Knowing the difference between the paid business directory listings that help and those that hurt is invaluable. The best brands can use this to help be sure they are getting the first chance at high-value inbound searches/traffic.

Three Quick Signals To Tell The Good From The Bad

Built and Managed By Brands: Genuine professional directories (not to mention sustainable and scalable) allow the brands to build and edit their own listings/profiles. Paying to be part of a directory that you can’t edit is an immediate red flag. It may not be a directory at all. You may actually be paying for a link. Google penalizes sites that are associated with paid link building. Google knows the difference from a true directory and sites that are low quality. A lot of brands (especially for local search) have to spend good money on cleaning up inconsistent web presences (and having helped a good number of brands through this headache) – I’d opt to pass on paying for profiles you cannot edit yourself.
Name, Address and Phone: To be a valuable directory the listings/profiles must at least include a place to add and edit your Business Name, Business Address, and Business Phone. It’s even better for paid directories to have fields that allow brands to add and edit Business Hours, Business Description, Category, and Payments Accepted. If you’re paying for a listing that uses a unique phone number and call tracking – I recommend brands reconsider. This practice can hurt the consistency of your web presence.
A No-Obligation Link: Good directories allow brands to add and edit a no obligation link to their website. There was a time people sought out directories that allowed do follow links rather than no follow. This criterion should be ignored – we’ve helped and watched brands be rewarded for having high-quality web presences (without do-follow links). In fact, for local search, I see the lower quality and spammy links come from do-follow sources. Also, worth noting, no-obligation does include no requirements of linking your brand’s website back to the directory (via text or a badge) – this shows the directory is using your dollars to build their own web presence, not yours.

Two Bonuses of Great Directories

Bonus 1: Some directories allow brands to add links to social profiles. If you’re paying for a directory that has this feature – take advantage of it. Of course, you want people directed to your website not social profiles, but you also want your social profiles to become more authoritative (in the view of search engines) than competitors social profiles. An increase in the authority of your social profiles only makes your brand and its ability to get rank and get found via inbound search better.
Bonus 2: Some directories even allow

Judging the Value of a Directory

Membership Perks: Sometimes a directory is just a part of a membership. Like a chamber of commerce. If the other perks are valuable to your brand take that into consideration.
Where Are Your Competitors?: Does your brand’s top competitors have listings in the directory? If yes, then the listing is more valuable to you. This is local search optimization. And you don’t want your competitors to get any authority or relevance signals you aren’t.
Does it add authority or social proof?: The National Pest Management Association is a good example of a directory that helps brands build trust with consumers. The association not only gives you a directory but you can get certified as a “Green Pro” or “Quality Pro” and you can display those certifications on your website. People trust brands that have a big variety of “social proof” – high rating average, lots of reviews, lots of social shares/followers, and have badges to show off their memberships, certifications, and awards. Take the potential trust and social proof into account when considering the value of a directory.

Conclusion – Don’t Lose Sight of The End Goal

Search engines don’t want to send searchers to directories (another search engine). They don’t want to send people to Yelp or Angie’s List or The Better Business Bureau. They want to replace all directories and search engines. They want to immediately provide people with the best results. With reviews, directions, phone numbers and of course websites – all in one place – their place. And what you want to do is be the brand at the top, with the most and best reviews, and with a blazing fast website that converts visitors to buyers. Don’t lose sight of that! That’s where the big reward is. Don’t let tiny paid listings get in the way of that reward! Once you’ve made it their you’ll understand why.

Genesis Child Theme Design Snippets

Below is a growing list of design tips for WordPress (and more specifically the Genesis Framework). I’ve provided several snippets as well. These tips and snippets are broken into 5 sections:

WordPress Options ↓
Genesis Options ↓
HTML Snippets ↓
CSS Snippets ↓
HTML and CSS Snippet Combos ↓

Let’s begin.

WORDPRESS OPTIONS

WordPress comes with a lot of built-in design options. Most of these are obvious and well known, but this is what gets overlooked.

#1 Special Characters (e.g. ‘›’, ‘»’, ‘〉’ etc.)

With the rise of touch screens came the rise of the Guillemet (or arrow if you prefer). This makes links unmistakably obvious (which is really good for mobile and other touch screens). Add these characters to buttons or other appropriate links. I prefer the single arrow, as most popular apps seem to be adopting it’s use over the double arrow. You can add special characters by selecting the Ω icon in your page editor.

#2 CSS Classes For Menus

WordPress allows you to mark any menu items as “highlighted”, “lowlighted” or any other CSS class that has been added to your Child Themes CSS file. Notice our sample. The menu item “Free Audit” has been marked as highlighted and therefore displays an outline around the menu item. This is done by following three simple steps:

Select “Screen Options” while in the menu tab of the WordPress dashboard.
Select display CSS Classes
Fill in the CSS Classes text field with the desired CSS Class.

GENESIS FRAMEWORK OPTIONS

The Genesis Framework comes with a few built-in design options of it’s own. The biggest ones are picking your page layout, adding coloumns and adding tables.

#3 Picking Your Layout

You can choose your “Layout Settings” easily. Within your dashboard visit the page you’d like to edit. Scroll down and below the “Theme SEO Settings” area you’ll find the “Layout Settings”. Pick your layout.

#4 Adding Columns in Genesis

Adding columns in Genesis is easy too : ) You can use the html below to add two columns of text.Use this code to add three columns of text.And four.Six.

#5 Adding Tables in Genesis

You can use the sample html below to add a table to a page or post.

HTML SNIPPETS

#6 Adding Jump Links

There are two snippets of HTML you will need to create a jump link:

The Link Tag: First you need to add the link. This is like any other link but you add a pound character (#) and the jump link destination name (e.g. #JumpLinkDestinationName) at the end of the URL. For example if you want to link further down your pricing page the URL you would use for your link would be “http://www.YourDomain.com/Pricing-Page/#JumpLinkDestinationName
The Destination Tag: The second part of a jump link is adding the destination tag. This should be added in the html exactly where you want the link to jump to. The destination tag is <a name=”JumpLinkDestinationName”></a>

Of course, change the “JumpLinkDestinationName” to any name you’d like for both the link and the destination tag.

#7 Boxes and Background Colors

Adding background color to your text is important for some content (e.g. pricing boxes). Here is an example below:

Here is some text.

#8 The Fastest Share Buttons Possible

Below is a view of and the html for the fastest sharing buttons possible. Just switch out the text of each share button with the appropriate link to share your site. You can quickly get the links you need at Simple Share Buttons.

#9 Three Simple Pricing Boxes

With A Tagline That Emphasizes Your Commitment To Simple Transparent Pricing

Little

$10

Feature 1

Feature 2

Feature 3

Feature 4

Big

$20

Feature 1

Feature 2

Feature 3

Feature 4

Bigger

$30

Feature 1

Feature 2

Feature 3

Feature 4

↓↓↓ HTML BEGINS ↓↓↓

&nbsp;
<h2 style="text-align: center;">#9 Three Simple Pricing Boxes</h2>
<p style="text-align: center;">With A Tagline That Emphasizes Your Commitment To Simple Transparent Pricing</p>

<div class="one-third first">
<div style="background-color: #7994aa; margin: 30px 0px 0px; padding: 20px 10px 10px; border: solid #554b47 0px;">
<h1 style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #ffffff;">Little</span></h1>
</div>
<div style="background-color: #ffffff; margin: 0px; padding: 29px; border: solid #7994aa 3px;">
<h6 style="text-align: center;">$10</h6>
<div style="text-align: center;">Feature 1</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">Feature 2</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">Feature 3</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">Feature 4</div>
&nbsp;
<div style="text-align: center;"><a class="button" href="https://solidstratagems.recurly.com/subscribe/good-roi">Sign Up Now</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="one-third">
<div style="background-color: #7994aa; margin: 30px 0px 0px; padding: 20px 10px 10px; border: solid #554b47 0px;">
<h1 style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #ffffff;">Big</span></h1>
</div>
<div style="background-color: #ffffff; margin: 0px; padding: 29px; border: solid #7994aa 3px;">
<h6 style="text-align: center;">$20</h6>
<div style="text-align: center;">Feature 1</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">Feature 2</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">Feature 3</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">Feature 4</div>
&nbsp;
<div style="text-align: center;"><a class="button" href="https://solidstratagems.recurly.com/subscribe/good-roi">Sign Up Now</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="one-third">
<div style="background-color: #7994aa; margin: 30px 0px 0px; padding: 20px 10px 10px; border: solid #554b47 0px;">
<h1 style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #ffffff;">Bigger</span></h1>
</div>
<div style="background-color: #ffffff; margin: 0px; padding: 29px; border: solid #7994aa 3px;">
<h6 style="text-align: center;">$30</h6>
<div style="text-align: center;">Feature 1</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">Feature 2</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">Feature 3</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">Feature 4</div>
&nbsp;
<div style="text-align: center;"><a class="button" href="https://solidstratagems.recurly.com/subscribe/good-roi">Sign Up Now</a></div>
</div>
</div>
&nbsp;