from old form phonebooks and paper-form business directories. As the Internet took hold, these businesses needed to find a new way to keep ad revenues coming in the door and business owners reliant upon their products. Online directories such as YP.com, Yelp, CitySearch, and hundreds of others jumped onto the web to continue their business in a new, electronic era. Some directories have a lot more reach and authority than others, and some focus heavily on niche products and services. These sites take information about your business, publish it on their website, and hope that you will pay advertising dollars to show up higher in their own search algorithms. Directory sites also work very hard at ensuring high SEO value, making their sites, featuring certain products or services, are being listed high in search results on Google and Bing.

From an SEO standpoint for your business, this is where directories become important. These directories typically have high SEO value themselves, meaning, if your business information is listed, and links to your website, SEO value can passed to your site. The more high-value links you have to your website, the more authority search engines find your business to be on specific topics or product searches, and the better you will rank.

What you need to look out for, however, is consistency across these directories. One of the biggest issues that most businesses have with directory listings is that they were typically placed on the directory by a third party, or through online scraping software by the directory themselves. Many times, this creates a listing for your business containing information that may not be fully correct. Having your business name, address, and phone number match across all of your directory listings is extremely important in ensuring search engines recognize that this listing does correlate with your business, and that you are a relevant result for search queries based on your products or services.

But that’s just covering SEO value. Many of these sites also have many ways of pushing customers directly to your website and business themselves. Some of the more prominent directories like Yelp, YP, CitySearch, and Angie’s List get millions of visitors per day. Making sure you have an informative, fully filled out listing, containing the right information, can have amazing effects for lead and sales generation. This is why it’s so important to make sure your info is correct across all of these sites and stays that way.

So the big question is, how can a business owner update this information, and continue to manage it when there are now hundreds of these directories? Can you just fill it all out once and be set? What are the short and long term strategies?

There are a number of tools and technologies that can help you deal with this new opportunity. Here are some important factors to keep in mind when looking at potential service providers:

1. How many listings do they post to? Most providers have an average of 50 or so, with some getting into the hundreds. It’s most important to ensure that they are hitting all of the top directories like Google, Bing, Yelp, CitySearch, and YP. Also ask if they do any niche directories that are related more specifically to your industry. Some will also include setting up social media profiles for you if need be.
   
2. Do they claim your listings or just submit changes? Many companies will submit change requests to directories and hope that it takes. Get a list from your provider on what directories they will be claiming and which they will be requesting changes for. All of the top directories should be fully claimed, and it can typically take a bit of work on your side.
   
3. Does the service include ongoing checks and updates of your listings? And how can you go about updating your information with the company and the directories they submit you to? You should have some sort of easy-to-use portal or interface where you can quickly and easily make any changes to your listings. And be sure to ask what the turnaround time for updates would be. If it’s longer than a couple of days, your provider could be costing you precious business, as well as hurting your search ranking. Also, directory listing services are software-run companies and have frequent changes to their technology that can affect the way your business is listed. Make sure your provider does regular checks on directories to ensure your information is correct.
   
4. And of course, pricing. Return on investment (ROI) for a tool like this can vary widely based on the industry you are in. A lawyer may miss one case that could cost them thousands of dollars in opportunity, where an ice cream shop would have to sell a number of cones to recoup the price of a service. Make sure you do your comparison-shopping to see what different providers charge and the level of service each provide. Then do a cost-benefit analysis, and really see how a difference in directory listings would drive more customers and revenue. A product like Qebot’s directory management tool comes in at $20 per month, so weigh that against your potential growth in sales. Some businesses also charge nominal fees for updates or reporting, so make sure you get a list of everything you could be charged for.

If you’d like more information about directory management, or other online tools and services to help you run your business more effectively such as local websites, email marketing, social media management, review management, loyalty programs, or advertising, email the Qebot team at success@qebot.com to learn more.

Want to learn more about how Qebot can help you grow you business? Check us out at qebot.com.