You can use our directory to target searchers in your area.
If you haven’t added or claimed your listing yet, go ahead, it’s free.
Run a search first to see if your business is already in our directory, then click the ‘Claim this Listing’ button if you find it. Otherwise, click ‘Get your free listing!’ (https://websites.ca/signup) in the main menu.
Our directory is growing fast.
By the end of 2016 we will have over 300,000 Canadian businesses listed. Those are all active businesses that potential customers can search for by keyword, category, and/or location, then we give them a link directly to your website.
The difference between Websites.ca and other directories is that we only include real, active businesses with websites.
We check a few times per year to make sure each website is still working, and a new feature we are adding soon is an email response time. That means we send an email to each business to the email address that potential new customers would contact them at, and we track how long it takes to get a response.
We will post these results in each listing so searchers will know when they can expect to hear back.
The goal of our directory is to save time for people searching for a particular product or service in a particular place in Canada. You shouldn’t have to search around to see if a business has a website, or send an email with questions and never hear back, or call and leave a message and never hear back.
Customers will search for what they need and be directed to only real, active businesses that they know will respond in a reasonable amount of time, and they can see a website right away to know if it is a good fit for what they’re looking for.
Here are the instructions for getting the most out of your listing:
1. Business Name
This is easy. Put your legal business name, and don’t include any extra promotional details here because it is confusing to our searchers. Save that for the Headline and Description.
Please don’t put all capital letters unless you have legally registered your business name that way. People on the Internet make fun of people who write in all caps. They say it means you are shouting or your caps-lock key is broken.
2. Physical Address with Map
Include your physical location if you have one — make sure to write the address the way Google maps can understand. That means usually: Unit #-Street# Street Name Street Type (300-245 McDermot Ave). That is our head office in Winnipeg. It is at 245 McDermot Avenue in unit 300.
Include your postal code also to help Google. If you don’t want to show your location because you work from home or for some other reason, just choose your city, or use your postal code to be more specific to an area of your city. This way people can still find you easily when they are searching by location.
The map will show a pin in the center of your city or close to the center of the postal code you provide.
3. Telephone Number
Include your primary business telephone number if you have one. It can be local or toll free, whatever you prefer.
You can have other phone numbers in your description.
Format your phone number(s) like this XXX-XXX-XXXX
4. Headline and Description
The headline is supposed to be short and sweet. 65 characters. This is what 65 characters looks like:
Promote your business website for free, and we also do web design
The description limit is 155 characters. Make sure to include the wording that your potential customers would be searching for. This is what 155 looks like:
People search Websites.ca for businesses like yours. Add your listing for free and we’ll send them to your website. Contact us for help with your website.
5. Logo
You can upload your logo in jpg or png file types. We recommend about 300×300 pixels for the size. Adding your logo is a good way to make your listing stand out in the search results.
Click the ‘Business Logo’ tab when you are editing your information, then you can upload your logo. You can use the sliding bar to change the size, and you can drag the logo around to position it.
6. Website
Our directory only includes businesses in Canada with websites. Put in your website address with the “http://” part at the beginning.
7. Categories
We have a set list of about 3,000 categories that cover pretty much every industry. This makes it easier for customers to search for something by category and find all of the businesses that fit.
Just start typing in the Category box and a matching category will show up. You can add 2 categories. If you think we are missing something, see a mistake, or have a suggestions, please let us know.
8. Email
This is not displayed on your listing because we don’t want spammers to bug you.
It is used for us to be able to keep in touch with you to let you know if there are any problems with your website, to verify that your business is still active, to test how quickly you respond to inquiries, and to let you know about new features we add to the listing.
9. Login
You can login with Google or Facebook (don’t worry; if you use this feature we don’t receive your password information, you are actually logging in directly to your Google or Facebook account to verify your identity only – and to save you the trouble of creating yet another username and password that you won’t remember).
If you want to use your email address and choose a password, that works fine too. You will be able to come back and login to your account any time to make changes or to add new information.
You can add your listing here: https://websites.ca/signup
The more details and good information in our directory, the more useful it will be for online searchers. This will make the directory more popular and help us send more potential customers to you. Win-win!
