In today’s competitive market it is important to take advantage of the free online local business listings and directories available to local businesses. Google Places, Bing Business Portal and Yahoo! Local are powerful sales and marketing tools once claimed and optimized properly. If you are an electrician, jeweler, hair salon, restaurant, accountant or any other local business you should know that showing up when people are searching for your business is essential. Are you ready to claim your listings and directories?
Have your information prepared and readily available
You will need to have some basic information prepared and readily available – the email you will use to set up your listings, keywords you have researched, photos and videos, and more. Storing all of this information in one central location will save you time and make the process easy and run smoother.
Local business listings treasure chest
I create a folder named “local business listings treasure chest” on my desktop – you can decide what works for you. As I collect the information, I add it to the folder. For example, I know that all listings require a business description. I have a standard one written that I keep in the folder – it can be edited or tweaked depending on the listing or directory. The folder includes the following:
- Email address: Create an email address to be used across the board for all of your listings, directories and media sites. They all require one in order to create an account and verify that you are who you say you are. An email address with your business domain is ideal.
- Name, Address, phone number: Use your real company name, address and local phone number. Be sure it is exactly the same on ALL listings and on your website. This will help build your citations, which will help you rank higher so that potential customers can find you.
- Business description: Google Places only allows 200 characters for the business description. Bing and Yahoo! Local allow more – choose your words carefully. This is a great opportunity to use keywords – not keyword stuffing – but true keywords describing your business. There are many tools that can help you select keywords – here’s a few to get you started: Google Places Keyword Tool, Local Search Toolkit, and SEO Book.
- Categories: Google Places allows you to select categories and create custom categories. Google requires that you select at least one category from the suggestions provided in their form – the remaining categories should be specific, but brief. Categories should say what your business is (e.g. Hospital), not on what it does (e.g. Vaccinations) or things it sells (e.g. Sony products or printer paper). This information can be added in your description or as custom details.
- Reviews: if you don’t have many reviews, ask 5 of your customers and friends each month to post a favorable review on Google Places, Bing Business Portal, Yahoo! Local or Yelp to start. Call them first and ask if they would write and post a review and then email them step-by-step instructions – make it simple.
- Photos: have fun with the photos – take some pictures of you and your employees, smile with your clients, show your products or you providing your service. If you are a landscaper, electrician or construction business take some on location shots – people love true life pictures.
- Coupons and offers: this is free advertising at its best. Google Places lets you create a coupon offer for your customers – 25% off or Free samples, whatever you think is of value to them. Be creative and use your imagination. Bing offers “Deals” in which you create a coupon offer. Brainstorm and think about what you would like to offer and add it to the folder.
Claim or add your free listings
Now it is time to go and claim your Google Places, Bing Business Portal and Yahoo! Local listings. Google Places provides step-by-step instructions – Bing Business Portal has a graphic type interface with excellent explanations of what something does or means. Make time to read their quality guidelines which defines how to fill out your listing and what is allowed and what is not.
Send us your input!
Let us know how it goes and if you have more suggestions on making it easier to claim or add your location business listings. We look forward to hearing from you – bring it on!
