Having been in the local SEO business for many years now, we’ve been successful in aggregating information and data for us to use and check against when it comes to some of our Local SEO Services. However, we also spend a lot of time simply helping other businesses and giving away a lot of really great and solid SEO advice. We thought we could share some of our resources to the public and give you a great place to find the best local directories to use for your citation work and local SEO efforts. Below you’ll find the 76 best local directories you need to make sure that your business is listed in, that are FREE. We’ve found a lot of value in making sure we’re checking, updating, and using the links below for all of our SEO clients (yes, even national focused).  You’ll find other companies that claim they have 100 places or 87, or 50… We’ve already done the work and cross compared the links. Many of the other lists are simply out dated with many dead links – bleh!  The list you’ll find below from Arcane Marketing is the most up-to-date and relevant. All of the local directory links listed below actually work.

Everybody knows what Google Maps is and does. Google Maps is quite possibly the most important tool local businesses can use to leverage their online success for any given regional area. Reviews, driving directions, appointment booking, click-to-call, images, websites, recommendations… what can’t Google Maps do? A lot, actually. One thing Google Maps is not very good at doing is trusting what users of Google My Business (GMB) tell it. Yes, there is a TON of spam on Google Maps and Google is constantly doing its best to give users the most accurate information about local businesses as it can. But ,Google can only do so much. To help keep business information accurate, Google oftentimes refers to other sources to validate what appears in their search results. We know this because Google will tell us in the Google My Business (GMB) dashboard with wonderful little notices like this one below. “Other Sources.” Those two words prompted some of the reason you’re reading this page. Read on to understand how you can keep these notices to a minimum and get your business more visibility in search engines (and you’ll get some really good links, too). Not that it matters to anyone, but it will results in better rankings in Google Maps too ;)

Google wants to be sure that your most important business information is accurate in Google Maps. We refer to this core information as NAP(C), or:

• Name
• Address
• Phone
• Category

When your NAP(C) is not updated to the right information about your company in Google My Business (GMB) profile, then it may be difficult for your customers to Google you, find you, drive to you, call you, or even know that you can provide the services/products they need. In order to ensure that your NAP(C) is correct, Google will search and confirm your company’s information from other places on the internet where your business information could be found. These other places are often other local business directories. These directories number in the hundreds or thousands, however, some of these business listing directories have earned a stout and good reputation from Google as “top directories”. They have the most benefit to offer you to be listed in. Some of these local directories are pretty well known, such as Yelp, Bing, Yellow Pages, Angie’s List, the BBB, and many others. If Google finds NAP(C) information that differs from what is listed already in Google Maps (for instance, maybe you moved to a new address and only updated your GMB listing, but not any of the others), then Google may consider that the information in your GMB listing is incorrect. That raises a question mark on their end. When that happens, Google might update your Google Maps information with incorrect NAP(C) info that it can find from some of the 76 directories you will find below. And… Well, you can understand the downside to that.

Now that you know briefly how Google Maps works when it comes to NAP(C), it’s time you get some work done. If you want to keep Google off your back and leave your GMB listing alone, you need to make sure that your business appears in as many fundamental local listing directories as possible. And, more importantly, you need to make sure that your NAP(C) is 100% consistent and accurate in each and every one of them. Now we want to stress the importance of consistency. Take our Idaho Falls office address as an example: 675 E Anderson St. Idaho Falls, ID 83401 (208) 938-5988 To be consistent we don’t use a “.” after the E and we do use a “.” after the “Street” abbreviation. If you change it up or don’t use it that way all the time, you have some work to do. Set a standard way to write your address and stick to that, 100%. The same thing with the phone number either always use parentheses or don’t. It would be a mistake to mix it up. The best thing you can do is decide exactly how you want your information printed, and then stick to that. Now, below you will find just about every fundamental and important local listing directory that your business should be found in. Some of these listings are free. Some are not. In an effort to keep this article on topic and to the point, we will not be getting into detail on how you sign up for these listings. After all, if we did that, how would we ever get anybody to sign up for our Local SEO services (wink, wink)? The following local listing directories are in no particular order. Also, this list may change from time to time, so be sure to bookmark this page and come back once in awhile to see if we’ve added any new directories you need to get your business into. Leeeeeet’s gooooooo!

• Google My Business
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• YP.com
• Yelp
• Local.com
• WhitePages.com
• Manta
• SuperPages
• ExpressUpdate.com
• Patch
• Crunchbase
• LocalStack
• 2FindLocal
• Brownbook
• LocalPages
• iBegin
• LocalDatabase
• Judy’s Book
• USDirectory
• HubSpot
• Yahoo Small Business
• Thumbtack
• Community Walk
• LaCartes
• Fyple

• Apple Maps
• Bing Places for Business
• MapQuest
• Dexknows
• Better Business Bureau
• City-Data
• Angie’s List
• Foursquare
• Hotfrog
• TomTom
• Citysearch
• 411.com
• Tupalo
• YellowBot
• Localedge
• Tuugo
• Cityfos
• AllOneSearch
• NextDoor
• Just Landed
• Call Up Contact
• Find Us Local
• N49
• BizHWY
• WherezIt

• MerchantCircle
• eLocal
• ezlocal
• Chamber Of Commerce
• B2BYellowPages
• ShowMeLocal
• Cylex
• AmericanTowns
• GoLocal247
• ebusinesspages
• CitySquares
• Yalwa
• MyHuckleberry
• 411.info
• Insiderpages
• Opendi
• YellowPageCity
• Best Of The Web Local
• Spoke
• Infobel
• MacRAE’s Bluebook
• Storeboard
• Cybo
• Parkbench
• Discover Our Town

Do you see a good directory that should be listed here, but is missing? Let us know! Contact us and we’ll take a look. Do you want to save a TON of time and hassle? If you hire us, we’ll complete your website listings in all of these directories (and others) for you. In addition to this, we’ll also apply our advanced SEO strategies that will bring you an average of 300% ROI to your efforts.