This is part of a series of posts about how to get free links pointing to your website in order to raise your search engine rankings and generate direct traffic from websites.

Site: Hive411. Ok. I own this site. But, that's a good thing. It is designed from the ground up to help small businesses be more findable. There are NOT many sites out there like that - that are free. That's why we built it. Here's some press coverage of it that explains what it is all about.

Quick Instructions: Go to the site and search for what you do in the town that you do it. (Eg Residential Contractor in Worcester MA) Then, scroll down and click "Add New Nomination". Enter your website address and other contact information for your business. Encourage other people to vote for you by sending them a link to it. Then, nominate and vote for other people in order to get more visibility and votes for your business.

Benefit of a Link from it:

1. Local Search Engine Optimization: If you're a business that does business locally, your website should be designed to attract local traffic from search engines. For example, if you're a cosmetic surgery place in Southborough, MA you should also be getting visitors from google who type in "rhinoplasty boston ma". If your website isn't designed to do that, we should talk.  But, even though your website is designed to catch that traffic, you still need links pointing to your website that confirm that your website is about that. Do you really expect google, yahoo, msn and ask to just believe you? So, that's what Hive411 allows you to do. It helps locally focussed businesses get a link that helps them attract local traffic to their website.
2. Secondary Search Result: Hive411 also acts as permanent endorsement of your business. The nomination that you create on Hive411 is likely to be found in the search engines too. (The site gets lots of traffic from search engines.)  Since your clients, friends and family can vote that you're the best "Home Designer in Birmingham, Alabama", you can get to the top of each page if you rally your supporters. Also, it shows who voted for you. So, if John Smith voted for you and Barry "I'm looking for a house plan" Jones knows and trusts John, Barry is more likely to want to hire you to design his house.
   
3. Direct Traffic from the Site: The site also drives some traffic to people directly. The site is pretty viral and gets a decent amount of repeat traffic where people are using it to actually search for things. I anticipate this will happen more often in the future, as more businesses are nominated. However, you can control how many times you get seen on the site by doing a few things. Your business gets automatically rewarded when you nominate and vote for other people like Russ did. So, spend some time clicking around and voting for people you know. Or spend some time nominating new businesses. If you want to send an excel spreadsheet, we'll even bulk upload a bunch of nominations and notify them that you nominated them. They'll be likely to return the favor, getting you more votes and more visibility.