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Here is a quick question for you. Let’s say you are looking for a restaurant to go out for evening dinner with your friends or family. Where would you turn to find out? In the old days your answer would have been Yellow Pages (remember those thick books you used to keep?). Not anymore. These days more and more people are turning to web sites such as Google Places and Bing Local to uncover local businesses. These Online business listings, along with review sites such as Yelp, are becoming the new “Yellow Pages” of the Internet age.
Small business owners who do not shift their small business marketing to these sites stand to lose when customers try to find them online. As we have mentioned in earlier posts Internet marketing is a must for small businesses these days. While websites like Google Place and Bing Local provide free listing to small businesses you still need to augment that with additional information so that your business listing doesn’t get lost in the sea of thousands of other local businesses who are trying to do the same. You have to actively manage this local search marketing by editing generic business information with relevant and additional details and paying attention to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) so that the listing shows up prominently when customers search for it.
Not all small business owners have expertise to manage this online marketing themselves. Besides, managing this can be very time consuming and can prevent you from focusing on your primary job of managing the business. A number of specialized companies have sprung up to help you with these online marketing efforts. They can manage the business listing, populate it with relevant and business specific information and elevate local listing so that it shows up on the first page of the search.
In summary, if you have not been paying attention to small business shift from Yellow Pages to Online the time is now to act on it.
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