Many of you remember the pre-internet days when looking something up in Ma Bell’s Yellow Pages or calling 411 were the only way you could find a phone number or address for a business.  And we paid 25 cents for that 411 call.  Then to find out if that business was any good, we’d have to call a bunch of friends to find out if they’d had good or bad experiences with that company.   3 hours later….  🙁

Now, with the internet, we can find any business in the world by just Googling some vague information about it.  Not only that, but we can map its location with a click of a button, go to their website, email them, call them from the computer with Skype, and read recommendations for that business from other consumers. 

Within 5 minutes we’ve compared 5 plumbers, their hours, prices, distance to our home, liability insurance they carry, and read 5 recommendations, both good and bad.

It is imperative for your business to exploit every avenue of free directory listings available on the internet.  Then ask your customers, clients and friends to add recommendations.

The procedures to list your business will differ slightly on each, but each will have a button or a tab that says something like “List my Business”, “Claim your Business Listing”, or something of the sorts.  The link to add a free listing is usually in the header or footer.  On some of these websites, your business will already be listed with just basic information.  First search for your business, if it doesn’t show up then add it.  If it does show up then there will be a button asking the owner to claim the business and they will ask for a variety of ways for you to prove that you are the owner.

Filling out the forms over and over again can be a big pain.  Your computer may have an Auto-Fill add-on that will fill in the forms for you.

If not, you can save time in filling out all of your business information by beginning with a cheat-sheet — a Word Doc with all of your pertinent business information, that you can simply copy and paste from.  Include: business name, address, phone number, website, email address, number of years in business, owner’s name, and a brief description of your business.

FREE BUSINESS DIRECTORIES:
(The link to add a free listing is usually in the header or footer.)

  • Bing.com
  • Biz.Yelp.com
  • BrownBook.com
  • Business.Yellowbook360.com
  • CitySearch.com
  • CitySquares.com
  • DexMedia.com
  • DiscoverourTown.com
  • eBusinessPages.com
  • eLocalFinder.com
  • EZLocal.com
  • Foursquare.com
  • GetFave.com
  • GetFreeListing.com
  • GoMyLocal.com
  • HotFrog.com
  • Infignos.com
  • JudysBook.com
  • Kudzu.com
  • Local.com
  • LocalBizProfiles.com
  • LocalDatabase.com
  • LocalStack.com
  • MagicYellow.com
  • MerchantCircle.com
  • MyGreenPages.net
  • MyHuckleBerry.com
  • MyLocalServices.com
  • MyWebYellow.com
  • ShowMeLocal.com
  • SuperPages.com
  • Twibs.com
  • USCity.net
  • YellowBot.com
  • Yellowee.com
  • YellowPageCity.com
  • YellowUSA.com
  • Yext.com