Local business directory listings today are essential to getting found online and attracting new customers. Not too long ago consumers found local business by opening up the yellow pages and searching for businesses alphabetically by category. A yellow pages business listing made it easy for businesses to ensure that they could be found by consumers. Not anymore, the Internet has changed everything. More and more consumers are looking for businesses online. Unfortunately there is no one authoritative source comparable to the old Yellow Pages for local business information on the web. As a result consumers look to a variety of online channels to find businesses. Similarly businesses have a variety of places online to list their business. This makes getting found much more difficult.
Your Next Customer is Searching For You
A local business directory listing has never been more important to your marketing efforts than it is today. The sheer number and variety of business listing opportunities that are available make it easy to take control, manage and distribute your local business listing online. With more than 70% of Americans on the Internet and more than 3 billion searches are conducted each month for local products and services, chances are your next customers are already online searching for you. Whether you think you already have an Internet presence or not, are a one man band or have thousands of employees, your business name address and phone number distributed across the Internet can greatly enhance your Internet visibility and search engine ranking. When consumers want to find a business listing they look online, as a result your business listing is a key element of today’s marketing strategies that help ensure you are present wherever people look for products, services and companies online. It is not sufficient to simply list your business on Google, Yahoo and Bing – today you have to do more. You have to literally think – Internet. The major search engines actually populate their local business listings not only with people who directly list their business on the sites, but from outside data sources such as phone directories (yellowpages, superpages, etc.) and other online local business directories.
Distribute Your Listing
Fortunately there are online services available to help you manage and distribute your small business directory listing to hundreds of local search platforms and business directories across the Internet. These services not only save you time and energy by independently submitting your business listing to the directories themselves, but they also serve as important data providers to the major search engines as well. As trusted data providers the major search engines pull, compare and display data from these providers on search results pages for their customers. Local business directory listings supplied by trusted data providers and compared with other sources are considered “verified”. Business listings that can be either independently verified or considered accurate by search engines improve search engine ranking for that business. For that reason it is imperative that as part of your brand marketing online, you verify that your business listing is accurate and resubmit and/or re-verify you’re listing at least once a year.
More Information
If you found this article helpful you might like to read one or more of the articles below. Using good local online marketing techniques today is essential to helping you get found online, attract new customers, grow your business and make more money.
