How To Get Your Small Business
Listed Online In The Local Searches!
“Must-know FREE & CURRENT Ways That You Can
Use To Get Your Local Business Listed Online”
by Randi Thompson
Table of Contents Introduc)on................................................................................................. 3 Why You Should Use Local Search............................................................... 5 Google Places .............................................................................................. 7 Bing Local................................................................................................... 10 Yahoo! Local .............................................................................................. 11 Enhancing Local Lis-ngs ............................................................................ 13 Now Its Up to You…Or You Can Join With Us ............................................ 15 All rights reserved Randi Thompson © 2011
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Introduc)on As a locally owned business owner, you understand how important it is to make sure your business can be found whenever someone is searching for your service or product. This usually means ge4ng your ad in the local yellow pages, adver/sing on local television and radio, or pu5ng ads in local publica*ons like newspapers and magazines. Now, thanks to the internet and social media, we can reach out further than ever before so that the people who are looking for us, can ﬁnd us. Even today, there are people who feel the internet can’t be beneﬁcial for their local small business. This just isn’t true. The internet can be enormously beneﬁcial to very small local businesses. What can you do to use the internet more eﬀec.vely for your local business? The percentage of people who have internet access is growing at an astonishing rate, and many of those people are using the internet to research companies in their local area. Do you know that studies now show that 80% of shopping or searching for local services is now done online? The *me for you is now! If you want to stand out from your compe&tors, you need an online presence. This begins with understanding the basics of internet marke0ng and how you can use it for more eﬀec0ve marke&ng on social media networks. All rights reserved Randi Thompson © 2011
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In this report, I’m going to show you why you need to make your presence known online, and the best way to do it. All rights reserved Randi Thompson © 2011
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Why You Should Use Local Search All of the major search engines are now using some sort of local search technology to display informa3on about companies that are based in one speciﬁc geographic loca.on. You may have heard it can take months for a website to make it to the top of the search engines. If you’re in a highly-‐compe&&ve niche, you may never be able to make it there. Sure you can get up in the searches with just your business name, but who would know that to search for it? That is why we use the internet marke/ng techniques. We can GEO target our business with keywords that will bring it to the top of the search engine results in your area. Local search results appear at the top of the results, before the standard results are shown. This means that they get a lot of a"en%on, o)en more so than the actual search results. If your business is not listed here, but your compe5tors are, you will be losing a lot of business. In some areas, thousands of people use Google and other search engines to ﬁnd local businesses just like yours every single day! All rights reserved Randi Thompson © 2011
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It just makes sense to make use of this technology. It’s free to submit your business, and it can make a big diﬀerence to your bo4om line. All rights reserved Randi Thompson © 2011
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Google Places – h"p://www.google.com/places Google Places is the new name for the Google Business Center. Using this service, you can “claim” your business in Google and customize your lis$ng on Google Maps and other important services. Google is the largest search engine, with an es1mated 75-‐85% market share. Most of your online eﬀorts should be focused on making sure your business has a prominent presence in this search engine. While this can be accomplished by crea3ng a website for your company and using search engine op/miza/on techniques, it could take several weeks or even months before your site ranks well and starts to see signiﬁcant amounts of targeted people. These are people who are interested in what you have to oﬀer. The best way to make sure your company has a strong presence is through the use of Google Places. If you have ever done a search for a local business on Google, you’ve probably no3ced the Google Places lis3ngs at the top of the search results. You might recognize those orange balloons that mark where a local business is. They appear before the standard results, making them especially important. It is very important to make sure your business has a presence here! All rights reserved Randi Thompson © 2011
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Take a look at this example: As you can see, the Google Places results appear before the standard lis$ngs, making them very prominent. If you were searching for a restaurant in San Francisco, there is a very good chance that you would choose one of those seven restaurants that appear at the top of the results. All rights reserved Randi Thompson © 2011
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As you can see from those results, Google Places shows users a number of diﬀerent pieces of informa0on about each business. The name of the business, the phone number, the website URL (if there is one available), as well as reviews for the company. If a user clicks the name of the business of the number of reviews, they are taken to that company’s business page. There is a map that shows the company’s loca,on, reviews and photos, hours of opera,on, and more. This feature is especially helpful to users, because they can quickly and easily ﬁnd the local businesses that have what they’re looking for. It’s also helpful for those businesses, because they can get a top lis4ng in Google without spending months pushing their website there the old-‐fashioned way. If you’re not taking advantage of Google Places, you’re missing out on a lot of business. In some cases, a lis2ng in Google Places could even double your business! All rights reserved Randi Thompson © 2011
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Bing Local -‐ h"p://www.bing.com/businessportal Google isn’t the only search engine that has a local search pla/orm. Bing is a rela&vely new search engine that was developed by Microso6 to replace its aging MSN technology. Like other local search systems, lis1ngs appear with a map at the top of the lis(ngs on Bing.com. While Bing doesn’t have the market share that Google has, its innova/ve algorithms and fresh technologies are causing it to slowly emerge, taking a larger and larger slice of the search engine pie as $me goes on. It’s a good idea to get your business listed in Bing now, while more people are focused on Google. If Bing happens to jump ahead in the market, your business will already be posi0oned to take advantage of the situa0on, while many of your compe1tors struggle to keep up. Lis$ngs on Bing Local are free, and they can be updated at any /me. You can also add mul+ple loca+ons if you have several diﬀerent stores or branches. All rights reserved Randi Thompson © 2011
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Yahoo! Local – h"p://www.lis+ngs.local.yahoo.com Yahoo! also has its own local search pla,orm called Yahoo Local. Yahoo has a signiﬁcant share of the search engine market, so they deﬁnitely should not be ignored. Since the process is easy to do, and results in more exposure in the search engine results, you might as well add Yahoo Local to your list. Yahoo! has two levels of lis/ngs for their local search pla5orm. The free lis$ng is very basic and includes the company’s name, URL, and a short descrip(on. The enhanced lis(ngs also include the company’s logo and tagline, photos, a longer descrip1on, links to coupons, and the addi1on of the company’s lis0ng in up to ﬁve categories. At the moment, enhanced lis0ngs cost just $9.95 per month. This is a very reasonable cost when you consider how much more a3en4on your business will get if you have these added features. Addi6onally, as a paying customer, you will receive reports that will show you how many !mes your lis!ng was viewed and how many !mes it was clicked. This will help you reﬁne your lis.ng in order to maximize its eﬀec,veness. All rights reserved Randi Thompson © 2011
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You can always start out with a standard lis1ng and upgrade at a later date. This might be a good op0on if you just want to test the water before you are locked into a monthly fee. All rights reserved Randi Thompson © 2011
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How to Enhance Your Local Lis3ngs There are a few things you can do to enhance your local lis3ngs, but one of the most important is to have a website. When you have a website, your URL will be displayed in your lis3ng, which will draw a8en3on to the lis$ng. This is very important, because it helps you stand out from the compe&&on. In most cases, you don’t need a complex website. Unless you plan to sell products or services directly online. Your site should contain: • Your business loca.on, including a map and direc.ons • Informa(on about your products and services • Hours of opera+on • Contact informa,on Most companies don’t need much more than this on their website, but you can enhance your site’s eﬀec0veness by adding addi0onal features. All rights reserved Randi Thompson © 2011
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For example, if you add an opt-‐in box to your site, visitors can subscribe to your email list, allowing you to send them your valuable content, news, coupons, sales, and new product oﬀerings. This will help keep your customers reminded to shop with you, and you can oﬀer incen4ves to keep them coming in. Since we can do it online, it is basically FREE. It costs a lot more to acquire a new customer than it does to get repeat business from exis-ng and former customers. By ge6ng people on your mailing list, you can en0ce them to buy from you again and again. It just makes sense to do this, because you can turn one-‐!me customers into loyal life )me customers. Why let people drop by your website once and leave, possibly forever, without ge*ng them onto your mailing list? It’s an eﬃcient use of your web space to provide a way for customers to be no4ﬁed about your latest oﬀers. You can send out a newsle1er once a month that includes a li1le about what you are doing, an ar1cle, an oﬀer, and as always, your 250 word Bio. How easy is that? All rights reserved Randi Thompson © 2011
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Now It’s Up to You Submi&ng your business to these three search engines is rela4vely simple, but it can be /me consuming. There is a lot of informa/on required, and it can be a li/le confusing if you’ve never done it before. Take your *me and be pa*ent. The results are worth it and now you can do it yourself! Wishing you success. Randi Thompson
Contact Us At… [email protected] Also take a look at our Social Media Networks: h"ps://www.facebook.com/howtomarketyourhorsebusiness h"ps://www.facebook.com/horseandriderawareness h"p://www.gplus.to/randithompson h"p://www.twi"er.com/horseexpert h"p://www.youtube.com/user/randithompsonlive h"p://www.linkedin.com/in/randithompson All rights reserved Randi Thompson © 2011
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