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Health & Fitness

Get listed - Mandatory for Local Business

I rarely take a firm stand on what is 'necessary' for a business when it comes to marketing yourself online, but this article is the exception to the rule. If you own a local business and are not...

Mandatory sounds so final, you must do this thing or else you will suffer the terrible wrath of the internet overlords.  I rarely take a firm stand on what is 'necessary' for a business when it comes to marketing yourself online, but this article is the exception to the rule.  If you own a local business and are not appropriately listed on Google Maps, Bing Maps or Facebook Local it's like you've become invisible. 

The Yellowpages are dead and buried, when people need a service or a product they immediately turn to their phones or computers for that information.  Search engines, and the local applications they run, are the new Yellowpages, which are much more nuanced and dynamic than a hunk of thinly sliced wood could ever hope to be.  Here is the one big difference that is putting listing sites and phone books into an early grave:

It's free.

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Google Places

The onus for this article is because Google Places is gearing up for a series of upgrades, promising more integration with other Google services (Google + Local page).

Google Places is where you can verify the ownership of an existing business listing (maps.google.com) or get listed if you're not already pre-loaded into the system.  You can update, edit, delete and control the type of information Google has about your business.  This is a must have because when people do a search for your business they use whatever information is on hand and display it.  If you've registered with Google Places you get a choice about what a visitor will see.

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What keeps people honest, is that you have to verify your business via snail mail to activate your account.  So after you've filled out your basic information they send you a postcard with a PIN number on it, then you simply login and enter that number to get your listing activated.

A little history, back in the early 2000's when google maps first rolled out, the company dumped every white and yellow pages listing it had into one database and let an algorithm sort it.  To say it was badly put together is an understatement, addresses, phone numbers, business names, websites and other data were all over the place.  Over the years they've cleaned up this data, to a large degree, but still you run into places that nobody has bothered to correct.  So look yourself up, if you've never done so before, to make sure you're listed properly.  If you find something you don't like, sign-up with Google Places to fix it.

What type of information can you provide?

Company/Organization, Address, phone, email, website, 200 character description, categories, service areas, hours of operations, accepted payment options, photos, videos, custom details

All of these are important because when someone does a search for you Google tries to pull as much data as possible into a single place.  An example would be the following:

http://www.alexseigfried.com/images/local-listing.png

See the Google Knowledge Graph on the right?  You really can't beat that for up-in-your-face display, also notice that Sitelinks below the FSF's initial listing.  If this business  had any youtube videos, and they were associated with your Google Places account they would also show up below the sitelinks basically giving you 60% of the page as your own!

Later this year Google+ is integrating with Local so that whatever you post on your Google+ Page will also show up in the above result.  This brings fresh, relevant, information to searches instead of it being just a dynamic listing and even more real-estate on the search page.

Get listed! http://www.google.com/business/placesforbusiness/

Bing Places

Everything mentioned above, only on Bing.com.

http://www.bing.com/businessportal

Facebook Local Search (Formerly "Nearby")

If you don't have a Facebook page for your business yet, get one, because today people are using local search in their social media more than ever before.  This Facebook mobile app tracks where a person is using their cell phone and allows them to quickly find local businesses closest to their physical location.  In March of 2013 a study from comScore entitled, "15 Miles/Neustar local search" revealed that Facebook is the second most used mobile application for local search (Google Maps is #1).

How do you take advantage of this?  Simply create a Facebook Page for your Business and fill out ALL of the About/Local data.  Be thorough answer all the boxes and descriptions because it's likely that in the future every byte of data you cram in here is going to be used.  Even if you're not social media savvy or 'don't have time', you need to do this and make some time to post at least a once a week update.  Something as easy as "this weeks we'll be open from 8am-5pm and... as always Wed night is bingo night."  Nobody expects you to be a world class social media star, but they do expect you to have the page and post something relevant/practical every once in

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