Best Free Business Listing Sites

Business listings are public profiles which can be viewed by anyone. These listings contain a phone number, name and address, hours of operation, description, website and more. These listing sites create a virtually effective pathway for local businesses that can be found across hundreds of online listings and directory sites across the web. Due to the invasion of search engines like Google, Yelp, Bing, etc. listing your business on these sites is a place for all information seekers. In today’s digital environment it is more than ever important to create directory listings and monitor them.

Why is it essential for your business?
A complete and strong business listing has definitely a good chance of bringing the visitor to your page. Check out the ways business listings will be of great support for your business in the following way:

Being Found
Potential customers will land on your web page when searching for a particular service or product without even knowing the brand name of your business. Isn’t that great for your business to acquire new customers!

Creates a Channel for your Business
Free listings help you to create a channel for your business by which potential customers can engage with your business directly. By making sure you engage with your visitors regularly and manage your listings well enough. Free Business listings will have immense potential to attract and redirect traffic to your site. It will significantly enhance your overall growth and online visibility. List your business on search engines, maps, social media platforms, directories and review sites.

Increase Brand Awareness
Once the users performs a search in the online web business listings site, it will lay out a list of relevant results. This means that the user may not click on your listing but will have a brief snapshot of your business listing creating awareness and familiarity with your brand.

Improve Local Visibility
50% of consumers who search for local businesses on their mobile generally visit a store within a day. Listing on free business sites allow you to become highly visible to local communities and niche audiences. If you want to improve your local visibility be sure to be visible on the listing sites because 46% of searchers on Google have local intent to purchase. Hence, your conversion rates will be higher if you are on these listing sites and this will be a key factor in ranking your webpage.

Encourages Word of Mouth
Reviews and ratings on the listing site actively influence and encourage organic word of mouth discussion about your brand, organization, resource or event.

Reviews
According to the BrightLocals latest consumer survey, 91% of consumers actively read online business reviews.

Why are reviews important?
Online reviews is a significant way to differentiate your business from your competitors. Getting online reviews must be an ongoing process for your business and should be built onto the process of selling, follow-ups and customer care. Don’t forget to ask customers for reviews when they are at the happiest moment in the buying process.

The social proof in reviews and star ratings help shoppers to make quick decisions with greater confidence more than ever before. Consumers are proactively looking for reviews that have a positive reputation. Did they just buy a new outfit for an event from your boutique, ask them to take a picture of themselves in that gorgeous outfit and write a review. It’s essential to ask your customers to take a picture of themselves with the product from your brand they are happy with. The growing quantity of online reviews provides huge benefits to consumers and businesses.

Where to list your business?
Having your organization appear in the online business listings is crucial for staying competitive in the digital era. Top 10 Free Online Directories for businesses are:

1. Google My Business - GMB
Google My Business is the first choice when it comes to be seen and viewed, for in-depth information.
• Google My Business is an affordable and effective marketing tool
• 49% of businesses usually receive more than 1000 views on search per month
• GMB connects customers to Google Search which gives you double visibility
• GMB drives relevant traffic to your website, location and social channels
• GMB gives your customers a wide view of your business opening hours, location, reviews, etc. which gives the required information to your customers
• Google is a worldwide platform but has immense local capabilities. Google uses IP behavior and user behavior to deliver the most relevant result
• The ease with which customers can write reviews and book services from your profile will definitely catch their attention and make them come back for more.
“Business grows when you are easy to do business with.”

2. Bing Places
After Google, Bing is the most often used search engine with 2.55% of market share. Bing users tend to be over 35 and are more likely to be 55 to 64 years of age. These users tend to have an annual combined household income of over $1,000,000. This way Bing places its demographics of users who tend to use Bing. You can have a more targeted platform for these specific demographics.

3. Yelp
The third most popular website on the web is Yelp. It is used daily by millions searching for local businesses, especially restaurants. According to statistics Yelp has 184 million reviews worldwide. Yelp helps millions of consumers see which businesses are available in their area, and how each one has performed for their clients.
Across mobile, desktop and app platforms Yelp has around 178 million unique monthly visitors. 35% of people searching on Yelp will make a visit to the site they checked on Yelp within 24 hours.

4. Facebook
People can use Marketplace to discover, buy and sell items and chat over Messenger. Businesses can use Marketplace to show a lot of inventory for retail items, home rentals and vehicles and event tickets by working with a Marketplace listing to reach more people.
Display your products from your Facebook Page and shop on Marketplace for free. Millions of people globally use Facebook Marketplace each month to sell or buy products. This forms a virtual pathway for retailers to drive discovery and sales of key products in a place where consumers are already shopping.
Don’t forget to use the relevant Facebook Marketplace Category.

5. Foursquare for Business
Foursquare is used by over 50 million people to locate great businesses, share their experience and what they loved about them. Two million businesses are already taking advantage of this marketing tool of Foursquare to grow their business by having conversations with their customers.
Foursquare can accumulate business location data to many other business applications like Uber, AirBnB and Apple Maps.
Tip: Get your data right at the source so it will be in apps around the internet.

6. Manta
A free business directory and one of the fastest growing small business resources in the United States. Manta is not just a standard directory but it has a swift and easy submission process to add your business listings. Manta is a great tool for business listings. This will optimize your business listings, lift your local visibility and help you appear in search results and increase online traffic.

7. Yellowbot
YellowBot is a hyper local search site for finding and reviewing places to go in your neighborhood. It will help you with organizing events and introduce searchers to the best of what your neighborhood has to offer. Keep in mind to make use of YellowBot tags as it gives the searcher a glimpse of your services or products.

8. MapQuest
MapQuest gives information about both directions and businesses. You need to take advantage of this digital marketing tool to drive the digital crowds to your site and also physical customers to your store. Its location centric expertise plays a key role in improving local search SEO.

9. Tripadvisor
Tripadvisor creates best listings, travel experiences, images and accommodation/hotel listings and information to assist your potential customers to make decisions on their travel plans. Getting your business listed on Tripadvisor will put more eyes on your business and have a targeted audience who are interested in travel.
Tripadvisor has about 730 million reviews, 490 million monthly unique visitors across 8.1 million businesses.

10. Angie’s List
Angie's List Reviews are free. Angie's List is a listing website that hosts online reviews from home improvement services. With more than 10 million online reviews, this listing site has more than 3 million users.

11. Instagram
One of the best listing sites, which is free for businesses wanting to be recognized on Instagram. This has a unique feature for customers to action and call, email or text you if they are interested in your product/service.
Insights on Instagram give businesses information about who their followers are and which posts resonate better than others. All this can be achievable from within the mobile app. Instagram believes you can create more relevant timely content if you can track and categorize the purchasing behavior and demographics of your audience.

12. Merchant Circle
Merchant Circle is an online networking platform of local business owners. It combines the features of social networking with customizable web listings with over two million merchants, hundred million consumers and many ways to grow your business. Merchants Circle helps to improve the online visibility of small and mid-sized businesses and they give all the tools needed for that.

Benefits that Merchant Circle offers:
Online advertising on their platform
Online reputation management services
Top rated customer support
Get analytics on how consumers interact with your brand
Event calendars that can drive in more offline traffic by highlighting promotions, discounts and special store events
By associating your brand with the right categories on Merchant Circle you will help consumers understand what you have to offer
You can review and monitor what customers are saying across different review channels
You can also highlight employees’ education and specializations to entice local customers
By claiming your business listings on Merchant Circle you can attract new customers and build your business.

Pointers for creating a listing for your business:
• Be accurate and consistent across all your listing sites. If your business is registered, always use that as your business name in all cases
• Use the same capitalization, spacing and punctuation. This will help directories know they are all talking about the same brand and this consistency helps in your search rankings
• Remember your goal is not that your listing should show, but you want people to visit your business
• To generate a lot of traffic and bring you closer to your target market, choose your business listing wisely
• Images help to create visual appeal but text is what helps your listing to be found. So do not replace your text with images
• Business directories today pull out information from larger directories that they automatically assimilate and create listings, or allow anyone else to add a listing. Your business listing could pop up in directories unknown to you. It’s necessary to monitor and update your listings.

Digital Marketing can help you scale up your business by developing a special bond with your customers. This can be achieved by staying in touch with your audiences and consumers through your website, e-mails or social media channels and paying attention to their recommendations will help you in developing a healthier rapport with them.

As the world has already adopted the digital trend, SEO Traffic Spider can help you in this space of digital marketing because we listen to you and your business, from which we create opportunities to grow your business to attain new customers!