Brownbook.net: Top Tips and Simple Tricks

Brownbook.net gives you free resources to promote your business online, but are you taking full advantage of it?

#1. Go deep, not wide

How do search engines find the pages on the internet where your business is featured? It used to be sufficient simply to have 'a presence', but these days, with so much more competition from web-savvy business owners, you need to go a little deeper. What do you think is most likely to rank well for user searches: a listing featuring just your business name and contact details, or a listing with a raft of additional rich text and media content? (No prizes here... it's the latter.)

If you've claimed your business listing on Brownbook.net, you'll notice the Business Toolbox near the top of your business page - use that to customize your business page with extra text, logos, photos, videos, even your Facebook or LinkedIn profiles and more. Take a look here at all the amazing (and free) things you can do with your business page: NEW – Add Widgets to your Business Page

#2. Don't be a stranger

Search engines like current content. This means that regularly updated pages get found more often. Regularly refresh your web presences to keep that feeling of freshness that the search engines love. Your Brownbook.net listing is easy to update and it's instant. Update your business tags (keywords) regularly and use the customizable business page to keep text and other content current.

Added bonus: each time you update your listing, it appears on Brownbook's home page in the 'Latest edits' section.

by Dave & Marc, co-founders of Brownbook.net
.

Why Brownbook.net is the most remarkable local search business directory on the net

.

In addition to offering many cool features that really help increase the online visibility of small to medium-sized businesses - all for free - Brownbook.net also has a lot of internet "firsts" to its name

• Brownbook is actually a global business directory because it allows businesses in 240 countries to be added – but it is also a local directory at the same time. I don’t know of any other ‘local’ directory that is also fully global (other than Google’s).

• It offers a great deal all for free – in fact, it offers much more than some other directories that charge a fee for extra functionality.

• It is billed as the directory anyone can edit – that includes address details, tags, videos, photos, widgets (e.g. Twitter feed or Goggle Street View), reviews, formatted text and page layout to enable full customization and individuality (some directories offer just a ‘box’ identical to the other guy’s ‘box’). Here are 3 examples of enhanced, customized listings: http://www.brownbook.net/business/31008544/sjk-products-ltd - http://www.brownbook.net/business/31015039/pulse-light-clinic (includes Google Street View) and http://www.brownbook.net/business/31014168/miamismcom---miami-beach-real-estate-resource.

• Brownbook is the first business directory to allow widgets in listings (e.g. Google Street View or Twitter feed).

• It was the first to allow you to use any unit within your listing as a widget in itself for use on other sites such as your blog (called Bidgets in Brownbook-speak).

• It was the first to enable the addition of Google Street View in a business listing.

• It's the first to provide QR codes as standard within each business listing.

• It's the first to provide page view stats for every listing.

• It was the first to provide these all these additional contact fields: IM, Twitter, VoIP and Blog.

• and it was the first to include a new B2B endorsement feature where companies within the directory can endorse others and so generate more links to their listing. Here's an example of a business listing in Brownbook with 100+ endorsements: http://www.brownbook.net/business/31008591/worldwideprnet

Further reading:

The Guardian: Brownbook finds success with 'freemium' model
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/aug/20/startups-advertising

But my listing is out of date...

.

The traditional business directory industry's 'little secret' is that even in the biggest directories, up to 15% of records are out of date, incorrect or wrongly classified. The main aim of the founders of Brownbook was to make it dead simple for people to correct things when they spot problems (something very hard to do in most traditional directories) - hence the introduction of wiki-like principles in Brownbook.

The beauty of it is that, if you find that your own business (or anyone else's) is inaccurate in any way, you can simply correct it yourself - or report it for deletion if it's, say, a duplicate or if the business no longer exists. This is a fine example of crowdsourcing in action!

In this way, Brownbook- the free global business directory anyone can edit - is made more accurate every day.
.