New Year Resolution for Small Businesses, Get Local!
Online business people and marketers know the importance of Search Engine especially Google in their life. I hope everyone have noticed the changes Google bring in his organic search results couple of weeks back and if you don’t let me give you a quick one line overview of that, Google now started to show places results in search engine that means if your business is not registered in Google places you might be losing some serious leads for your business!
As Google is focusing more and more on local listings it is highly advisable to register yourself to Google places and other yellow pages and local directories.
How to Register on Google Locals/Places?
It’s easy but you have to be careful on every single step.
- Go to http://maps.google.com/ and click on put your business on Google Maps
- In the next window set your country and local phone no. in case of duplicate phone no. Google will indicate you that your business listing is already available.
- Once you provide the local business phone no. now it’s the time to provide the basic information about your business like: Business name, Country, Address, Local phone no. and zip code, business description, email address and website address. (provide as much information as you can about your business so that people online can find you online and contact you easily)
- Select the categories wisely (choose the categories suggested by Google places)
- Select the locations and areas where your services are available.
- Tell more about the business like Opening hours, Payment Options and other additional details that you might think are important.
- Add Photos and Videos for your business.
Also, add your business on other Maps/Yellow pages and local websites like:
- YellowPages.com
- SuperPages.com
- Insider.com
- Yelp.com
- Yahoo Local
- Bing Maps
- Switchboard.com
- Yellowbook.com
- Dexknows.com
- Yellow.com
And others…
The above mention sites allow local business to put their listings in their directory and by this you not only get local leads and clients but this also helps you attain top 10 rankings in search engine from your desired key phrases.
It might take a bit of the time to get your listing live but once live work on it and get positive reviews from your clients and solve client’s problem (if any). Your strong local connections and reviews on your business listings can bring massive leads and better search engine rankings.
So if you can do this of your own, perfect! or hire someone to do this for you, also if you have small business clients you should recommend them to list their business on local maps and directories to get maximum out of the online market.
Your opinions and suggestions are always welcome 
Moosa Hemani is the Team Lead for SEO and working for a leading IT house. He works on the client side; develops and executes the SEO strategies for clients related to different industries like real estate, contracting, Restaurants and others.
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12 Responses to “New Year Resolution for Small Businesses, Get Local!”
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Yeah Google is implementing its new tactics on daily basis and after a hard work on global market Google is showing its interest in local search.. example Nexus phone is updating day by day and just focusing on local search .. The SERP usually contains maps results on top positions.. Well thanks for your great post..
Users surely want a global as well as local presence for their business and the importance and attention given by Google to both these factors in their search results, is getting more and more business to start doing Local SEO, and to enhance their local profiles.
Moosa Hemani Reply:
December 28th, 2010 at 10:21 pm
I believe local SEO is more about getting local business and getting the exact business a visitor is looking for in the desired area.
Like: i am in search of a restaurant in San Diego so now with Google places search integrated with organic results its actually more easy for me to get not only the desired restaurants but also other information about the restaurants like word of mouth, reviews and others…
SEOs should recommend this to their client in order to get targeted leads for their businesses.
What to do if someone running an online business only means he or she doesn’t have any physical existence so whats the tip for that kind of businesses.
Moosa Hemani Reply:
January 19th, 2011 at 11:16 am
that’s fairly another topic Khan… i can discuss that too.
I own a home security company in Arizona and have just started to implement this local google marketing and i have to say after my first two weeks i have already generated one sale. I want to generate more leads thou, any help on doing this and expanding my local ??? great post .. thanks.
Moosa Hemani Reply:
January 19th, 2011 at 11:18 am
I guess better go and ask for your clients for thumbs up and reviews on local listings… in local listings power is the word of mouth.. ask them for reviews and this will automatically attract more customers… best of luck!
Is this method beneficial to SEO or ranking?
Moosa Hemani Reply:
January 19th, 2011 at 11:21 am
Well as Google and Yahoo implemented the same strategies then it will surly help in rankings as well…
I knew there had been a change and I’d heard of the local SEO but had no idea where to start – thank you for this!
That’s Great!!
Thanks for sharing such a nice post.
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Very informative post. I am sure all people planning to start up small businesses or even large ones will greatly benefit from this. Businesses should register with search engines like Google so as to be known by many people.