June 6, 2010

Yes: There Is a Free Lunch for Local Businesses

If you want to be found as a local business or professional you have got to hang your shingle out there on the web for all to see.

In days more or less gone by you put an advertisement in the Yellow Pages in an effort to be seen, found and or noticed. If your Yellow Pages salesperson was good you might have had pictures,map and a small advertisement in your listing. Most people searching went to the phone book.

Today it is more likely, in all but a few demographic groups, they are going to try to find what they are looking for on the web . Are you there? Do you have a listing. presence or blog. Have you checked?

Forget the Yellow Page which costs money, the web is there for you at no-cost and can be done by claiming your listing. You can put useful information and have the search engines advertise you for the asking.

Your first place you will want to go is Google Local. Google has the widest base of users and all you need to do is create a Google Account ( and get free Gmail) if you do not have one and submit the details of your business,practice or service. Follow the simple instructions and verify your listing and you will show up. Searches will seek your location out and you will show up with a listing on Google maps like the listing below:

2010 06 06 1418 1024x390 Yes: There Is a Free Lunch for Local Businesses

Google Places Listing

Your next place is Yahoo Local and then Microsoft’s Bing where you can do a similar listing and provide the requested information. Do not forget to take advantage of all of the items on these sites. You can post photos,videos and product and service descriptions to make your location stand out. You can also add links to your social sites such as Twitter,Facebook and LinkedIn. The review function can be very helpful if a customer raves about you.

There are many other review sites and local listings out there as well you can get free listings . Some of them include SuperPages,Yelp,GigPark,HotFrog and Ask.com but get the Big 3 done first.

Do not forget to get your free lunch before your competitors have you for lunch.

Here are some other views:

Comment on Business Portals & Local Listing Guide by How to get … – rankings. Those directories include Yelp.com , SuperPages, YellowPages.com, and a host of others. Click Here for the full list. Don’t forget plain old optimization. It’s still a search engine! […]
Google Street View Adds Local Business Listings – They don’t really need to, they can build on top of search traffic. Google is rolling out some serious offerings to beat down Yelp, and similar ones. FourSquare must be their next target to hammer down or buy outright.
Local Business Listing Marketing vs. Data Services | Search Engine … – As local business marketing as become a hot topic in the Internet marketing industry, business owners are finding themselves confused about the various types.