Many small businesses still rely upon their yellow pages listings to some degree for business referrals. A business’s listing data is not only found online in the internet yellow pages, but that same data feeds into the local search engines like Google Maps, Yahoo! Local, Live Local Search, and a multitude of other websites.
A really simple way to increase your small business’s exposure on the internet is to insure that your business listings are associated with as many appropriate categories in online directories as possible.
While it seems like a no-brainer, many small businesses don’t think to check how many websites have categorized them, and as a result they get ineffectively and insufficiently displayed throughout the internet.
So, today’s tip is easy: go out to the top online directory sites such as Superpages.com, Yellowpages.com, Yellowbook.com, Google Maps, Local.com, Yelp.com, Yahoo! Local.com, and any others you’d expect to find your business in, claim your listing(s), and check to see if they’re in the proper business categories! This alone can help you get higher rankings in the search engines for your local business.
Most internet yellow pages allow you somewhere on the order of five category associations for free, so you should be able to update and enhance your listing in these services for free.
Try not to limit yourself to just two categories — if the directory site has a rich taxonomy, you may be able to find a number of categories that are exactly right for you business.
Imagine, if your company is only in one category and/or a wrong category, just by fixing this business categorization you could increase your referral rate by a few times over!
Good Luck!!!
- February 27, 2009
- | Category: General, Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Tips
- | Comments: 0
