If you want your business found online, a directory listing is one of the fastest wins available to you. It takes about ten minutes, it costs nothing, and it puts your name, your category and your location on a page that both Google and AI assistants can actually read.
That last part matters more than most business owners realise. So let's talk about it properly.
Yes, and for a different reason than they did five years ago.
The old logic was backlinks. You got listed, you picked up a link, your website crept up the rankings. That still helps, but it is no longer the main event.
The new logic is retrieval. When somebody types "brand photographer Sheffield" into Google, or asks ChatGPT to recommend a bookkeeper in South Yorkshire, an answer gets assembled from sources that are public, structured and readable by a machine. A directory listing is exactly that. Your business name, what you do, where you are, what you offer, all sat on a crawlable page with a proper heading and a link back to you.
That is the bit most women in business are missing.
Here is the uncomfortable truth. If your entire online presence is an Instagram grid, you are close to invisible to AI search.
Social platforms are largely walled off. They do not want search engines and language models hoovering up their content, so they make it difficult. Your beautiful carousel explaining exactly who you help does not get indexed the way a web page does.
So you can have four thousand followers and still not exist in the place where more and more buying decisions now start.
You fix that by owning findable ground. Your own website first. Then structured listings that describe your business in plain, searchable language. Directories, your Google Business Profile, professional profiles. Boring, unglamorous, quietly powerful.
Nobody can promise you where Google or an AI tool will rank you. What you can do is give your business more chances to be understood and found.
The EMpowered Directory is a free, publicly searchable directory of women-owned businesses in the UK, run by business and marketing coach Emily Mallender from Sheffield, South Yorkshire.
Anyone can browse it. No login, no membership, no barrier. Listings are organised into twelve groups covering around sixty categories, from bookkeeping and virtual assistance to photography, catering, holistic therapies and web development, so people can find the specific thing they are actually looking for.
Every single listing is checked by Emily personally before it goes live. Nothing publishes automatically. That is deliberate. A directory full of dead links and abandoned businesses helps nobody, and it certainly does not help the women in it.
Any woman-owned business in the UK. You do not need to be a member of anything; you do not need to know Emily, and you do not need to create an account first. You fill in the form, and the account is made for you.
Basic listings are free. Permanently free, not free-for-now.
| Free listing | EMpire member listing | |
|---|---|---|
| Business name and your name | Yes | Yes |
| Category | Yes | Yes |
| Short bio | Yes | Yes |
| Photo or logo | Yes | Yes |
| EMpire Member badge | No | Yes |
| Tagline and full introduction | No | Yes |
| Services | No | Yes |
| Photo gallery | No | Yes |
| Location, contact email and phone | No | Yes |
| Website and social links | No | Yes |
| Reviews and star ratings | No | Yes |
| Position in the directory | After EMpire listings | Top of the results |
The enhanced listing is included with membership of The EMpire, my membership for women who are already running a business and want to grow it properly. It is £35 a month or £350 a year, and the directory listing is one of the smaller things you get for it.
Most listings are wasted. Here is how to not waste yours.
"I am passionate about helping women thrive" tells a buyer nothing. "I photograph personal brands for women in Yorkshire" tells them everything. Your bio is capped at 300 characters, so every word has a job.
Not your industry words. Nobody searches for "transformational alignment facilitator". They search for "life coach near me". Write for the search, then let your personality do the rest once they land on your profile.
Not the one that sounds most senior. If people think of you as a bookkeeper, put yourself in bookkeeping, even if you do far more than that.
Listings with an image get clicked. A square image works best, and use the same one you use everywhere else so people recognise you when they meet you in a Facebook group three weeks later.
Each empty box is a missed keyword and a missed reason for someone to trust you. If you have got the enhanced listing, use all of it, especially services and location, because that is what people search on.
A profile with five real reviews on it does more for you than a perfectly worded bio. Ask your happiest clients directly. Most of them will say yes and simply have never been asked.
You can log back in and update your listing any time. Changes are reviewed before they appear publicly, so your live listing never goes blank or half-finished while you are editing it.
Yes. A basic listing costs nothing and always will. The enhanced listing is included with EMpire membership.
No. The directory is open to any woman-owned business in the UK.
No. I am based in Sheffield, and the directory started with Yorkshire businesses, but it is open UK-wide.
Every listing is checked personally, so allow up to three working days. You will get an email the moment yours is live.
Yes, any time. Log in from the Add your listing page, and your listing will be there ready to edit.
Nothing complicated. Your listing is upgraded, and you get an email inviting you to fill in the extra fields. Everything you have already written stays exactly as it is.
Your listing goes back to the basic version. Nothing you wrote is deleted, and it all comes back exactly as it was if you rejoin.
Members can leave reviews and star ratings on EMpire member listings. All reviews are checked before they are published.
Being good at what you do is not the same as being findable. Plenty of brilliant women are running quiet businesses purely because nobody can find them, and that is a solvable problem, not a personality flaw.
Get listed. It takes ten minutes, and it is one more place your name exists in a form that both a customer and a machine can read.
Add your free listing here, or join The EMpire and get the enhanced one.
