The one thing every small business must do to increase online visibility

Posted by admin in Google, Local Search

We are now officially past the tipping point for small businesses and online marketing.  The number of local searches continues to increase every month and the localization of the search engines is happening at a break neck pace. The search engines continue to serve local search results for more and more non-local queries.  And new local features at both Google and Bing seem to be popping up every week.

For small business owners the time is now to take control of how your business is being presented online.  Even if you don’t have a website, your business is showing up in the many online directories and the search engines.

So where do you start? The online world is one with it’s own language and many acronyms.  It can be very scary for people who are not techies.  You’ve got your HTML, CSS, SEO, PPC, XML, and so on.  But what does it all mean to a small businessman?

Luckily, there are some pretty easy steps you can take to improve your business’ online visibility that don’t require learning how to write code or decipher the ever changing search engine algorithms.

Let’s start with the one step that is the single most important thing you can do to control how your business is represented online.

Claim your business listing in the Google Local Business Center.  The good new is that only about 10% of all businesses have done this, so simply taking this one step will put you ahead of your competition.

The Google Local Business Center is where Google allows local small businesses to submit or correct information about their business.  The information listed about a business in the Local Business Center is also one of the major factors that Google considers when they decide which businesses are displayed near the map for a local search query like this one.

Once you have created you Local Business Center account you can edit your business’ listing.

You can do that by simply searching for your business by name and town, state.

If your business doesn’t show up next to the map simply click the “more results” lnk at the bottom.

When you find your business you can click on the name of the business to get to the Google Place Page for your business.  To claim your listing click the “Business Owner?” link in the upper right hand corner.

From here you’ll be able to input and correct all the information about your business.  You should take a few minutes to go through all the fields and fill them all in.  The more information you add to your Local Business Listing the better your listing will do.

One thing you should not do is try to cram keywords into every field on the page.  Describe your business, but do it reasonably without keyword spam.  Google’s computers very good at detecting attempts to “game” the system and if you do get caught, your listing and website can be put into the Google penalty box.  That’s very hard to get out of so it’s really not worth the risk.  Just be honest and write your descriptions for people not search engines and you’ll do fine.

You should also add photos and videos of your business, your products and yourself if appropriate.  The more you add to the listing the better.

The whole process should not take you more than 20 minutes.  But it’s the best 20 minutes you can spend to increase your small business’ online visibility.

Of course there are other factors that affect where your business shows up for local searches.  We’ll cover more of those at a later date.  So head to the Local Business Center now and claim your listing!