Business Listings get you two things from the internet, a brand mention and a backlink. Brand Mentions can get you recognition, traffic, and visibility in front of your customers. Backlinks on the other hand get you the most coveted thing in SEO, called Domain Authority, which then helps you rank your business higher on Google.
Brand Mention
A brand mention is the recognition that another brand gives you. This recognition is in the form of a page created in our name or a listing on their website.
For a new site, Brand Mentions are very helpful as they help them get initial traction. As a brand grows, the list of mentions grow with time and your brand becomes more publicly known.
For new sites, owners and publishers must create the first few brand impressions (say 50) to let others know that this website exists. Later, automatic mentions keeps flowing in as your brand grows.
Domain Authority
Domain Authority refers to a metric used by SEOs which indicates the trust Google might place on a website. Therefore, sites with higher DA like Wikipedia, Medium, Forbes, Quora and Reddit have the highest rankings for many keywords. As a result, they have traffic in millions.
Listings grant you a backlink to your website (the site is just mentioned in your brand profile) which then acts as a vote of confidence in front of search engines. The higher number of websites grant you such mentions, the higher is the confidence search engines like Google place on your website.
At this point it is critical to note that Domain Authority increases on a very slow basis and it often takes months to cross 10s and 20s if done in a professional way. If you rush it, you will risk your domain getting penalized and deindexed from Google.
Top Websites for Business Listings
General Listing Platforms
- Crunchbase: The most coveted brand listing platform used by B2B businesses, investors, analysts and management consultants.
- TrustPilot: A brand listing platform with a focus on managing user reviews.
- LinkTree: Brand listing platform that helps you show all your links on the same page.
- Quora: Q/A Forum with a focus on brand-managed pages called Quora Spaces.
- Subreddits: Individual communities on Reddit
- Google Alerts: A free service that lets you know about new content based on your preferences.
- Google My Business: Your geo-tagged business profile with reviews, address, phone number and product listings.
- Google Maps: Geotagged brand listing with integration on Google My Business.
- YourStory: Multi-industry brand listing and startup newsletter.
- Just Dial: A digital version of phonebook with list of various businesses.
Specialized Business Listing Platforms
- Startups: YourStory
- Crypto: CoinMarketCap
- Music: Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music
- MSME:
- Cloud Kitchen: Zomato
- Hardware: IndiaMart
- TripAdvisor: Travel and Hotels
- Medicine:
- Insurance: Policybazaar
- Used Goods: OLX
