No Funds for SEO Or Marketing - Do This One Thing Instead

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) covers many facets, local, regional, international, onsite content and more, all of which can be complicated, time-consuming and costly but there are parts that can be done by your secretary, assistant or clerical worker with little guidance.

Find directories where you can be listed without having to pay.

For example, let’s say you’re are a professional like an attorney or a CPA that wants to increase your websites SEO, but you have limited marketing dollars. With a little searching on Google or Bing, you can find many directories that will add your listing and even provide a link to your website, for free.

There are no less than 200 directories that will do just this. All you need to do is spend a little time finding them and then entering your firm or company’s information. You are probably wondering why the directory company would list you for free. There are a couple reasons which will make sense to you.

The directories motive for giving you free advertising.

You are going to provide them with your firm’s contact information and an email address.

You were going to tell them the areas that you specialize in, work with or that your clients come from.

In six months or a year they are probably going to send you a small invoice to have you keep the listing. That invoice will be under $100 and many businesses and professionals will just pay it.

Are you going to get customers or clients from this directory?

In short probably not. So why am I telling you to sign up? It’s simple really, these directories all have a ranking value assigned to them by the search engines like Google and Bing.

When you sign up with them and they put your website address in their directory and publish it online, they are providing you with what is known as a backlink which provides your website with what is known as link juice.

You may never get a client or customer from this directory, but what you do get is the increasing your rankings, which means when someone is doing a search on Google or Bing and if all else is equal your website will be listed in a higher priority than your competitors. Now that’s value!

Yes, they just transferred part of their value to your website, and they did it for free. Was this a good deal for you? Was it a good deal for them? I would suggest it was a good deal for both of you!

So, after a year you get that $100 invoice….

So, a year goes by and the directory sends you a bill for a hundred dollars to keep you on that directory listing website, should you pay it? The answer really depends on where your website ranks a year later, for example:

IndexBoss, LinkDirectory, and AttorneyABC are all free directory services. I am sure that they would sell you premium listings if you want to buy them, but they’re basically free. These directories have rankings that would help most websites that are looking for or were needing link juice.

If your website already has higher rankings, or a large diverse backlink pool, then you may not need to be connected to these sites. Personally, these three sites have rankings that are good, so I don’t think they would harm higher ranked sites.

I would argue that they would help the higher ranked sites also because while they might not provide high ranking link juice, they do provide diversity. And most SEO’s know that diversity is another ranking signal for search engines.

So, to answer the outstanding question about the invoice, if it were me I would pay the $100.00. In my view, it’s an inexpensive cost for a good backlink.

Besides, maybe I get a client from it? Well, probably not!

Watch for my listing of free directories, a post that will be forthcoming soon.

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