Don’t Forget to Get Local With Your Search Listings

Want a great way to boost your company’s search rankings? Tired of relying on pay-per-click search listings for your search results? Then make sure to get your site listed with the top three Local search providers: Google Places, Bing Local and Yahoo! Local. This will help to ensure that if a person does a local area search for a service offered by your company, that they will find your company’s listing. This article provides easy how-to instructions to get your local listing submitted to these local search providers.

Google Places

Google Places is Google’s local listing service and allows you to post a wealth of information about your company, including your company description, services offers, hours, photos, videos and more. Of the 3 local services, Google Places was the easiest to claim a local listing. You can begin the process to claim and update your Google Places listing by going to http://tinyurl.com/2a7xacj. They also have a new feature for their local listings called Google Tags. This new feature is actually rather affordable at 25.00 per Google tag per month, and it helps your Google Local listing to stand out with a with a coupon or announcement about your company. You can find more information about Google Tags at http://www.google.com/help/tags/.

Bing Local

Bing Local is Microsoft’s Local listing service, and is perhaps the most annoying to actually claim a listing from. Claiming your business’ listing from Bing requires entering a confirmation code sent in a letter to your business address and can take several months (in some cases, 9 months) to actually receive the letter with that confirmation code. I did finally manage to find a form to request support for Bing Local listings. I suggest that you bookmark this link (http://tinyurl.com/4a76q8f) immediately just in case you run into the same issues as me, as it was really had to find. You can begin the process to claim your Bing local listing at https://ssl.bing.com/listings/BusinessSearch.aspx.

Yahoo Local

Yahoo! Local is Yahoo!’s local listing service and allows you to list information about your company similar to what is offered by Bing and Google. You are allowed to add two types of listings: Basic and Enhanced. The Basic version allows you to add you listing for free and to post basic information about your business. The Enhanced version costs $9.95 per month and allows you to add all of the information offered with the Basic listing, plus your company logo, up to 10 photos, up to 2 coupon/promo links, a company description, and a company tagline. You can compare what is offered between the Basic and Enhanced listings at http://listings.local.yahoo.com/comp.php and signup for your Yahoo! Local listing at http://listings.local.yahoo.com/signup/create_1.php?type=fl.