Ranking well within the search engines can mean the difference of having a extremely fast growing business and one that is struggling to stay a float.  Just look at this following chart that I found on SEOSearcher.com.

If the first two links of the page get about 70% of the clicks what would having a first page listing at the top of page for your main GEO targeted keyword phrases mean to your business?

How to get to Page 1 Fast!

One of the fastest ways to get to Page 1 at the top of the page in the major search engines is by taking advantage of Local Search Listings.  The search engines offer free local listings to any small business (regardless of whether you have a website or not). With very little SEO efforts your business can quickly rank for your major GEO keyword phrase on the 1st Page of the major search engines.

Now with blended search or sometimes referred to as ‘universal search’, where the local listings are appearing on the first search engine results page (SERP) for even broad term keywords this has become a standard SEO strategy.

However, do not be fooled by some companies who want to charge you a monthly on-gong fee to submit you to these FREE local listings. It’s totally not necessary to pay that kind of dough for that service when you can do it yourself in about 10 minutes.

Below are a series of videos that will teach you everything you need to know about submitting to these local directories.

Google Local Business Center

Be sure to check to see if your business is already listed with Google Local Business Center before registering a new one.  This will prevent you from having a double listing.  Now a ton of business’s will discover that there is a listing in Google’s LBC for them already (due to the fact that Google does pull data from some of the phone companies).

It is very important that you claim your listing because if you don’t it says “is this you..? claim your listing” and when it says that, it promotes an element of miss-trust. Once you claim your listing that goes away.  Another reason to claim your listing is then you have control over the information being displayed which can be very powerful in gaining better rankings and instrumental in turning internet surfers into offline buyers.

8 Additional Google Local Listing Tips:

1. Address: Make sure your address listed is closest to the core of the city you want your listing to show.  If you are a contractor or work out of your home and your home address is not in that city then you may want to get a P.O. Box that has address and ZIP/Postal Code that correlates to the city core, otherwise you may find your listing not ranking as well as you’d like.  NOTE: Make sure your contact address is consistent across all the web.  Don’t have different sources showing different address for your business.
2. Category: Make sure you choose the most relevant category for you business in the ‘choose category’ section.  Getting this wrong can cause your local listing not show for the GEO keyword terms you would like.
3. Title/Business Name: Make sure your major keyword product/service is in the title (which is the business name section) however, I heed a WARNING: Do Not go too far with this because you don’t want to look like a spammer.  Make it look nature and make it make sense for humans who are ultimately your true audience.
4. Business Description: Make sure you have your product and/or service keywords listed in your business description.  Now this is not as important as the Title, but it too is important.  It is the equivalent of a website’s “meta description”.
5. Reviews: Get reviews! Right now it doesn’t seem to matter whether the reviews are positive or negative, just having more reviews can get your local listings to rank better.  Encourage your clients/customers to writer reviews.  Offer something in return for reviews.
6. Content/Media: Add rich media to your local listings.  Add photos & video, etc.  I not sure if it improves rankings in the local listings, but it can only help turn online browsers to offline buyers.
7. Coupons: Use them. This can be what differentiates your business from other competition found in the local listings.  Not offering a Google coupon is risking losing business to those businesses that are.  It also gives you a great way to track your sales generated from your local listing on Google.  NOTE: If you have coupons listed on other local listings make sure you make them different so you can track properly.
8. Double Listings: Don’t do it and make sure you only have one.  Currently spammers have not be banned from this, but it will hopefully happen one day soon and when it does you don’t want to lose your listing over something so ridiculous.

Yahoo Local Listings

MSN Local Listing

SEO & Additional Local Listing Tips

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