Much has been written about advertising on the Internet, and using search engines to get customers to your website, but can those customers really find you in your town? An easy (and free) tool many business owners don’t take advantage of is the “local search” listing section of the major Search Engines.

What is local search? Simply put, local search is a listing within the search engine’s maps database for your business. It is important to note that local business listings are only valid for businesses that have a real physical location. “Virtual” or “mobile” locations are typically not allowed. Local business listings include the company’s name, address, phone number(s), website address, and even hours of business and services offered. And best of all, they are FREE!

As an added bonus, local listings are shown in the local business results section within the regular search engine results page. A Google “10-Box” local business results section is shown below, for the search “commercial roofing products” near Portland, Oregon.

Chances are, your company already has a local business listing on Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft’s Live Search, even if you didn’t enter that information yourself. Here’s why: The major search engines take business information posted on other websites. Data from business review websites, like CitySearch.com, Yelp.com and MerchantCircle.comis imported by the search engines for this purpose as well.

In the example below, the local business listing was created from listings on Super Pages and Dex Knows, and has not been claimed or edited by the business owner. There are 8 additional web pages that mention the company (ABC Supply), and 2 pages of user-generated content, typically blog posts, that also reference the business somewhere online. This business has not received any reviews online, positive or negative.

Some questions to consider about your local business listings:

·      Do they exist in the 3 major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN/Live)?

·      Is the information they contain correct and relevant to your business?

·      Have you claimed your business listing in each of the major engines?

Yes, all of the major engines allow, and actually prefer, business owners to claim their local listings. To quickly find out if your local business listings have been claimed, visit GetListed.org and enter your businesses name and zip code. GetListed.org even gives you easy links to claim your listing in each search engine.

Once you have submitted a claim request to each engine, the engines will verify that you are indeed the business owner by calling you or mailing you a letter with a unique code that must be entered into the listing. After you have verified your ownership and claimed the listing, you are free to edit your listing information. Here are some tips to consider when you do this:

·      Make your listings as accurate as possible.

·      Place your listing in as many appropriate categories or types as possible in each engine’s local business center.

·      Solicit positive reviews from customers! If a customer thanks you for doing a great job, ask them to review your business on Google, CitySearch, Yelp, or other review sites. A good idea would be to create postcards for your company, with the URLs to your local business listing, Yelp, CitySearch, etc…to make it easy for them to find you on those popular review sites.

Total number of reviews, as well as amount of additional user content and web pages helps the local listing to rise within the “10 Box” results section. Note that while negative reviews are not good for the company’s reputation, they do actually help the listing get better rankings in local search, and provide a way for the company to address customer issues publicly, which increases trust.

In review, it is very important to have a good local search strategy in place for your business. You can start by following the tips below:

1.    Go to GetListed.org and check your local listings.

2.    Claim each listing.

3.    Edit/update each listing.

4.    Solicit user feedback in the form of reviews and user generated content (blog posts, etc).

5.    Ensure your full business address is located on your website.