Directory Listing Management: Improve Your Website Traffic
Directory listing management is the process of managing a business’s online directory listings across multiple directories, such as Google My Business, Yelp, and Yellow Pages. By managing directory listings, businesses can ensure that their information is accurate, consistent, and up-to-date across all directories. For local SEO, having your NAP (name, address, phone) correctly displayed across applicable directories make significant improvement for rankings, and the ability to synchronize them and manage them simultaneously is worth its weight in gold.
How Directory Listing Management Helps Businesses
1. Improving Online Visibility
Having accurate and consistent information across multiple directories can help improve a business’s online visibility. When a business’s information is consistent across directories, it can help search engines understand that the business is legitimate and trustworthy. This can help the business rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) and attract more customers.
The below example is why you absolutely need to be listed in directories, especially for local SEO. The “near me” queries in search engines continue to increase dramatically each year, and the consumers searching for these are looking to purchase immediately – so you want to attract some of those visitors to your product or service.
Here’s an image of actual search engine results when I search for “bbq near me” in Google search engine (which actually gets an astoundingly large number of searches each month when doing keyword research.) But let’s say in this example, the user that searched this term just skips right over the Google map section. The very next option (and the one they’ll likely be clicking on) is Yelp, SuperPages, YellowPages or some other big name directory.
If you don’t have your business listed in these directories, you are 100% going to be missing out on free and easy traffic.
2. Building Citations
Directory listings act as backlinks (citations) to a business’s website. Backlinks are important for SEO as they signal to search engines that other websites consider a business’s website to be a valuable resource. By managing directory listings, businesses can ensure that they have high-quality links pointing to their website. While these are mainly “no-follow” backlinks, they still improve your SEO, especially at the local level. When listed in a directory, these links are often also referred to as ‘citations.”
3. Increasing Website Traffic
Directory listings significantly improve traffic towards a business’s website. When a potential customer searches for a business or a specific product or service, they may come across the business’s directory listing. From there, they can click through to the business’s website and potentially become a customer.
The below image was a case study from a recent client that previously had 0 directory listings outside of Facebook and a Google Business Profile. You can see that after just 1 month, the directory listing service provided a relatively large increase in traffic, and the traffic from those directory listings was 2nd place in its average engagement time – meaning these visitors were more likely to transact with the site than visitors from other referral sources (in the image, directory listing is listed as Hyphae SEO for source/medium – the screenshot comes directly from their Google Analytics.
You’ll also notice that this law firm has a listing in FindLaw.com, a common directory for lawyers and firms. The monthly cost of this singular listing at FindLaw is almost the same as the cost of our listing management service – and our service performed 15x better in the first month alone.
4. Enhancing Brand Consistency
Managing directory listings can help ensure that a business’s brand is consistent across all directories. This can help build brand recognition and trust among potential customers. When a business’s information is consistent across directories, it can help reinforce the business’s messaging and improve brand awareness. Ensuring that your NAP (Name, Address, Phone) is consistent across the web is a major signaling feature for Google SEO. By synching your NAP across listings, any change you make can be immediately changed across all listings to ensure SEO friendliness for your brand.
5. Streamlining the Management Process
Managing directory listings can be a time-consuming process, especially if a business has listings across multiple directories. By using a directory listing management service, businesses can streamline the management process and ensure that their information is always up-to-date and consistent across all directories.
Why Choose Our Directory Listing Management Service?
Our directory listing management service can help businesses reap the benefits of directory listing management without the hassle. Here are some reasons why businesses should choose our service:
1. Syncing with 65+ Directories
Our service syncs with over 65 of the largest directories, ensuring that your business’s information is accurate and consistent across a wide range of locations online.
For businesses that have just had a name change, our directory listing management can also update all these directory listings to your new business name, and also suppress any duplicates that present with outdated business information. This ensures that new potential clients find you with ease.
2. Synchronized Updates
Our service automatically updates a business’s directory listings whenever there is a change in the business’s information, such as a change in address, phone number or operating hours. All you have to do is notify us of the change, and all listings are updated within 48 hours.
3. SEO Optimization
Our service optimizes directory listings for SEO, ensuring that a business’s directory listings have consistent, and high quality listings optimized to drive traffic and improve your rankings online.
4. Custom Reporting
Our service provides custom reporting, allowing businesses to track their directory listing performance and make data-driven decisions. Our monthly “heat-map” report allows you to select 10 keywords and track where you rank for them in a geographic region so you can continually track your online performance and identify weaknesses and strengths for your content.
5. Expert Support
Our service provides expert support to help businesses with any questions or issues that may arise.