Let’s assume you’ve claimed your online business listing and made sure it was all set up with the correct information; the business title, phone number, complete address and relevant information about your practice is all in there. Experts would say you’ve done a great job, except… There is one more step you should take to not only boost the ranking of your business listing but the optimization of your main website as well and that is using off-page criteria. These are the links and citations coming into your business listing from off-site or off-page places.
Picture your website and your business directory being linked by a two-way street. The traffic flows back a forth just like you want it to. Now picture the road between your business listing and your website as a freeway. Between your main site and your business listing there are all sorts of on-ramps and other traffic arteries. The more connections the more traffic, right?
Off-page links and citations coming into your business directory are like the inbound arteries on a freeway. Not only do they improve your chances of people organically finding you, they also improve your standing in the eyes of the search engines. The more off-page links you have the more the search engines will like your business directory. Your directory will then be more likely to be shown at the top of the list when people search online for “dentists”. Also, however, business directories are a good link back to your main website.
In short, a bit of super-highway building on your part is crucial to building traffic to both your online business directory and your website. Building links to off-page criteria is a shovel-ready project you need to undertake.