Small businesses need not be intimidated by their domineering counter parts. Today small and medium sized businesses have countless ways of dealing with online competition. One of the helping factors here is that search engines try to list local companies in the result even when we do not specifically include the geographic qualifier. Moreover, it has been estimated the around 40% of the searches made by the Internet users include geographic qualifiers or key words that include local intent. This is certainly an advantageous factor for small businesses, which they must utilize to the fullest.
Having said this, you need to emphasize the importance of having a powerful website that will attract visitors and that can handle the high level of online competition effectively. How do we deal with this and where do we start?
Content Localization
Make sure to mention your location in your website and this is one of the best ways of being listed for local searches. This is an information both your customers as well as search engines will look for. This is also one of the best ways of targeting your local customers. So answer questions like the following in your website:
Who are your target audience?
Which geographic locations are relevant to your business?
How to reach you or how to find you? Etc.
Some of the places where you can provide such information to your website visitors include your Home Page, About Page, Press or News Page, Help or FAQ Page and Contact Us Page.
Claiming your Business Listings
There are instances whereby companies had to almost close down because they have not claimed their business listings. Such business listings are at times hijacked by unscrupulous people on the web and used for their own benefits. It is very important that you be in full control of your business listings.
Make the best use of Google Local
One of the interesting advantages of Google local is that it is not necessary that you should have a website to make use of Google local. Anyone with a business can get their business listed irrespective of the fact whether they own a website or not. Here you will be able to provide your website visitors with all the essential information regarding your business including your business name, address, contact details, website address if you have one, product images and product videos etc. The only factor that you should be careful here is that to make sure that you are identifying the right category to include your business listing so that it can be easily found on searches. Accurate listings in Google local will get better visibility. You can find a comprehensive user guide by clicking here.
Don’t miss out on Yahoo Local
Yahoo Local works more or less like Google Local. Here you will be listing your business in yahoo at the following link http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/local/business.php. Yahoo has also launched paid listings besides the free listings. There are two types of paid listings in Yahoo. The first type is Enhanced Listing, which is $9.99 per month, and the second type is Featured Listing, which is $24.99 per month. With both enhanced as well as in featured listing programs you will be able to provide the internet users with your website’s links, photos, descriptions. For the higher value package, you will also get a 5-page website. Yahoo will be the best option if you are looking for a comprehensive listing.
Third Party Data Providers
You can also make use of third party data providers. There are number of such data providers including Insider Pages, InfoUSA, Open List, SuperPages, YellowPages, Yelp, CitySearch, Localeze, etc. There are more such data providers that you can use. You will have to sign up with these third party data providers like you do with Yahoo Local and Google Local. Many webmasters find it a long process to signup in these sites but if it will certainly do your website a lot of good. You will also be able to enhance your listings in Google as well as in Yahoo because Google and Yahoo make use of these sites to generate their local results.
BOTW Local
Another site that you should consider is BOTW Local (http://local.botw.org/). They too have free and fee based programs that you can try.
GetListed.org
Yet another site that you can try is GetListed.org. It will enhance your business listing on the web.
