Places To Build Your Web Presence
Build out your web presence to help with your online reputation. Secondly, these can help with your traffic by providing more quality inbound links to your site. External links that you put on these sites are NoFollow unless otherwise noted, but they can still help you with direct traffic.
More places for people to find you.
Social Sites:
- Facebook.com - A Facebook "Page" is a profile for your business that doubles as a social media channel to connect with your fans. See also: Using Facebook for your business.
- Twitter.com - A Twitter account for your business is another online presence, and like Facebook, it's another place that you can engage your customers. See also: Using Twitter for your business.
Directories:
- AboutUs.org - This is a popular website directory that's also a wiki. You can create a page by visiting AboutUs.org/YourWebsite.com and clicking a pencil to add more information.
- HotFrog.com - A business directory for U.S. companies where you can add your own.
- MerchantCircle.com - You can sign up for a free profile here.
- Manta.com - Similar to Merchant Circle, You can register here, and create a company profile. Manta's free listing allows business owners to add a variety of content, links, and a twitter stream.
- CrunchBase.com - This is TechCrunch's business directory that you can add your business to. Profiles are openly edited, but they only get posted once they're approved.
- VentureBeatProfiles.com - Much like CrunchBase, this is a place for business profiles that get included as widgets in VentureBeat posts. AboutUs community member Matt Stephenson likes VentureBeatProfiles because it allows people to add so much content to the profiles. The profiles also have some nice community features like user opinions of the site and Twitter streams.
- Google Profiles - This is a free profile that you can create. People with Gmail email accounts often have one. While Google Profiles are intended for individual people, there's nothing stopping a business from adding one.
Other:
- Wikipedia - I wouldn't bring this up, but I hear too many people pine for it to not bring it up. If your company or website is big and 'notable' enough you may be able to get a Wikipedia page. It's a wiki that is about neutrality and not self-promotion, so don't expect (or try, please) to edit it into a marketing piece or much at all.
- GetSatisfaction.com - This is an interesting site: it's customer service in public, along the lines of a forum. You can create a page for your company and it's a place for customers to post questions, ideas, problems and praise. This is a great place to build your reputation by responding thoughtfully to posts right there. GetSatisfaction's also nice because it becomes a self-building FAQ - check out ours to see what I mean. (GetSatisfaction.com does not NoFollow their links.)
- MyWOT.com - This is a site to help people know which sites they can and probably shouldn't trust, complete with a free add-on that gives you a color-coded heads-up about sites. Go to MyWOT.com, search for your site, and make sure it has a green rating. Asking fans of your site to give it good rating and comments is a good idea too.
- blogspot.com - You can create a free blog with a URL like YourBusiness.blogspot.com. (Your blogspot blog will not have NoFollow links.)
- Squidoo.com - This isn't really a business directory, but you can create a "lens" for your business.
- KillerStartups.com - If your company is a startup you can submit it for consideration and it may be reviewed. You won't have control over the final review, but they are generally pretty positive because they only review companies that they think are 'killer' in the first place.
