Small Business SEO | Small Business Social Media

Getting your business listed in the local search engines sites is paramount to getting not only more traffic to your website, but more calls on the phone and more new customers in the door. If you have been dragging your feet in listing your small business in the local search engines, stop what you are doing and read the following post. It will be the best 15-30 minutes you have spent on marketing your business in years – possibly ever.

Local search listings include not only your basic contact information, but they also include a map of your office location, posted hours of operation, details about your products or services, and more. Think of local search listings as interactive, detailed Yellow Pages ads of the 21st century – with one clear advantage – local search listings are free!

In this series of posts, I will be covering the step-by-step process to properly submit your small business local search listings. In this post, we will tackle the most important local search engine: Google. Google local search results are shown in the blue highlighted box in the image below. As you can see, Google places a very high level of emphasis on local listings – the local listings come first at the top of the page before the regular search results! Your business needs to be here – now.

How to Get Your Small Business Listed on Google Local: Step by Step

Step 1. Go to the Google Local Business Center to create a Google Account. You will need this to create your listing. If you already have a Google Account, you can login here as well.

Step 2. For those who need to create a Google account, enter your information to create your account and Google will send you a confirmation email. Click the confirmation link in the email to login to the Google Local Business Center.

Step 3. Ok, once you’re in, click ‘Add New Business’ to bring up this screen:

Step 4. Fill in your business address, phone number, website, etc. You will also be given a chance to choose a category for your business, as well as enter your store hours, payment methods accepted, brands you endorse, parking information and a wealth of other information about your practice. Once you have all of your information proofed and spell checked, click ‘Submit’.

Step 5. Google will then need you to confirm your submission with a PIN number. You can either have Google call you at the business number in your listing (much faster) OR by having a postcard sent to your physical address (much slower). Your listing will not go live until you confirm it by one of these methods, receive your PIN number, and enter the PIN number in your listing.

Step 6. Wait. Once you have confirmed your submission, it can take as long as 4-6 weeks to show up in the listings, so be patient.

In the next post, Ill step you through creating your Yahoo Local listing. See you then!

I happened to be on LinkedIn earlier today, and someone had posted a question about where they should land their website visitors. I answered their question, and thought it might be helpful to post it here for you guys as well

You need to target where your visitors land based on where they are in their search behavior:

1. Informational searchers are looking for a specific fact or topic. These are your broader keywords (i.e. widgets). These folks are gathering information and probably arent ready to buy yet, so I would land them on your homepage or possibly a secondary page in your website (i.e. blue widgets).

2. Navigational searchers are seeking to locate a specific website (i.e. widgetsrus.com). Believe it or not, many, many searchers will type the URL of the site they ant to go to in the _search box_ of Google instead of their browser line.

These folks already know your website or brand, and want you. So you can land them on your homepage, or maybe you land them on a specially designed landing page that builds a relationship with them right off the bat (i.e. a freebie ebook/whitepaper/coupon/etc) as a thank you for coming to you via your brand name. Dont make them register for this freebie either. Give it to them w/o any forms to fill out.

3.Transactional searchers are looking for information related to buying a particular product or service. These are your buyers! Treat them well! These folks know exactly what they want (i.e blue widget model 996xp with flash) and MUST be sent directly to that product page on your site. Do not send these folks to your homepage… they will leave. They will NOT click further into your site to find what they want. Why should they? They already searched for it on Google, and if you’re not going to provide the page they need when they click, your competitor certainly will.

Are you still making your website visitors click a plain email link to contact you? Chances are you are losing a ton of new leads that way (and probably seeing a ton of SPAM in your inbox).

A recent study I came across reinforces the fact that folks just don’t click email links any more. They like a nice, easy-on-the-brain form to tell them what information to fill out, where to fill it out, and how to ’submit’ their info. Less thinking. Fast.

The are numerous benefits to having your users submit via form as well. Two of the most important being:

1. Their contact information can be merged directly to your CMS/CRM system, eliminating the chance for corrupted data that can occur when it is hand entered/transfered from an email to your database. Yuck.

2. You can immediately begin a relationship with the user by sending them to a useful thank you page – maybe even with a freebie like an ebook, whitepaper, coupon, link to your social media profile, etc.

So do your business and your bottom line a favor, and join us in the 21st century. Get rid of those email links and replace them with a contact form asap.

These are simply the best books I have read for SEO, SEM, social media and online marketing in general. I have learned countless strategies that have increased my website traffic, improved my interactions with my customers, and generally let me dominate my online markets/niches/verticals. If you are an online marketer, you need to read these books. (And no, there are no affiliate links embedded.) Enjoy!