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Here at Brilliant Directories, we like to guide our users down the path to success. To this end, we put together this short webinar segment on five simple ways to ensure your local business directory website appears established and professional. As we all know:
A good business doesn’t want to be associated with a bad directory…
So how do you go about ensuring your business directory is the best of them all? If you follow our advice, you should be finding yourself on the path to success!
We broke down the best methods for ensuring your business directory does well on a local scale. If you want to be successful, then read on for some industry-leading insights.
1. Exciting Articles – A Simple Way to Provide Top Content
Setting up your local directory website for success should start with writing useful, exciting and engaging articles. Although this should be a matter of common sense to most; there are several ways you can make sure you always have the best content – that works for you, as well as your general users and members.
What we need to consider is that interesting articles don’t just push up your rank in Google search results – they can also be harnessed to garner you more business. How? By using a relatively simple process that establishes rankings within your categories. To exemplify this, let’s look at the following scenario…
You may have an online city directory with a category listing local restaurants. Within that category, you may then be able to establish a hierarchy by use of written content. Perhaps you have twenty restaurants listed in your directory; so you write an article featuring the best five restaurants in town. While this might breed a little competition between the restaurants, it will also give you a unique selling point for next year.
Then you can approach the other fifteen restaurants and tell them they could be on next year’s top restaurant list if they pay a little extra or promote your online directory for you. You can start to see how these new articles can become profitable. The businesses featured in your article can use this as advertising, and you can earn extra cash in the meantime – that’s what we call that a win-win.
If you don’t have time to write articles for yourself, you can harness a professional content writer to do it for you. Try Fiverr, Upwork or TextBroker to hire these writers and free up your own time for other tasks such as marketing, reaching out to potential new members, etc.
2. Harnessing Popular Deals and Events
To regularly get the most out of deals and events, you need to put yourself in the shoes of your website’s visitors and general users. What information are they most likely to be searching for on your both on Google and on your website? What is it you offer that other sites don’t have? When you start considering things from your user’s perspective, you will soon find you can spot popular deals and events at a glance.
The idea here is that you can harness the traffic of popular events and deals. If it is a happy hour every week at a local sports bar, then you only need to enter that information once into your local directory to gain the recurring benefits of the traffic that can bring.
3. Use Simple Categories to Navigate
Establishing member categories can trip up even the most experienced directory website owner. Naturally you would think that having more categories would be better for business, but this is not necessarily the case. Having too many categories in your online directory can confuse users are lead them away from your site. A confusing user experience is the fastest way to deter visitors from your website.
How so? Well, too many categories give the user so much choice that it lowers the chances of finding what they seek. If you have fifteen different sub-categories under your lawyer main category, then you increase the risk that your users either pick the wrong type of lawyer for what they need, or they end up searching in a sub-category that has little to no members in which case they receive no valuable information from your website; this leads to loss of users and traffic – so be keen!
4. High-Quality Images are Vital
You should never underestimate the impact of using high-quality pictures. The images on your website need to be clear, bright, attention-grabbing and fit to purpose. If they are not then delete them – and be ruthless! There are four rules to ensuring images are good enough to represent your directory website in the most professional light. These are as follows:
- Do not use blurry or grainy images, these will turn away potential users and give a bad impression.
- Do not use images with white backgrounds as these tend to appear washed out and can drastically affect the amount of time a member wants to spend on a site.
- Make sure you use images have the proper dimensions – warping or stretching never looks good.
- Do not stretch images to fit anywhere on your site. These look low quality and turn off potential businesses and users. Instead, find images that are already the correct size needed or that can be cropped down.
5. Elevate the Value of Your Directory
Elevating the value of your directory includes everything from introducing tiered membership to using articles to prompt some friendly competition between local businesses. Raising the value of your local directory website will make you more money and bring in new users, so do it often and well for success!
Offering incentives to businesses is one of the best ways to elevate the value of your site. Giving them the chance to use your website’s name to gain themselves notoriety can be mutually beneficial and lead to more business in the future.
Engaging in regular promotions and deals will also increase the value of your site by way of boosting traffic – and the more traffic you have, the more your members will fight (or pay) for that coveted top spot!
Guiding Local Business Directories in the Right Direction!
We here at Brilliant Directories specialize in guiding local business directories towards success – so if you are an online directory owner, then you need us! Bookmark our page or visit our blog for regular hints and tips straight from the industry experts.
With Brilliant Directories, success is well within your grasp!
This is a segment from Webinar Wednesday 40, recorded live on May 16, 2018.

Marketing Strategies (00:02:49)
- Creating a local Web directory involves various marketing strategies, including publishing articles and leveraging them afterwards to attract more company listings (00:02:49).
- Writing engaging articles that provide value to potential readers is crucial, and techniques such as writing in-depth reviews of top-rated businesses, like the top ten Italian restaurants in a town, can be effective (00:02:58).
- Partnering with businesses by offering them a spot in a top-rated list, similar to the Yelp model, can be a successful strategy, especially when trying to sign up the first members to a website (00:03:37).
- This approach provides businesses with a marketing asset they can share on their social media pages or print and display in their reception area, promoting the website’s brand to their users (00:04:33).
- For those who do not have the time to write content, hiring content writers from websites like Textbroker, Upwork, or Fiverr is a viable option, and pacing oneself to write one article a week or every two weeks can also be effective (00:04:59).
- Choosing topics carefully to ensure they have the most value for potential readers and the website is essential, and creating articles that can be shared on social media, even if they do not rank in Google, is a key goal (00:05:08).
- The ultimate aim is to create articles that can go viral, get shared among friends, and increase the website’s visibility and credibility (00:05:38).
Popular Deals Events (00:05:55)
- The auto-recurring events feature is a brilliant directories add-on that allows directory owners to find and display local events that happen every week, day, or month, making it a favorite content hack (00:05:56).
- When users click on any section of the directory, such as the events section, it is crucial for the directory owner to ensure that they see a lot of content, as this will make the website appear more valuable and worthy of return visits (00:06:17).
- The recurring events feature enables directory owners to add events that happen regularly, such as daily specials like Taco Tuesdays or happy hour, which can be advertised once but will recur daily, providing a great way to proactively add content to the site (00:06:54).
- Over time, once all the town’s recurring events are found, the website will have a lot of value, and directory owners can also publish one-time deals and events, using high-quality images to accompany each post (00:07:31).
- Having a lot of content on the website, including recurring events, will give directory owners an advantage when pitching potential paying members, as it will make the website appear more valuable, even if it doesn’t have a lot of visitors (00:08:02).
- The recurring events feature also ensures that directory owners always have something to talk about on social media, and when members see that their business is being promoted, they will see more value in joining the directory, which is not just a listing, but a marketing tool (00:08:26).
- After publishing events and deals, directory owners should use these assets to build relationships with local organizations, contact them to let them know that they are being promoted, and strive to make their website a household name in the local area (00:08:53).
Categories (00:09:40)
- Creating a local Web directory with thousands of categories can be extremely difficult to produce quality search results and provide a quality experience for end users, as visitors may have a bad experience if they search for a specific category with no or few members, leading them to feel like the website is not the place to find what they are looking for (00:09:41).
- Having too many categories can lead to an empty experience for visitors, causing them to feel like the website is not the right place to find what they are looking for, and they may jump to another website to continue their search (00:10:29).
- One strategy to overcome this issue is to start with broader category names, such as “legal services” instead of listing every type of lawyer, allowing visitors to search for specific services within that category (00:11:07).
- When creating categories, it’s essential to put yourself in your members’ shoes and consider how they will benefit from the categorization, for example, a restaurant owner may prefer to be listed under a top-level “restaurants” category with tags or descriptions indicating their specific cuisine, rather than a specific “Greek cuisine” category (00:11:55).
- Grouping members together under broader categories can incentivize them to upgrade their listing to appear at the top of the list, which can help increase revenue, as business owners want to attract more customers and be visible to people looking for their type of business (00:13:11).
- Focusing on filling one category at a time can be an effective approach, where “filling” means populating the category with members, rather than leaving it empty, which can help create a better experience for visitors and encourage business owners to list their businesses (00:13:25).
- To create a well-structured local Web directory, it’s essential to limit the number of categories and focus on completing at least ten complete profiles in each category before adding a new one, which can be achieved by setting a challenge to upload files, photos, content, and links for each profile, and once ten complete profiles are done, the ability to add another category is granted (00:13:47).
- Linking the best categories around the site is crucial, and this can be done by identifying top-level categories, such as activities and attractions, accommodation, food and dining, professional services, and things to do, and making sure there’s a good number of members in these categories, then linking four of them on the home page for a good user experience (00:14:31).
- In the main menu, the most popular categories, such as things to do or food and dining, should be linked, and other categories can be accessed through the browse by category page, which provides a simple and user-friendly experience (00:14:56).
- Using high-quality images is vital, and this can be achieved by avoiding blurry images, not using images with white backgrounds, and considering other factors to ensure the images are of high resolution and suitable for the website (00:15:23).
- To find high-quality images, free stock photo websites can be used, and a list of such websites is available, which provides an alternative to using low-quality images from search engines, and Gabe can share this list in the chat (00:17:01).
- Avoiding images with white backgrounds is recommended, as they can create empty white space on the website, but there may be exceptions where a white background is acceptable, such as in certain design contexts (00:17:12).
- Pat and Gabe emphasize the importance of using high-quality images, as they see many sites with blurry images, and using high-quality images can be a key differentiator, even for websites that are just starting out or have less powerful competitors (00:15:38).
- Creating a good local Web directory requires attention to detail, including the use of proper image dimensions, to ensure that images do not appear stretched or blurry, and to add credibility and value to the site (00:17:55).
- When using images, it is essential to consider the background and the subject of the photo, as a plain background can make the subject appear to be floating, and a well-designed background can enhance the overall appearance of the image (00:18:01).
- The type of image being used, whether it is a horizontal rectangle, vertical rectangle, or square, should be taken into account to avoid stretching or distortion, and to ensure that the image fits the space it is intended to fill (00:18:42).
- Using high-quality images is crucial, as it can add credibility and value to a new website, and it is often overlooked, with many sites using small images that need to be stretched to fill the space, which can result in a blurry or distorted image (00:19:42).
- There are several websites that offer free high-quality stock photos, including pixels.com, Unsplash, freephotos.cc, and stocksnap.io, which can be used to find images for a website by doing a keyword search (00:20:08).
- To avoid common mistakes, it is essential to be conscientious of the proper image dimensions and to use images that are the correct size and shape for the space they will fill, rather than relying on stretching or resizing small images (00:20:01).
Conclusion (00:20:28)
- To create a successful local Web directory, it is essential to come up with creative concepts that make the directory a unique and valuable resource, rather than just a list of businesses (00:20:30).
- Leveraging reviews, events, and deals can help to add value to the directory and make it a preferred guide for users, with features such as sorting by best reviews and allowing users to leave reviews and find the best businesses in the local area (00:20:44).
- Using favorable text and imagery on the website, including the homepage and sign-up pages, can increase member sign-ups and encourage visitors to participate in the site (00:21:42).
- Renaming the directory to add more perceived value can make the business listings seem like a curated list, making the website seem more important and exciting, and adding value for visitors (00:22:20).
- Applying strategies such as adding purpose and credibility to the website can help to increase its importance and make it more than just a simple business registry, with resources such as the local travel guide theme available to help (00:23:11).