There is a lot of opportunity for local SEO, so whether or not you have a brick and mortar store, it is vital to ensure that your local customers can find you.
Customers search locally online to know whom they are dealing with and a findable website is a must for any business in today’s age.
If you are a business owner, this easy guide will help.
Why list your business locally?
It’s free
Consider it like free advertising! The more information you provide, the easier it is for customers to find you.
It’s fast
Add, improve or update your business listing anytime that is convenient for you.
Reach your customers
Customers are already searching for what you provide so stop losing business to your local competition.
Updated information controlled by you
Offering discounts? New product launch? You can provide updates anytime!
Submit your site to Local Search Engines
→ Yahoo Local
→ Bing Local
→ Google Maps & Google Local Business Center
Verify your Google listing
A simple search in Google Maps will tell you if your business is listed, verified or none of the above. To search, US Residents go here and Canadian go here, and use the following format in your search query:
Business name, city, stateClaim your Google listing
Claim your Google listing
If your business is listed but the results indicate that it is an “unverified listing”, be sure to verify that you are the owner to prevent it from being hijacked by anyone other than you.
- If your local Google listing does not show up, submit your new business listing.
- For updating/editing a current Google business listing.
- To correct a search result that lists multiple listings for the same business.
Submit your business to Internet’s Yellow and White Pages
Submit your business to Top Local Directories
→ Yelp
→ Localeze
Some additional things to think about
Mobile Exposure
Make yourself available for the mobile search market. With the dawn of smart phones and other mobile efficiency gadgets, searching for a local business listing is more and more performed using our handheld devices.
Press Releases
Utilize free press releases to advertise anything worth mentioning to your audience. A new product launch, change of standard business operation, release of some new exciting news, or anything else that will draw your readers to find out more about you.
Contact information properly tagged
Tag your contact information in your website using the <address> tag. This includes your address and phone number on your contact page and/or other pages.
Ask for reviews
Positive reviews will make your business more credible. Most local sites accept reviews so go ahead and ask for them from your satisfied customers.
Contact us to get the full list of local search engines and directories, or to let us help you get listed.
thanks for the post, very useful
I can’t believe I’ve been going for years wtihuot knowing that.
By the might of Mjölnir, I feel like an SEO God now that I understand local listings and Google Maps so much better.
Does listing locally help the business rank higher in the search engine results?
Google Places, Yahoo Local, and Bing Local will impact the search visibility the most, not to say that the others wont. Increased exposure has corrolation to increased rankings.
All of my questions settled – thanks!
I should digg your article therefore other people are able to look at it, really helpful, I had a hard time finding the results searching on the web, thanks.
- Norman
Took your advice and have seen my local listing jump in rank naturally without even using SEO, quite amazing! Have you seen any changes in results from Google’s last algorithm change?
This is a good website and very instructive. I will come back on this blog to read your articles.
Really useful post about listing businesses locally, thanks for posting it.
Very nice, this one is going in my bookmarks!
I really like what you are doing with your blog. It’s hard to figure out Google Maps, and am glad I found your website. Please keep it up.
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