My daughter is currently studying at Warwick University and wants to become an advertising Account Manager. She told me a story about Sainbury’s and their desire to bring in an additional 2 million in income. Their Account Manager came up with an idea that didn’t involve trying to beat the competition (Tescos) but instead increasing business with the customers they already had. By developing a range of food that they put together and encouraged customers to buy (starter, meal, dessert) each customer paid an extra £1.50 on their usual shopping bill. Doing that made them their £2 million.

It really was that simple to bring in extra profit to their business by increasing business with existing customers. Simply offer your customers something that encourages them to spend a little more than usually. If you use your business blog to promote a service maybe you can offer them a deal to bring them back to you as a customer. If you have a product or workshop you can promote it on your business blog and bring in extra income that way. When you start a business blog with influencer.biz – you not only get a blog that is promoted for you by us ensuring you gain attention, but you also get an ecommerce store.

If you have been thinking about starting a business blog for your local area as a way of building an online presence call me, Diane, on 020 8242 4339 to discuss how having your business blog on this business platform will be of benefit to you. Or click here to complete my enquiry form and I will get back to you.

Yes, you can go ahead and set up a free blog on any of the other blogging platforms but who will ever find you? Running a blog is about more than just writing content and hoping to get noticed. Blog promotion is extremely important and that’s what we do for you making sure you get found within your local area whether that is Richmond in Greater London or Llanfair Caereinion in Wales!

   

Would you like to replay the video or share the link to it with your friends?

After a brief introduction I focus on how to write a blog post including adding a title and your first paragraph  (1:30) – I then stop and speak a little about who you should be focusing on when writing your blog content (3:05) and this is an important part for all bloggers. One thing I didn’t mention is to make sure you add your local area into the content if it is relevant to do so.

When it comes to writing a keyword focused blog post the key here is to do things BECAUSE IT IS RELEVANT and BECAUSE IT FITS into your content. Ultimately, your focus needs to be on the reader and making it read well for them so if adding your local area or keyword doesn’t fit then leave it out. You want to improve their experience but you also want to help the search engines learn about you – which they do using keywords.

Publishing your blog post/adding categories

The next section covers how to save your blog post in draft form or publish it/schedule it to be published (4:50) and I then move on to adding your blog post into categories with an explaination of why categories are important (6:30)

The importance of adding TAGS to your blogpost is covered and how it helps your blog (8.30)

Inserting an image to your post along with the importance of why you need to rename your images and include your keyword happens at (9.23)

If you are adding text from a Word document or Notepad document then you need to use the appropriate icons to avoid adding code into your blog that will completely mess everything up (11.36). The code is more relevant to Word. Notepad allows you to add text code free so save your blog posts in there. It also helps if you have it saved in Notepad so if something unfortunate happens and you lose your blog post you still have a copy of it.

Finally, I cover the importance of internal linking (12.49) – making sure you add links to other relevant posts on your business blog. You can also link to other things as well as blog posts like your pages or anything relevant in your eCommerce store.

Finally I go through a brief summary of the steps to writing a keyword focused business blog post for you (13.35) and that completes the video.

If your business blog is on influencer.biz then you can include a link to it in the forum so we can have a look and/or if you want any help.

If you have any questions about starting your own business blog on this platform please call me, Diane Corriette, on 020 8242 4339 or click here to complete my enquiry form and I will contact you.

As always this is an opportunity for the youngsters – hopefully one day someone will recognise the talent in us older folks but never mind! Because Richard himself was helped by someone who believed in him when he was in his 20s he wants to do the same thing for a few lucky young people. There are two different stages to go through before the final decision and investment is made.

At stage one the 500 most promising applications will receive some initial funding and the winners use this to generate as much profit as they can so they can demonstrate their profit making abilities.

Stage two - 18 successful appilcations from stage one are given seed capital, which they have as a free loan for 9 months and they have to use that money to make a profit. If they don’t they have to either repay the seed capital in full immediately or arrange to convert it into equity in their venture.

Stage three – the successful businesses receive an investment in their business

The application form is available from 9 March 2012 to 8 April 2012 and to be on this show click here to appply

Good luck if you decide to apply and as with anything related to investment in your business read the T&C

Twitter @BYOBoss_BBC3

Influencer marketing is all about writing content that gets you noticed. Writing quality content is never enough – it is important that people are sharing it which is why I say your content gets you noticed. People may not always leave a comment but you find them more than willing to share it via social sites and maybe even write about you and your business on their blog linking back to you in the process.

In a recent interview I mentioned that a cab company might want to have an online presence and the interviewer said “but when I am searching for a cab to take me home I’m just looking for a phone number why should they bother?” and being a typical introvert my answer wasn’t as succint as I am going to explain it to you now

Online Local Marketing For Cab Companies

All cab companies have a website at least with their phone number. Now if I live in Haslemere, Surrey I know to search for “cab company Haselmere” but if I am visiting and I am not sure about the location I may type in “cab from Haselmere station“ or my destination ”cab to Lythe Hill Hotel, Haselmere“ and I find a blog post that says “Need a cab to get from Haslemere station to Lythe Hill Hotel?” I am more likely to click on it. I definitely prefer that than being presented with a business directory outlining 20 different cab firms to choose from. All it took was a simple blog post with that heading and some content.

If a cab company knows there is a big event taking place in their local area or that they receive a certain number of calls every day from people asking for a cab to take them from the station to a particular venue why not write a blog post about it….

TITLE: Searching for a cab to take you from Victoria Station to the Hilton Hotel?

Every day our Central London cab company takes passengers from Victoria Station to the Hilton Hotel. Call 020 8111 1111 to book your cab now and we will have it waiting for you when you arrive. Our driver will be wearing a uniform and will hold up a card with your name on it. Before you get into Victoria you will receive a text message letting you know the drivers name and his registration. For your safety please ensure you ask the driver for their name when they approach you. They will of course know your name.

When you write a blog post the first 160 characters appear in the search results as a description so people will see that you are a cab firm that can help them and will have your phone number without even needing to click the link to read anymore.

That’s all it takes, add a photo of one of your cars and a driver and you have a blog post. Doing that is enough to get you business, to be an influencer you need to go a step further. You can have other information there that some people will read and some won’t – that’s fine but by supplying it, it all helps.

While you are in London why not book a cab and visit

a
b
c

Choose three venues and explain why they are great sight seeing places to visit while staying at the Hilton.

Need a place to eat  – we can recommend

a
b
c

Our customers have also recommended

a
b
c

If you are staying the night and you need a lift home you can book that in advance with us. Your driver will leave you with a business card – call us any time so we can help you get whereever you need to.

Make sure you include some images of the places you recommend and maybe even link back to their website to make it easier for your reader to find them. Now a blog post like that may take some time to write but you are looking at a piece of content that will be around for years. It can be updated with new venues and other places to visit every six months to keep it fresh. Every time you up date it the search engines will view it as a new piece of content.

Remember now.. this is a cab company… and if they can find content to write about so can you. If the local area a cab firm is based in regularly hosts events then there is an opportunity again to write about the local events that take place.

TITLE: Need a cab to take you to the dog show crufts?

Whether you are coming in to Birmingham airport, the International station or you are taking the Euro tunnel our Birmingham cab company can take you from your destination to your hotel and back again. Call YOUR NAME CAB COMPANY on xxx xxxx

Then after writing that one sentence in which you not only managed to mention the show, but you also mentioned the airport, train station, Euro tunnel, the fact that you are a cab company in Birmingham and include your phone number you get in to supplying some additional content.

Talk about the event. Did anyone at your firm attend? Do you have any photos? Show a photo of one of your drivers and the dog they love. Write about other things to do in Birmingham while they are here. Is this their first visit to crufts, here are 7 things you might want to know. Let them know how you can look after them by ferrying them around. etc etc

Really, be creative and the opportunity to use influencer marketing is amazing. You never just sell and put your business in someone’s face. You give them content that they will enjoy reading and that is useful. Some people will just want a cab – that is true enough but others will appreciate the effort. If you want to get a conversation going you can ask people for their suggestions/comments and you can encourage people to share your blog post. By keeping content fresh on your blog you stay in the minds of customers who have used you in the past and who may want to use you in the future as well as new customers.

Influencer Marketing On The Web

Here are some other blog posts on influencer marketing that you might find useful:

Influencer Marketing – What it is, and Why YOU Need to be Doing it …

Content marketing is an increasingly hot topic these days. More and more people are starting to realize the potent role that high quality content plays in creating visibility for your brand on the Internet. Seth Godin was quotes a …

Publish Date: 03/06/2012 21:09

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/influencer-marketing-what-it-is-and-why-you-need-to-be-doing-it

This blog post contains some great questions to ask yourself about influencer marketing and the outcomes of engaging in it. You can use it to simply increase the rankings of your business blog, to generate leads/enquiries and even to get feedback from customers/clients. It really does help if you have a strategy in place before you start using it.

How Does Your Influencer Marketing Strategy Stack Up …

While the majority of my time is spent experimenting with different social media and influencer marketing strategies for OpenView, I am always looking for ways to help our marketers within our portfolio companies and other …

Publish Date: 02/28/2012 16:32

http://blog.openviewpartners.com/how-does-your-influencer-marketing-strategy-stack-up/

Some quotes on influencer marketing

Influencer Marketing Quotes of the Week – Influencer Marketing …

For The Influencer Marketing Community Worldwide – Edited by Influencer50, Inc. … Today, these scores are apportioned in such naive fashion that your so-called influence changes following a fortnight offline. Being a …

Publish Date: 02/26/2012 21:30

http://influencermarketingreview.com/2012/02/26/influencer-marketing-quotes-of-the-week/

The term influencer marketing is used to not only describe what you need to do to become an influencer but also to focus on people you regard as influencers within your industry who can help you gain recognition by sharing your content. A little like Lord Sugar telling the business community about my a blog post he read on here – the boost to my business would be amazing to say the least

I will blog about that in another post. For right now if you are a local business owner looking to generate leads and enquiries online it is important to remember you are one of thousands and the best way to get noticed is to have your own business blog that you write and share content on. Yes, you can pay to be part of business directories but you will always be presented as one of many. You can also choose to send out brief messages on social media in the hope that someone will read it but messages are here one minute and gone the next. By taking your business in your own hands and using a business blog you get to highlight your company as the one who can help and your blog posts will be found over and over again as long as you have written it in a way to get you noticed.

If I can support your business with online local marketing we provide online help for local business owners interested in developing a business blog that will get them noticed. Call me, Diane, on 020 8242 4339 or click here to complete my enquiry form and take advantage of a free 15 minute consultation. Until 15th March I have a special offer that includes a complete blog setup and keyword analysis done for you free (worth £197) when you invest in a full year.

Or to get started right now and set up your business blog CLICK HERE

For example I live in Luton and when I type in “Estate Agents” without using my location it brings up all the local estate agents in Luton if a blog/website has optimised themselves in that way, so as long as you have the words “Estate Agents in Luton” in your title text and in some of your content your site will show up in the results.

Improvements to ranking for local search results. [launch codename “Venice”] This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.  Source : Official Google Search Blog

What that means in plain English is someone searching will receive organic search results based on their location (and assuming they have their location turned on and set to their local area) rather than give them general results about estate agents.

What makes it VERY important to pay attention to is the fact that right now these results are appearing ABOVE the Google local business places page. So up come everyone who is optimised for the keyword and then come the places results.

You may be writing blog posts that will help you rank for this new way to search by including your expertise and area in a blog post as well as on the main areas of your site. If you haven’t here are a few examples for you -  I have written blog titles that are structured like this…

“Richmond personal trainer Jane Smith explains how to use a TRX system”

“Are you searching for a personal trainer in Richmond?” (always worth writing a blog post along those lines)

“Need a cab firm in Wembley to take you to Heathrow Airport?”

These  types of blog posts are focused less on providing information about how you help and more on selling your business directly and there is nothing wrong with writing the occassional blog post like this as long as it isn’t often. I have mentioned the 80 / 20% rule before – focusing on 20% of what you write being self-promotion gives you some room to write blog posts that will fit in with the ‘venice’ local search results update.

The search engines are the ‘middle man’ – they are the link between what you write and what someone is searching for in a local area so make it easy for them to connect you to the person searching by adding blog posts which focus specifically on your local area and/or your expertise so whether someone types in….

“Electrican in Islington” or “Electrician” and they are sat at a computer in Islington you give yourself the best possible chance to show up in the search results.

UK LOCAL SEARCH NEEDS IMPROVEMENT

It is a new change so isn’t 100% accurate all the time. I did a search for a car mechanic and received information on a magazine and the usual wikipedia information that shows up in searches but even they appeared above the Google Places pages which came next. So there is an opportunity for a few savvy local business owners to optimise their blog so they can show up above the pages.

Generally in the UK local search results are not always 100% accurate, which is why getting your business blog ready now for when they are will pay off in the long run.  A clear example is searching for a personal trainer in Clapham bought up Google Places pages for personal trainers in Bedfordshire. At first I thought this was because I live in Luton and it showed up that way but my client from his location in Central London did a search and the results were the same. However, the results AFTER those incorrect ones were all based in Clapham, which is why having your own business blog wins again over just relying on free tools like your Places page.

If you are looking to start a business blog take a look at our platform. We work with UK business owners and provide all the local search optimisation they need to be found within their local area and for their expertise. You can call me (Diane) on 020 8424 4339 or click here to complete the enquiry form and I will call you back.

I have two pages and one has free eBooks to download which was protected by my landing page  – well they are still protected and the landing page still shows up but it is not the default page that new visitors will see. With the new page they will see your timeline first.

Getting Started

When you visit your page you will notice that you are given an option to preview the new timeline now and you can select to publish your page and the new timeline will appear and become your Facebook Business Page

You can click to learn more or click to preview it and then publish it too. Once you click on preview click to edit your page, go to the help link and click there. It takes you to a page all about the new Facebook Page

Click on the link that says PREVIEW THE NEW DESIGN NOW and you are taken to another page that has a green button which says PREVIEW YOUR PAGES

When you click on that you are finally in the place you want to go to publish your new page – just hit the PUBLISH button and you are done.

You don’t have to publish it now of course and some people were experiencing bugs when they changed over – I didn’t have any trouble.

Creating Your Main Cover Photo

You are going to need a large image to cover the top of your page – it needs to be 851 x 315 pixels. You can use your own logo if you can get it to position correctly and there are also tools that you can use like…

Pic Scatter – lets you make a cover photo using the photos you have on your page – http://picscatter.com/

You might find a ready made cover photo that you want to use here http://www.timelinecover.co/

Or learn how to make your own custom made Facebook cover photo CLICK here

Changing Your Facebook Page

With your main cover photo created you have just about everything you need.  If you had an introduction page or a page that was protecting downloads it should still be there… well mine was at least. On my Feel and Grow Confidence page you are still invited to LIKE the page before being able to download anything so although it is no longer the first thing people see it is still there.

You are able to select three out of the four areas that appear at the top. Photos can not be moved (or at least for now I couldn’t see how) and I noticed whenever I looked at a photo sponsored links appeared under the photo’s information so Facebook are obviously utlising that.

I don’t have my Twitter account on my confidence building page but I do on my local search marketing page and I also decided to make my RSS Blog feed available.  Whatever apps you were using before you will notice they are still available to use (well the ones I was using are at least)

Click on the plus button and you can add more apps if you want to. You can also click on the little pencil icon that appears over the ones you have available to move them around if you decide to swap positions.

Admin Panel

Your admin panel now appears above your page which is very handy. You can click the HIDE button on the right if you don’t want to see it.

More Information On The New Facebook Business Page

TechCrunch – Facebook opens timeline to all business

Mashable – Timeline for brands

I have to confess I don’t use my Facebook Pages for much except to give people another opportunity to connect with me. I would much rather have someone leave that page and come meet me at my business blog. Research has found that over 90% of people who Like your page never return and to keep people active you really need to engage in conversation and get people talking. I personally would much rather have that engagement taking place on my blog.

Of course I never call myself a social media expert in any shape or form. I use it as it is an online marketing tool that is great to have. For local business owners it may seem easier to send out two sentences on a page or 140 characters as a tweet than it is to have to sit and write content for your business blog.

Here’s how I see it. When I write content it is indexed in the search engines and my domain name gets the kudos. I am building my business domain up and over time that means something in the search results. When I engage people on Facebook, Facebook gets the kudos and their domain gets all the activity.

That of course is my professional choice. You must choose whether you prefer your activity to take place on a third party or on your own blog. One is fairly easy because they are all hanging out there anyway. The other takes a bit more time and effort on your part to make it happen because you need to provide good enough content to make them want to come hang out at your business blog.

If you would like to start a local blog that you don’t have to promote (because we do it  for you) you can either click this link to your start a business blog today or call me on 020 8242 4339 to arrange a 15 minute free consultation to see how to help you get started online. Alternatively, click here to complete the enquiry form and I will get back to you.

It took me just a couple of hours to re-arrange my page to the way I liked it so it shouldn’t be too time consuming for you.

If you would like to stay in touch with this blog and receive my free eCourse on how to develop a successful business blog the sign up box is on the top right and on my homepage. You will also be kept in touch with my latest blog posts. If you would like to join my Facebook Page you are more than welcome

http://www.facebook.com/local.marketinguk

I am fairly active on Facebook and you can connect with me personally via my Facebook profile

First you start a business blog on influencer.biz, you then write content using your expertise (think about all those frequently asked questions potential clients always ask – they make great blog posts ) and you can share it via any social media profiles you already have. Here at influencer.biz it is our job to carry out all your local search engine optimisation (SEO) - so we optimise your blog. We will also optimse a blog post that you have written if we see an opportunity to do so and we share your blog post via social media. Other members may share your blog posts too.

There is a ‘middle man’ standing between you and the people searching online for local products and services – its called the search engines and unless they know who it is you help and how they won’t connect you to their customers – the people searching. By writing great content (we show you how inside the members area) and letting us do our job of optimising that content your local blog gets found. The people who find you may do one of many things

1. Subscribe to your blog using an opt in box if you have provided a free ebook/ecourse or other free gift

2. Subscribe to your blog using your RSS FEED so they can stay in touch with your latest blog posts

3. Complete your enquiry form and get in touch about using your business

4. Call you to say they are coming into your shop to buy or to enquiry about buying

5. Take down your business address and visit you

All of this happens by simply keeping your business blog up to date with great content that is useful to them and any business can do this. I will share the recording of my interview from yesterday soon that will focus on “how to generate leads for your local business using a business blog” – until then I hope the image I put together today helps

Online local marketing using a business blog @Influencer.biz

So, that is how to use content marketing and your business blog to generate leads online.

If you are looking into starting a business blog find out how I can help by using our free 15 minute consultation offer – just call 020 8242 4339 to leave a message or click here to complete my enquiry form and I will call you back. If you think you will benefit from spending more time with me so we can go through this in detail and create a plan for you (so you ensure you are completely clear on how you will use your business blog) take up an online marketing strategy session with me and let me help.  I love to plan so let me help you plan out your time online whether you are new or you have a blog on a free blogging site that is getting you nowhere. Our local optimisation support will ensure you get found in the search engines.

One of the most important messages you want anyone who visits your blog to know is how you provide value to them and this must be a message that is clear as soon as they hit your blog so that if they are a prospective client for you they stay and if they are not they move on quickly. For example it is quite evident when you visit this business blog that I focus on supporting small business owners within the UK. For anyone outside of that my message is irrelevant.

I also focus on helping small business owners use their business blog to help them generate leads online and my blog posts will write about different areas of business blogging and content creation (how to write content for your business blog) while always mentioning how my blog promotion services can help if they choose to add their business blog to this platform.

Because I am clear about

1. Who I help

2. How I help

3. Where they are based

It is easier for me to convey that message through my blog posts. It also helps me really tighten up on the type of content I want to include on my blog.

Thinking About Your Message

Hopefully, you already have some idea about your message because it will be the core of what your business does right now to attract clients. You can simply use what you already have to create a business blog that provides the same message. What do you tell prospective clients about how your business helps when they call you? Or what is your 30 second elavator pitch for your business? Whatever you currently say to prospective clients (or whatever you say at networking meetings to let other business owners know what you do)  can be used to become the message you share via your business blog.

Once you have thought about your message your next task is to consider how to write content for your blog and the different types you will use. Written content is the most obvious one but also consider news items, photos, video, stories, testimonials to name a few. All of these things make it easier for you to continually create valuable content for your business blog.

I also stick to the 80 / 20 rule when it comes to creating content and that is to ensure 80% of what I write is useful to those people reading it while 20% will focus on self promotion only. Most of the time I keep the self promotion down to a minimum by writing a few lines about how I can help based upon what I have discussed in a blog post. I usually add this to the end of each blog post.

Call To Action

You also want to think about the action you want your readers to take. For example if your business blog is mainly for the purpose of engagement then blog comments will be important to you and you will want to end your blog post with a question or by asking people to leave their thoughts in the comments section.

If  generating leads online is the most important aspect of you running your business blog then it is important that your call to action encourages people to get in touch and that you provide relevant contact details giving them the option to do that or letting them know how to leave their contact details so you can contact them.

If using your blog to stay in touch with current and past clients is important to you as well as hoping they will tell their family and friends about you then you need to make it easy for your readers to share your blog posts. You need to provide them with the tools to share it in different ways on different social media sites as well as via email and maybe even the option to save/print off your blog post.

Promoting Your Message Via Content

It is important you focus on more than just how to write content but also on what message you want to promote through your content

For example if you are a wedding photographer how will you use photos to get your message out to perspective clients? Will you simply add them as blog posts or create a gallery of them on your business blog. Will you put them together as a video and use that as content on video sharing sites as well as your blog?

Will you use stories and testimonials to portary your message to clients? Letting them know how your success with clients has helped them so they can feel more at ease about getting in touch with you knowing you can help?

For example if you are a personal trainer or hypnotherapist people will want to see your message not just read it. They will want to see success stories and photos, maybe even video testimonials from clients telling them how much you helped.

How Will You Promote Your Message

This is where business owners who use our business blog plaftorm can relax because we take care of blog promotion for them. That doesn’t mean you can’t share your newly written content on your own social media accounts and via your email marketing system because that helps to keep your business in the minds of current and past clients. However if time is limited at least you can relax knowing we are promoting your business blog for you to help you generate new clients. We are also carrying out all the essential local search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques you need to help your business blog get found by the prospective client searching the web.

Before you think about how to start a business blog and you rush to set one up that ultimately does nothing to help your local business spend some time considering the message you want your prospective customers to know about your business and how you can help them. You will find it much easier to write content for your blog when you do that, you will have a clear outcome for your blog and that will help you stay focused and most of all your business blog will be working for your business rather than being lost out on the world wide web with the millions of other message-less blogs with no purpose.

If your business blog is doing nothing to help you generate leads online or you are thinking about starting a business blog give me a call to find out how I can help. I provide a free 15-20 minute consultation that can help you think about the message of your business blog click here to complete my enquiry form and I will get back to you. You can also call my message answering service on 020 8242 4339 and leave a message – I will call you back to arrange a suitable time for us to talk. If you use Skype find me at local.business and get in touch.

Any questions? Feel free to ask them by leaving a comment below.

The search engines used to make us believe that to rank well all we need is good quality content on our business blog and while quality content is important there is something far more important – the number and quality of links coming to your blog.  But how do you go about building links to your local business blog? Well if you are an influencer.biz member you don’t have to think about it – we take care of that for you.

For those who are not there are plenty of different ways.  One way that I use to build links to a blog is through UK business directories – it is still one of the best ways to help improve the ranking of your blog and a great local search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy.

Today I wanted to focus on three different types of business directories that you can use to add your local business blog or website into – it not only helps with providing you with a link and increasing your search engine position but it also helps to bring visitors to your blog who are searching the directory.

UK Business Directories – General

These are business directories with a variety of different businesses covering the whole of the UK. Below are a few links to some that I use:

http://www.020.co.uk/

http://england.zeezo.com/

http://bestdirectory4you.com/index.php

http://www.uk-link-directory.co.uk/

http://www.britaine.co.uk/

http://www.bizdirectories.co.uk

http://www.directoriesfree.co.uk

www.backlinkfree.co.uk

http://www.addwebpage.co.uk

http://www.globalsitedirectory.co.uk

http://www.submitlistingdirectory.co.uk

UK Niche Business Directories

If your business is in a particular niche you can also find directories that cater to them. Whether the niche is a particular area of based on your business expertise.

http://onewomanbusiness.co.uk/index.htm

http://www.lollo.co.uk/ – restaurants only

http://www.atuk.co.uk/addurl/index.htm – travel search engine and directory

www.parwich.org (covering Derbyshire)

UK Local Area Business Directories

These are business directories which focus on a particular local area or they cover a complete area but people can search for a particular service within their local area.

http://www.londinium.com

http://www.digilondon.co.uk/

http://www.mylocalservices.co.uk/

http://www.toplocallistings.co.uk/

http://www.misterwhat.co.uk/

http://www.local.co.uk/

http://www.gomy.co.uk/

I have a much more comprehensive page of different directories on the Little Fish Media site click the link to find more uk business directories for local seo - it also includes blog directories.

Link Quality

It is important to remember that not all links are created equal. A link from a respected university or from an online newsite is seen as far superior than a link from a web 2.0 platform that you use to simply set up a page and leave, although even these low quality links are better than no links at all.

Business directories are great links to have as long as you are finding good quality business directories with some ranking. Of course there is nothing wrong with using a new one because over time they will hopefully grow but if your time is limited stick to directories that have a large number of entries in them.

What you really need to do is come up with a link building strategy that includes a combination of links from different places online. If you can help out your local school and university and get them to mention you on their site and link back to you that is a great link to have.

SEO experts differ in opinion about whether paid links are worth having or not – something worth avoiding are sites that charge small amounts for links, you may as well stick to free ones however a site like Yell.com is seen as an authority site and it can be worth having a link from them back to your blog.

I have only mentioned different types of uk business directories you can use but there are many other ways to develop links for local SEO purposes and I will mention others in future blog posts.

The main problem with adding your business to a business directory is the time it takes to complete all the details and submit it. CAUTION is added here to anyone who thinks they can simply pay a small price to be added to thousands of directories – that really does you no good.

As mentioned earlier if you are using our business blog promotion services because your business blog is on our platform then you don’t even have to think about this – we are doing it all for you.  Not only do we help to share your blog posts via social media but we also build links to your business blogs using these directories and many others. For more information on starting your business blog call Diane on 020 8242 4339 or click here to complete my enquiry form and book yourself a free 15 minute online strategy session with me and let’s take a look at how we can help you generate leads online.

Do you know any other UK business directories or do you run one? I know there are hundreds of them online. Feel free to leave a comment below so we can find out about yours.

There are ‘experts’ out on the web who say links from web directories are not worth anything and yet a website or blog without them is easily overtaken by one with them. They are worth including – not as a complete strategy but as a part of one.

It wasn’t her fault ‘Susie‘ (not her real name) had been an employee for over 17 years and after being paid a huge redundancy fee decided to go into business for herself. She had very little sales training so wasn’t experienced at having to ‘ask for the sale’ and there is a big difference between clients being handed to you from your employer and having to find them yourself as a business owner.

She had been generating leads online for over 10 months but her problem was knowing how to convert them into business. She never had a pipeline and her idea of ‘getting in touch’ was sending just one email and then waiting for a response. If the person didn’t get in touch she did nothing about it. Eventually I encouraged her to follow it up with a phone call as well at the very least!

As she had no pipeline she couldn’t really focus on her conversion rate or on increasing it – not having a way to measure how she was performing meant she was always struggling.  A big plus for her was the fact that her clients loved her and recommended her to family and friends so word-of-mouth was a source of income for her but she was missing out by not successfully converting the prospective clients who got in touch via her business blog into income.

The internet is a fantastic vehicle by which savvy local business owners can generate more income using a business blog but only as long as you do the work to convert those leads into business.  The great news is by the time someone fills in your enquiry form they are already interested in you and have either read your blog posts or watched your videos (if you create them) so they are a very warm business lead. When you start a business blog on influencer.biz we do all your blog promotion for you and we help you generate leads online but it is important you have a strategy in place to help you convert those leads into new business for yourself.