If you have an online business, then you know how important it is for your website to get noticed. Depending upon your niche, it can seem as though your website is one site in a galaxy of thousands of websites. How will you get it noticed? One way is with directory submissions.

What Are Directory Submissions?

On the internet, there are websites that are set up as directories for website links. Think of it as the Yellow Pages. You go to the section of the book that is dedicated to your particular category. Within that category, search for the relevant listings to fit your needs.

Not only does this process take less time than looking for the information in a phone book, you can search directories for entries from all around the world that are relevant to what you are searching for.

These directories are where you want to have your link posted if you are trying to draw traffic and status to your website. You can Google these directories to see what types of website link submissions they take. Be sure to follow all the instructions for submission. It is very important to comply or your submission could be rejected on the basis of not taking the time to read the information.

People often visit directories to find what they are searching for. The advantage here is that all of the listings in a particular category are relevant and your website will be among them. These directories are searched by popular engines so they will show up in keyword searches.

Link Status

What makes your website special? It could be the status you hold, especially when it comes to search engine rankings. Each link to your website can be counted as a positive tick mark in its favor. The more directories you link to, the higher your status and, hopefully, your ranking will be.

You can submit to free and paid submission directories. If you are just starting out and are still doing some keyword testing, then you might want to stick with free directories. Paid ones may offer a few more features or be a little more high profile, but search engine optimization (SEO) is what’s important. You still need relevant keywords that are highly searchable no matter what the directory.

When people can find you in directories and in random keyword searches, your ranking will take a hit but in a good way. Use directory submissions to get a good start with your new website. Research them to find the one that is most relevant to you. This will help ensure that all your efforts pay off.

When it comes to making your business known, there are a lot of ways to establish yourself online and off.  Businesses are becoming successful using social networking and blogging, but Yelp is a somewhat less known, but powerful way to make yourself known online and expand your business.

Yelp is a newer website, but the concept behind it has been around as long as businesses have.

Yelp has several different webpages, all for different cities.  It’s a listing of businesses, but it also includes the ability to rate and review the businesses.

When it comes down to it, word-of-mouth advertising is generally better than an everyday, average advertising campaign.  The reason?  Anyone can make a claim about their business.  But no matter how good that claim is, there’s no real guarantee that itís true because the business owner is making it themselves.  With word-of-mouth advertising, someone else is telling the consumer that the claim is true.

Whether it’s someone they trust, or simply someone who doesnít profit from what they’re saying (or even if they do), this is taken as a much more trustworthy source.  This way, you’re not only getting your name out there, you’re also getting your reputation out there.

So how can you use Yelp to your advantage?  First, make sure your business is in there.  That way, even if there are no reviews, at least youíve got your name out.  You can then use your Yelp page to add details, pictures, and even updates, and special offers about your business.

That way, new customers know what to expect, and have some extra incentive to come in along with previous customers’ experiences that assure them theyíre getting what you advertise.

Once you’re listed, make sure you’ve got quality reviews.  While some people may get family and friends to plant positive reviews, these are often easy to spot to the trained eye.  Why not just encourage customers to go online and write a review?

Yelp is not only good for finding new customers, you can also use it to communicate with current customers to keep them coming back.  You can talk to them privately, or communicate with them publicly so other customers can not only get answers, but also see that you take care of your customers even after you’re done providing services.

Another advantage of Yelp is that it allows you to recommend other businesses and more importantly, allows them to recommend you.  You can offer reciprocal links to local businesses, or provide them some other incentive for promoting you.  The more successful the other businesses, the better the links you’ll get from them.

The best part about Yelp is that once you set up your listing, it’s fairly easy to maintain.  Youíll need to update when you make business changes and keep up communication, but it only takes a few minutes and is well worth the benefit.

Recycling, reusing and repurposing  your content makes good business sense. It’s a good way to squeeze out as much value as possible from your current content. And repurposing also helps your customers by providing fantastic content in a variety of ways.

Here are a few ideas to help you repurpose your content:

Recycle. There’s no need to just use great content once. Recycling your content benefits everyone in a positive way. A good way to do this is to think about each piece of content and how you can reuse it.

A few ideas may be:

#1 – Take a special download report and use the content for article distribution. The report is only available for download on your website but you can use several articles within the report to distribute to article directories. That content will then work to bring you new subscribers to your site.

#2 – Use product content to create an auto responder series. If you have an info product available for sale (or a free one) you can take snippets of that content and turn it into an auto responder series. This way your customers can preview the content through the AR series and the AR series can promote the actual product.

#3 – Use the content on your website for a product. If you have articles on your website or blog you can easily turn these into a product. Simply choose a collection of articles you’ve previously written and make them available in download format for customers.

#4 – Use your newsletter to attract search engines. If you have a regular newsletter which you send out make sure you also add it to your website or blog pages after sending. This will help you attract more search engine traffic and will give customers an archive to view previous newsletters.

#5 – Turn your audios into content. If you have audios on your website, use them to get more free search engine traffic. Have the audios transcribed and place them on your website or blog pages. This also gives your customers options, as some people will prefer to read rather than listen to an audio.

With a little thinking and planning you can make your content go a long way.