In this 7-minute read:
- 21 free listing sites for your retail business
- Manage your listings with reputation management software
One of the most important things you can do for your retail business is to increase its online visibility. This allows you to get reviews online, helps your business to get found by more customers, and increases cash flow.
Want to get and keep more new customers? Try reputation management software. Learn more, plus get free reputation monitoring and customer insights when you sign up for Womply Free!
A great way to help improve that visibility is to claim all of your free online directory listings, commonly referred to as citations. Womply’s data shows that when businesses claim multiple free listings, they earn 78% more money than businesses that don’t claim any.
Let us help you get started with these free listing sites for your retail business.
1. Google My Business is essential for retailers
Google My Business is always the first place that you want to start. This is how you get into the Google maps and show up on the first online source people use when looking for a new store.
List your retail business on Google with our guide: How to claim your Google Business listing
2. Facebook is a must for your retail shop
Facebook is another huge one that consumers are using more and more to contact businesses. When someone has a question about your store and they can’t find the answer on your website, they’ll often ask a question through Facebook’s messenger app before coming into the store.
This is also one that tends to show up on the first page of Google when someone searches for your business (if you have a business page, of course).
3. Don’t forget Bing Places
Bing is a popular search engine as the default for Microsoft Edge’s web browser. Don’t miss out on valuable opportunities by missing this one. The best part is, if you have your Google listing claimed, you can just sign in to your Google account on Bing Places and import your store’s listing.
4. Retail on Yelp? Yes!
Millions of people are on Yelp every day searching for new places to shop and take their business to. As the third most popular review platform, this is definitely a place you want your store to be.
Check out our guide: How to claim your Yelp business listing
5. TripAdvisor is good for retail also
Many people use TripAdvisor when they are traveling, and whether you have a souvenir shop or simply a grocery store that someone will need during their travels, it’s a good idea to list your retail business here.
Check out our guide: How to claim your listing on TripAdvisor
6. Foursquare is helpful
With 55 million users every month, Foursquare is a pretty popular listing site. On their platform, your store visitors can “check-in” to your store and leave helpful tips for other visitors. Get more feedback for your retail business by listing it on this site.
7. Better Business Bureau (BBB): a no-brainer
Having your store listed on and rated by the Better Business Bureau sends huge trust signals to customers and potential employees. This is important for any business. So get your store listed on BBB.org today with this form.
8. Yellowbook: specialized local digital marketing
Yellowbook is another “yellow pages” directory site. They are run by a digital marketing company called Hibu. Hibu specializes in local digital marketing and they know what it takes to help retail businesses like yours show up better on Google and other search engines.
List your store on Yellowbook with its simple-to-use form.
9. YP.com (remember the Yellow Pages?)
The traditional “Yellow Pages” has digitized its platform to bring us YP.com, a huge online directory service that gets more than 60 million visitors every month. They know the importance of improving your online presence.
You can go to YP.com to claim your free YellowPages business listing.
10. MerchantCircle for local retailers
MerchantCircle is all about directing users to the best local merchants—that’s you! They separate merchants by category to help their visitors easily find the service or products that they are looking for.
Get started in claiming your MerchantCircle listing with this form.
11. People still use MapQuest
Another popular one for travelers, MapQuest is still a widely used directory site. Their support team is awesome and will help you get your store added to their database quickly.
Just submit a support ticket to MapQuest and see your store’s listing in days.
12. Manta for cross-platform listings
Manta is a little different from these other sites in the extra features that it offers you. When you put your business information into Manta, they will scan other business listing sites to make sure your information is consistent across multiple platforms.
This consistency is super important to the search engines in order to provide customers the most accurate information for your store.
Manta makes it simple to sign your store up for a free listing here.
13. Citysearch: essential for local retail
Citysearch wants to provide users with the best experience in finding great businesses in their neighborhoods. Customers shouldn’t have to travel far to find what they are looking for.
Citysearch prioritizes fun with cool features like voting for your favorite places, special deals, and award badges.
Add your store to Citysearch by adding it to the CityGrid database.
14. Hotfrog: the “freshest” local business directory
Hotfrog boasts itself as the freshest local business directory in the United States, and for good reason. Its directory is constantly growing with more businesses each day to help users find the best local places to be.
Get your store listed on Hotfrog for free today.
15. Local.com
Local.com wants to help customers find the hottest local happenings in their cities. Make sure your store is one of them!
Local.com will provide driving directions, reviews, and contact information for each listing on its site to help give customers the best information available. List your store on local.com by signing up for an account here.
16. Verify your retail shop with ExpressUpdate
ExpressUpdate is a big one that you want to make sure your store is listed on. They are what’s known as an “aggregator,” meaning once your store’s information is verified on their site, they’ll pass it along to other partner sites. So you just got multiple free listings from one site. Pretty neat, right?
ExpressUpdate does require a little more on the verification side of things than some of these listing sites. Once you’ve added all of your store’s information, they’ll do a phone call verification to confirm that your info is accurate. Then, the listing is all yours and ready to go.
Get started by searching your business on ExpressUpdate.
17. Womply Storefront
With Womply Storefront, even the smallest local business can have a helpful, functional website for free. Building and maintaining a traditional website is simply too much for many small business owners to deal with. This is one reason a Womply Storefront can be such an amazing benefit.
Over 500,000 local businesses already have Storefront pages, and if your business isn’t included, you can just sign up for Womply Free, confirm your Google page, and Womply will build your Storefront page for you automatically!
Your Womply Storefront page has a high-end look and feel, a great user experience, and will list your business’s location, contact information, hours of operation, any details you want included… even your Yelp, Google, and Facebook reviews. All automatically, and all for free, with premium features available as well.
18. Brownbook: comprehensive retail listings
Brownbook.net is a fun one because it allows you to add so much more information than several of these listing sites. You can add tons of images, videos, history, business accommodations, and so much more.
Just make sure you get your business name spelled correctly the first time, because they don’t allow you to change it (without contacting their support team anyway).
List your store on Brownbook.net with this form.
19. Instagram is huge for retail
Instagram is super popular among younger demographics, so if the target audience for your store falls in that category, make sure you are active where they are!
If you are going to get into Instagram, just be sure to have lots of awesome photos and “heart-worthy” content that will get you tons of followers.
20. YouTube? Yes tube!
YouTube is another great social media channel to take advantage of. Create a channel for your store where you can show off new products, give fun tutorials, and share advice about the different ways your products can be used.
21. Local chamber of commerce
Your local chamber of commerce is all about helping its community succeed—and that includes helping small businesses like your store get found. Most chambers have an online directory in their community, as well as free resources to help businesses market themselves better, so take advantage.
Managing all of these listings sites and then trying to get new reviews to these sites on top of that can seem like a lot of work. But with solutions like Womply’s reputation management software, this process is made easy with automated features that save you precious time. Learn more, plus get free reputation monitoring and customer insights when you sign up for Womply Free!