It’s All About Local

For the brick and mortar small business, it’s all about local.

Forget about SEO, blogging, gaining back links, and posting to Facebook and Twitter for just a moment. If you want to draw visitors to your physical storefront, you need to focus on ‘local’ first. Get the local part right, and the rest will begin to make sense. All paths will lead directly to your door. 

Is your business visible on the map?

Navigate to Google Maps and type your business category and location into the search box. Does your business show up? Is it at or near the top of the list? If so, click on your listing. How does it look? Has it been owner-verified?

Now go to Bing’s Business Portal and Yahoo Local and do the same thing. Answer the same questions.

Those are the big three, but what about Yelp.com, MerchantCircle.com, Angie’s List, SuperPages.com, Local.com, Kudzu, Manta, InsiderPages, and do you know if you’re showing up on mobile and GPS enabled devices?

As a local business owner, you need to be highly visible on directory maps. Your listings need to be accurate, consistent, and present you in the best possible light.

Many local directory listings function as external supporting websites – providing not only your business name, address and phone number, but also links to your website, your social media profiles, third party reviews, even image and video uploads, and the ability to post blogs and coupons.

The upside is that the opportunity to increase your online visibility is huge. The downside is that I don’t know of one single business owner who has the time or the patience to make sure he’s listed properly in all the local directories at once.

Here’s what we tell our clients:

Learn the basics by signing up for our List Yourself! video series.

Develop a few business descriptions, approximately 200, 300, and 500 words each. This is where people get hung up. It takes time to think about how your company comes across to potential customers intelligently, with keywords they recognize.

With your business descriptions done, set out to fill out one FREE directory listing a week. Online directories are very aggressive about listing your company for you for a fee, but they mass upload, making it virtually impossible to do accurately. They all offer to list everywhere else. Just do it yourself, but watch the videos and have your descriptions ready to make the most of your time.

Local listing terms are very important, don’t neglect your store’s physical location as it relates to your online SEO. Be sure you’re listed accurately. We offer quite a bit of helpful information like this in our weekly newsletter, The Inside Line on Getting More Business, have you signed up yet? Inside Line subscribers have access to free downloads and reports unavailable anywhere else. Right now, you can learn what to do, and what to avoid to make more money this year in our FREE report, 5 Keys to Higher Sales in 2012. Sign up today to get yours.

Additional Reading:

10 Things You Must Do Now For Your Business