Comments on: Claiming Your Local Business Listing on the Search Engines

By: Shelly

Shelly — Tue, 25 May 2010 10:18:04 +0000

This is a good resource for people to utilize in their local business strategy.
Thanks for such wonderful examples. Shelly

By: Don Keeton

Don Keeton — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:19:34 +0000

Good points all around, Melih. You are absolutely correct; the number of promotional options can be overwhelming, especially to a new business on the Web. Given that any business always has time and resource constraints, it becomes difficult to determine which vendor brings real “cash register” value and which vendor the website owner should not spend time and resources on.

Another major consideration is the competitive situation that a small business is in. A small electrical contractor in New York City faces a different competitive landscape than does an electrical contractor in a much smaller city, say Bend, Oregon. The NYC customer is going to have to be more aggressive in promoting their business in order to be seen among the many competitors, who are also likely to be aggressive for the same reason.

Regardless of the business’ location or offering, our recommendation is to take advantage of the local listings that the three main search engine players offer as the starting point for promoting a small business.

There are many good directories, listings, and websites that can add additional promotional value and take a local business to the next step in terms of being seen on the Web by additional potential customers. We encourage small business customers to look closely at the reports that the three local search engines provide. That information is a veritable treasure map that leads to the paying customers—where they are, what they are searching for, on which days of the week they are most actively searching, etc. Having that information alone provides a competitive advantage to determining the next steps in promoting a local website.

By: Melih Oztalay

Melih Oztalay — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 04:43:49 +0000

Hi Don,
I certainly agree with you that the local business needs to tap into local business listings as their new marketing tool. This industry is going to benefit the local business reach for the local consumer through Web searches and mobile searches.

What I am most concerned about are small and local businesses having to contend with multiple websites when it comes to their local listing. What I’m really talking about are “time resources.” After all, there are over 60 websites in four different categories specifically geared towards local listings. How can a local or small business have the time resources to cover this space? Even if you made a conscious decision to not manage all 60, there are well more than Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask. The space goes to Local.com (they went public), Yelp, MerchantCircle, and many others.

Consumers will be the ones deciding which of these local listing websites they will go to and post their experience through consumer reviews. This adds to the burden that no one single local listing website will do the trick.

Good information from your post, and hopefully varying opinions help give perspective.