50 Free Places to List Your Business Website
ContentPowered.com
A huge part of modern SEO is earning a place online. Finding sites to link back to yours gives you presence, authority and position. If no one links to you, no one can find you and the search engines have no confidence in you. Thankfully, it’s easy to get yourself listed; you just need to find the right places. Here are fifty for your consideration, loosely categorized by purpose.
Note: It’s very likely that your site won’t be appropriate for every site on this list. Use the ones you can, but don’t force the ones you can’t. Listings on sites that have little or nothing to do with your industry come across as an attempt at link spam and can earn your site a penalty.
You might like:
30 Places to Get Free Traffic to Your Website It’s easy to get free traffic directed…
Social Media Sites
- Facebook – The king of social networking, you can’t go wrong with running a Page on Facebook for your business.
- Google+ – Google comes with a lot of side benefits, including one unified account for a whole host of business tools.
- LinkedIn – LinkedIn is great for professional networking as well as educated groups and discussions.
- Instagram – Focused on multimedia, Instagram is great when you share pictures tied to your blog posts and products. Rich snippets give you even more functionality.
- Twitter – Microblogging at its finest; network with professionals and fans alike, keep up with trends in real time and dominate hashtag discussions.
- YouTube – The premier video hosting site with a social network attached, you can pull in great traffic if you produce decent videos.
- Tumblr – The most recent in a long line of teen- and 20-something focused blogging platforms, savvy businesses can carve out a great niche here.
- Flickr – A photo hosting site for professionals, classier than Imgur, with a great copyright search.
- Quora – Social commenting and discussion with a twist; you can become an authority in record time.
Social Bookmarking Sites
- StumbleUpon – The random distraction generator still brings in some decent traffic in certain industries, though the paid advertising isn’t worth it.
- Reddit – Strict rules restrict your advertising abilities, but being a redditor with a good website for backup can be great for traffic.
- Pinterest – Make pins for your blog posts, make boards for your interests and network with your craftier followers.
- Digg – The granddaddy of social bookmarking sites, Digg is coming back into relevance with their most recent revamp.
- Delicious – Another progenitor of the social bookmarking scene, Delicious also kicked off the trend of dot-riddled URLs.
Business Directories
- Google+ Places (Google Local) – Google is so potent it gets two entries on this list, particularly because Places gets you in special local search results.
- Yahoo Local – Similar to Google’s Places, it gives you extra positioning in mobile search.
- Bing Business – The same as the above two, but for Bing, obviously enough.
- Merchant Circle – A small business director helping businesses meet up with local shoppers on a small scale.
- Yelp – Dominant in SEO, Yelp business pages can be a great boon if you have a local business with a physical location.
- Yellowpages – Formerly a phonebook, the Internet has made them obsolete, so they had to adapt.
- Whitepages – You don’t get much out of Whitepages beyond a page for your contact information, but it’s enough for a referral when in need.
- Citysearch – Great for local businesses, particularly when those businesses provide a service rather than a product.
- Foursquare – Social checkins make a competition out of being a frequent customer; cater to your Foursquare Mayor for added benefit.
- Business Journals – A business news site with great listings for events, resources and jobs, if relevant.
- Angie’s List – The business review counterpart to Craigslist, Angie’s List helps you build an online reputation.
- Manta – Ranked by Inc as one of the fastest growing business directories online, Manta gives you great tools and highlights your brand.
- Local – Local.com is a surprisingly potent and simple URL for a site with a lot of benefits for a small, local business.
- BBB – Earning Better Business Bureau accreditation can be a great boon to your reputation, particularly if customers are hesitant to trust you.
- Alexa – Run by Amazon, Alexa comes with analytics and traffic rankings, though it is not without its flaws.
- CityVoter – Limited to certain geographic areas, if you’re in the right location you can bring in great traffic through this little site.
Articles and Press Releases
- Ezine Articles – Not the most high-class article directory in the world, but it’s easy to rise to the top with a basic standard of quality.
- Hubpages – More or less the same as Ezine Articles, for all of the same reasons.
- NPR – National Public Radio online; converting your press release into fantastic exposure for free.
- PRLog – More press release submission, this time on a site dedicated to the service. Beware submitting the same release to too many sites!
- Online PR News – A press release site with a few beneficial paid options, though the free submission is plenty for most.
- PRWindow – Another press release site; remember, only choose one or two of these sites lest you face duplicate content issues.
- Gawker – The Gawker media network has blogs for all sorts of industries, so you can find one for your press release easily enough.
- Slashdot – One of the oldest tech news sites online, Slashdot is great for specific industries, particularly open source and linux tech news.
- Amazon – Publishing an ebook through Kindle Direct can be a great bit of advertising for your brand.
- PRLeap – More press release goodness.
- Slideshare – Create the online equivalent of a powerpoint and blow people away with how easily you can show them how to do something.
- ReleaseWire – Formerly SBWire, a great way to link up with other bloggers through one press release.
Byline Journalism
- HARO – Help a Reporter out by becoming an industry expert for their blog post or journalistic article.
- Entrepreneur – Advice for CEOs, business owners and anyone looking to break into the industry.
- Inc – One of the biggest and best business blogs online, it may take a while to get an account, but it can be well worth the effort.
- Huffington Post – Everyone knows about HuffPo these days; just make sure to get featured in the less trivial sections.
- CMO – Another business and tech journal with a great byline if you can get your foot in the door.
- Venture Beat – Tech news that matters; great for a press release or a news submission, particularly for new tech startups.
- Mashable – Always on the cutting edge of news, get featured on Mashable for days of high volume traffic.
- Instructables – Teach others how to do something with a good evergreen tutorial and you’ll have a permanent flow of traffic here.
Written by James Parsons
