Any business owner who’s tried to get visible to customers in local search has noticed the huge number and variety of citation sources out there (AKA places to list your business).
We all know that people who own businesses in America are of all different stripes – some who identify as a minority, some born in other countries, some multilingual, etc. That’s one of the very best things about this country.
What most local business owners and local SEOs don’t know is that there’s also a variety of local-biz directories geared toward many of the different ethnicities and identities of people who’ve built businesses here.
These sites are important for two reasons: Because “local” business owners (1) want to attract the “right types” of customers and (2) need to gather as many local citations as possible in order to get visible to those customers in the local search results (mostly Google+Local and Bing).
I’ve rounded up a list of ethnicity-specific / identity-specific sites, some of which you may want to list your business on.
I didn’t know about these sites, partly because this topic gets zero attention – even in local-SEO circles. But that doesn’t mean your customers don’t know about them and use them. Plus, chances are good Google views them as high-quality citations, which could help your local rankings.
This post is for you if your services cater to people of a particular origin, or if you’re trying to find more customers who have a similar background to yours – and who might be looking for someone like you in the same way.
A couple of notes:
1. I’ve only included directories that are (a) free, (b) available to people in any city in America, and that (c) don’t require you to place a reciprocal link on your site.
2. There’s no good way to categorize the sites, so I’ve simply listed them alphabetically. Most of the site names are self-explanatory, but I’ve added little side-notes to the ones that might not be.
Sites:
AlbanianYellowPages.com
AmericanIndianBusiness.net (Native American)
AsianBizOnline.com
BizPronto.com (Latino)
BlackBusinessList.com
BlackDollar.org
BlackOwnedBiz.com
BlackPagesOnline.com
Chinese411.com
CopperPages.com (Indian & Southeast Asian)
DesiWebUSA.com (Indian)
DoJewish.org
FilAmBizPages.com (Filipino)
FilAmPages.com (Filipino)
GreekAmericanBiz.com
HispanicSMB.com
IndianVillage.com (Native American)
IndoUSListing.com (Indonesian)
IranianHotline.com
iZania.com (Black & African American)
Jewocity.com
LatinaMarketplace.com
Latin-Businesses-USA.com
LebaneseinAmerica.com
MakBiz.net (Macedonian)
MinorityProfessionalNetwork.com
MuslimBusinessUSA.com
MuslimDir.com
NAOTW.biz (Native American)
RUList.com (Russian)
RussianImpact.com
SaigonNet.net (Vietnamese)
SupportBlackBusinesses.com
ThaiYellowPagesUSA.com
TurkishBiz.com
US4Arabs.com
Yasabe.com (Spanish speakers)
YaSas.com (Greek)
And a couple of good sites for US Armed Forces veterans:
VeteranOwnedBusiness.com
VeteransDirectory.com
(If you’re a vet or know one, check out my pro bono Visibility for Veterans program.)
By the way, you can find paid-membership sites if you do a search in Google along the lines of “[ethnicity] american chamber of commerce”. There are also a ton of LinkedIn groups, which you can find if you type things like “[ethnicity] American business network”
If the list doesn’t have a directory geared toward a particular type of person, it’s either because I simply couldn’t find such a directory (possible) or because I didn’t think to look (not likely – I spend 2-3 hours combing the web).
In any case, I’m sure there are some great sites out there that I missed. And I just know there must be a lot of non-US sites similar to the ones on the list (I’ve stumbled across a few so far). I’d really appreciate any suggestions.
How many of the above sites apply to your business (or a client’s business)? Any thoughts on how to make the list a little better? Leave a comment!