Local Search - Promote Your Business through Social Media

Many small businesses are overlooking local search (Google Places, Bing Places, Yelp... ) as a means to promote their business; concentrating on Facebook or Twitter. This is a mistake. Local Search is important because it helps people with no connection to your or your customers find your business.

Local search accounts for 10% of new visitors on some of the websites Zajon manages.

Some Background
In 2007 Google placed local search results with their organic results. Since then they have added features to local search and improved its integration into search results, most recently including a map with search results. (In May of 2010 they renamed their listings Google Places.)

One Reason
Some published studies show people spend more time looking at local search results (ionadas.com Sept 2010) than on other information on a search results page.

In fact using Google's browser size tool and testing a search result page reveals that almost half the people need to scroll to see past the second organic result. While 90% of all user can see the local search results without scrolling.

What does that mean?

Businesses that people are likely to search for locally, and who are not in Google Places or other local search results are missing potential clients.

What To Do

1. See if you have a listing at Google Places.
   
   • You can do this by searching Google using your company name, city, state and the word "Map".
   • For example: Jimm'y Simply Good Food Painesville Ohio map will show the listing for a restaurant in a town near me.
2. If your company already has a listing, then claim it.
3. If not, then create a listing.
4. Find out what other Local Search directories in which your company is listed.
   • Claim your listings in the major local search websites.
   • See if there are any reviews of your business in those directories.

As  a start, if you have not yet claimed your Google Places business listing, you should do so now. Also look into claiming your company's Local Listing at Bing.

Set Up Tips

You will need a Google account and Windows Live account to set up a listing for your business on Google and Bing respectively.

Google will call the phone number enter as the business number when setting up the listing. They will also send a letter if you prefer.

Bing sends a letter to the address you supply, with instructions to verify your information.