If you work for a marketing firm the best leads of course come by way of referrals from happy customers. The next best lead source is when they are looking for digital marketing agencies online and they find you. Getting backlinks from marketing directories help you get found online easier so follow along and learn the right technique to leverage them to your advantage.
SEO CAN BE BROKEN DOWN INTO ONE OF THESE 3 THINGS
Search engine optimization, also called inbound marketing or SEO at its core is based on these three things. Keywords, Content and Backlinks. After you figure out the best keywords and use them within content that you add to your website on a continual basis, getting backlinks are the next logical step to better Google rankings.
AFTER KEYWORDS AND CONTENT ADD RELEVANT LINKS TO YOUR WEBSITE
Backlinks from powerful websites in your niche are like votes in Google’ eyes. The more backlinks you have the more credible you will be and all things being equal you will get higher rankings.
If you work for an internet marketing agency, a web design or development firm, or an SEO company and have local customers you will want to add your listing first to local directories in your city or neighborhood and then add your site to directories in your business niche, digital marketing.
MY CURATED LIST OF DIGITAL MARKETING, WEB DESIGN & SEO DIRECTORIES
Here is a collection of websites that feature listings of marketing companies that you will want to add your site to also. My suggestion is to fill in all the blanks as completely as possible and don’t forget to use your main keyword and similar terms a few times along with reference to your location in your business description. Don’t copy and paste the same description from site to site or worse, copy it from your own website but take the time to write up something unique for each of these. Many directories have a spot to add a link to all of your social media profiles so don’t forget those either. Optimize your logo file along with as many images each site might allow.
https://www.agencyspotter.com/
https://digitalagencyrankings.com/
https://www.websitemagazine.com/
https://www.webdesignlistings.org/
IT MAY TAKE A WHILE BUT IT WILL BE WORTH IT IN THE END
Most of these send over a verification email, some might send a text message with a code and with others you may be prompted to sign in with a LinkedIn or Facebook account before the listing goes live. I have even spoken on the phone to a few of these directories to verify my information and assure them I’m a real person at a real company.
MAKE SURE GOOGLE INDEXES YOUR LISTINGS OR THEY WON’T COUNT
After your listing goes live it might take a week or two for Google to crawl and index the page with your listing. Until it is indexed the page is not going to count as a backlink source for you.
You can easily check to see if it is indexed by copying a sentence from the listing and doing a Google search for it in quotation marks. If Google returns with: No results found then these listing pages might need a little help to get the Google crawlers moving. You can add a link to your profile page from Twitter or other social media channels, add a ping from a place like Pingler.com and then check again in a few days.
Another way to help get these directory listings crawled is to add a link to them to Omega Indexer.
POSITIVE REVIEWS ALWAYS HELP YOUR OWN MARKETING
If you can get a few reviews from your happy clients within the sites that support reviews and testimonials that will help also by adding more unique relevant text on that page. Some directories help you get more reviews by having a spot you can add your customers email address requesting a review. A few sites like Clutch will even interview your customers for you and write up a review.
THE BOTTOM LINE IS THAT MORE BACKLINKS HELP YOU SELL MORE WEB DESIGNS
Being at the top of Google search results will certainly help get your firm more business. If you work at a website design or marketing agency and could use some help with search engine optimization we should talk. I can train you or your team on best practices for SEO, backlinks and measuring results or take care of some of these mundane tasks like building the right kind of back links for you.
