Protect Your Referrals Challenge Day 11: The First 5 Directories

Hopefully yesterday was a nice break from claiming or optimizing directory listings, which we know becomes a tedious exercise of copy and pasting from your template spreadsheet.

But, today we are back at it, armed with your tracker that you filled out.

You probably have anywhere from 15 to 20 for a solo firm to upwards of 50 to 75 or more directories to work through. This could be a bit of a repetitive and monotonous exercise and asking for some help from your colleagues or assistant might be a good idea here.

We are going to work on this over the next 3 days, so divide your list by three and that is the number of directories we want to claim each day. If you are a solo firm you may have around 5 directories to claim and optimize each day.

If it is just you, and you have a larger list of more than 10 a day, you may want to be strategic about which directories you claim and optimize. For example, I would suggest that today you just work through the directories that showed up on page one for each name and the firm name.

Here are some things to understand as you claim these directories:

1. There are some directory listings will try to sell you better placement or imply that you have to pay to get the directory updated. Most of the time, there is a way to update the information without paying.
2. If you have to pay to update your information, skip that directory for now then revisit in a couple of months to decide if you need to update those directories. All of the other work we are doing this month may push those “scammy” type of directories off of the first page anyway.
3. A few directory listings will not have an obvious way to update your name, address, phone number and URL using a website form. Sometimes you have to find an email or phone number and reach out to someone.

Good luck!