About Us

IBD is a family company that has been established since 2003. The website has been designed to have two aims, firstly to offer a cost effective quality advertising package that won’t be beaten. Secondly to offer the users of the site a comprehensive directory where you can easily find the information that you are looking for.

We believe in honesty and ethics, we don’t believe in hard selling and as a result we have built a solid reputation where our customers renew with us year after year. Please refer to the testimonials page for what our customers have said about us.

How IBD Can Work For YOUR Business:

IBD has been designed to offer quality, cost effective Internet advertising. This is achieved by creating an advert which is optimised for the World's major the search engines, giving our customers the best possible chance of being high on the Organic listings.

We aim to increase the profitability of your business by getting you found on the internet for your chosen keywords.

Each customer will have there own unique advert designed and created by IBD. Each advert has it’s own URL (web address) which means that they can be found in the search engines independently of IBD for the customers selected keyword phrases.

For Example:

One of our customers refurbishes Aga cookers. They wanted to be found in the search engines for refurbished aga cookers in any County of the Country. IBD built their advert and they are now optimised for that particular key worded search. You can see for yourself by typing in the words refurbished aga cookers followed by a County of your choice, hopefully they should appear on the first page!

Most adverts rank highly in the major search engines which is putting your business at the forefront of thousands of potential customers every day

The unique design of IBD sets it apart from many of the other Internet directories because each customer has their own keyword targeted advert. This means we don’t need to use categories as many other directories do. This gives our customers complete control over their advertising. IBD customers are found for what they want to be found for, not just placed in a broad category with many other businesses. Our adverts are also displayed in there entirety there is no other company advertising on their page and their company is not shown as a “priority listing” with all of their competitors.

We can offer customers without a website an effective Internet presence at a fraction of the cost of having there own website.

We can help customers with a website to get their site highly ranked in the search engines.

We truly believe that you won’t find a better quality advertising package that is as cost effective as IBD anywhere on the Internet.

What is a Good Directory Listing by Stop the European City Guide

The Internet has hundreds of online business directories all promising to do wonders for your business. Some of them are very good, however as in most industries, there are a few cowboys out there that will be happy to sell you a listing that will be of poor value to your business.

Here at IBD we want to promote honesty and ethics within the industry, we don't believe in miss-selling just to gain a quick buck - earning ourselves a bad reputation will damage the longevity of our business which we don't want to do.

IBD has received an official looking letter from the European City Guide which states that filling in the form would give IBD an opportunity to be published in their directory. The actual wording is as follows:

Dear Sirs,

We are presently compiling commercial information for the European City Guide. Filling in this form would give you the opportunity to be published in our inter-professional guide on CD-Rom and Internet. In order to positively represent your company and your city, we would be grateful if you would fill in and return this form with additional information about your business as soon as possible in the enclosed envelope. Thank in advance for your co-operation.

Next is the form containing the data they already hold, and provision to change this data. In my case, fax number and url are blank. I find this a little odd as they have my business name and address, so surely my website address is not a mystery to them.

There follows more text and, to be fair, a cost is highlighted in bold - 997 euros. However, i believe i could easily have missed this. This text ends with the following sentence - 'The present contract is governed by the conditions overleaf.'

I have no idea what said conditions are as the text is a light grey colour on a whitish background, making it almost impossible to read for me personally (as far as my optician is concerned, my eyesight is normal when wearing my spectacles).

There are several more points i could make, but suffice it to say IBD will not be advertising with the European City Guide, and i suggest anyone wanting further information follows the following link:

Further information on European City Guide from StopECG

In September 2005 the StopECG orgnisation issued a report advising businesses on what a good directory listing is, below are the main points of that report and IBD's response to those points:

A Good Directory lisitng is one that is going to bring your business customers. So how can you tell if a directory can do this? Stopecg recommends businesses to consider the following points when considering a directory listing:

Target Audience
Website Traffic
Ease of Use

Target Audience

As most people visit directories because they are searching for a particlar product or service, it is therefore important that they can attract customers. It is also important that they can direct customers to the right pages within the directory.

IBD addresses these points in three ways:

Firstly, the site has a Google customised web search where users can type in keywords such as Accountants Cheshire and appropriate searches will be displayed.

Secondly, the customer can search the directory geographically.

Thirdly, we are also currently ranked number one in Google.co.uk for the keywords "internet business directory", therefore we are highly visible to people looking for a directory.

However the best and most UNIQUE thing about IBD is that people don't have to find the IBD website to find your business. Your advert is like a one page website, therefore it can be found independently in the search engines for your chosen keywords, people don't have to look on the IBD site at all. And even better, the said advert is just one click away from the search results.

Traffic

Online traffic is the number of people that visit a site, the more visitors there are the more likely that people will see your advert and click through to your own website. Now any salesperson working for a directory can tell you any superfluous figures for the number of visitors they get and often you just have to take their word for it. At IBD we don't have anything to hide and our site statistics can be accessed and viewed by anybody looking at the site. (Please refer to our Statistics Page). Be wary of any directory that doesn't have this facility for obvious reasons.

As an added measure we can add a tracker to your advert so you can monitor how many visitors it gets, then you can assess whether you think it's worthwhile renewing your subscription.

Ease of Use

StopEGC recommend this as a critical point, they state that a "good directory should deliver the visitor quickly to the service they are seeking without hassle, pop ups or failed searches".

As mentioned earlier, IBD has a customised search box facility on the Home Page to make it easier for users. We don't have annoying pop ups and uniquely, all of our customers adverts feature information about their business and nothing but their business. There are no other links to other companies to distract the user, there are no annoying weather reports and you are not in a list of your competition.

To view Stop EGC report in full please click the link below. One important point to mention is that this report was prompted because of unscrupulous advertising techniques by a certain Internet directory. IBD want to make it absolutely clear that we have nothing whatsoever to do with this company.

Stop ECG Report on Good Directory Listings

We hope that this article has helped you, if you have any further queries please don't hesitate to contact us.