One of the primary factors in business marketing success these days is visibility. Among your target demographic, if your agency’s brand is the most prominent, you will inevitably attract more clients. That is not to say achieving brand visibility is easy. Whatever marketing opportunities are available you can be sure that your competition is already trying to exploit them.
Furthermore, as a small business owner, without the luxury of a corporate-sized marketing budget, you can’t afford to spend big on advertising. You will need to find inexpensive ways of gaining visibility for your brand. That is where business directory listings come in. If correctly managed, directories can be one of the most potent ingredients in your insurance agency marketing arsenal.
Directories are powerful, yet often underused channels that can make your brand highly visible to more prospects, with the added benefit of a boost in SEO. Online directories represent an inexpensive way to boost your agency’s bottom line.
Understanding Online Business Directories
In what now seems to be the distant past, businesses relied on physical directories. Those were sizeable print books which housed all manner of business listings and had to be hand-delivered to consumers. When someone needed to find a service, for example, a financial planner, they would flip open their directory and select from the numerous listings available.
These days, pretty much all business is conducted online. No surprise to learn, then, that business directories have also moved online. The old format, physical directories, still exist, but their use is diminishing. When people want to find a service nowadays, they flip open their laptops, speak a voice command into their mobile device, or search on their personal computers.
According to the Local Search Association, some 8 out of 10 people use online directories to find the services they need today. That likely means most of your prospects use online directories. It is an opportunity for you to make it easier for people to find your insurance agency.
Online directories are an evolution of the physical directory, allowing businesses, like yours, to increase brand visibility, drive more prospects to your website, and get a few extra SEO-beneficial backlinks.
Online Directories and SEO
Listings in directories can be beneficial to your insurance agent marketing plan in multiple ways. Aside from the important benefit of people being able to find your business more easily, there is also an important SEO factor. How strongly a listing benefits SEO depends on the directory, but, suffice to say, backlinks from directories can lead to higher rankings for your business website.
Making sure that your business gets listed in high-ranking, established directories will help you build up important backlinks. The search algorithms recognize these backlinks, which could result in your site getting a boost in the SERPs.
What’s more, pages on these high-ranking directories often rank high for certain keywords. That means, your business listing could show up higher in the SERPs than your website for certain keywords.
Getting Started with Directory Listings
There are a plethora of online directories available. Not all of them will be beneficial to your marketing strategy, but all of them want you to create an account. To begin with, you will need to identify the most important directories for your business. As an agent, that will most likely be local directories.
Finding relevant directories is not as simple as typing in “web directories” into a search engine. That search query will yield nearly half a million results. You can narrow your search query to a more manageable list by typing in the name of your locality alongside things like “business directory,” “online directories,” or “business listings.” So, your search query might look like this – “San Francisco business directory.”
The first two or three results on the first page are the ones that receive the highest amount of traffic for that search query and are a good place to start. You can repeat your search with different variations of locally oriented keywords to discover other high-trafficked directories.
You can also find directories by industry specific keywords, and by checking what your competitors are doing. The aim is to create a list of 50-100 high-quality, high-trafficked directories to get you started.
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Importance of Choosing the Right Directories
As previously alluded to, not all directories are created equal. Some are reputable and well established while others are just plain sketchy. The former will be well worth the effort, while the latter might amount to wasted time at best and negative SEO at worst.
Also, certain directories are more suited to certain types of businesses. Foursquare, for example, is ideal for businesses that have a physical storefront, Manta, on the other hand, is suitable for service type businesses. It is important to familiarize yourself with each directory to ensure that it is a good fit for your services.
That effort will not only help to improve your chances of getting found by prospects who are interested in what you are offering; it also sends positive signals to search engines which place a lot of weight on relevancy.
Business Listings Management
Creating accounts and adding the details of your business to top directories is only the beginning. Directory listings is an aspect of marketing that does not require as much pruning as, say, social media, but you will need to attend to your listings from time to time.
The directory owners are unable to monitor the accuracy of information on the site, so it is in your best interest to take efforts to ensure that your business data remains up to date. Consumers rely on directories to provide accurate data about businesses.
Good directory listings management means maintaining a consistent data source across all channels. It also means that the data in each directory is kept complete and accurate. That work can be detailed and time-consuming, but it is crucial. Search engines and directories rely on the data, but, more importantly, prospects will judge your business based on the information they find.
Conclusion
Online directories can be a powerful force in your marketing plan. They are beneficial for SEO, brand visibility, and increasing leads to your business website. But simply adding a few details to an account is not enough. You need to keep the data updated and maintain consistency and accuracy across all channels.
When done correctly, online directories can become one of your best sources of referrals – supercharging your business’ bottom line. You will be hard pressed to find advertising options with better ROI.
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