Whether you hire a professional to help your small business with local marketing, or opt to do it all yourself, there is no doubt that there are significant opportunities for local businesses to dominate their local market with relatively little effort through local business search optimization.

As a small business owner, you are probably familiar with the local competition. If you are a dentist, you likely know all of the other dentists in the area and you know how long they have been in business.  You may not have considered them as a direct competitor before, but with a limited number of customers in any given area, the more providers there are, the more you have to fight to stand out from the competition.

The opportunity to stand out in this way through the internet is big right now because we are in a bit of a gold rush period with local online marketing.  Consumers are leading the way by using the best tool they have at their disposal to look for the things they need and want online. Search engines are doing their part by making it easier than ever to get relevant, accurate local information out to those who search for it. 

But local business owners who are so used to relying on foot traffic and word of mouth referrals have not completely caught on to the fact that people really, truly are using the internet to look for their products and services at the local level.  This is your opportunity. You can be the first dentist in your block that knows that having more online reviews than the person next to you will push your business name to the top of the list when people search locally.  You can be the first to claim your Google Local profile and add pictures of your waiting room.  It may sound trivial to you, but these small things can make the difference between growing your business or not.

Don't get me wrong. I am not saying that word of mouth referrals are not still the best way to get new clients.  We all know that there is nothing better than a friend telling us in person about a good service they experienced.  But the general public doesn't know much about your business and the only way they will learn about it is if you encourage the conversation.  You can do this on your website. You can do this with online reviews. You can do this with social media and networking. You can do this with local coupons, deals and promotions.  There are many many ways to get the conversation started about your business. So what are you waiting for? Perhaps a place to start? Well, here are some of the basics to get you going.

1. Claim your Google Local profile.
This is mandatory. You must claim your Google Local profile.  Doing this will allow you to publish critical business information to Google Maps and will allow you to track how many people are viewing your profile on Google Maps.

Claim Your Google Local Profile >

2. Claim your Yahoo! Local profile.
This is also mandatory. Claiming your Yahoo! Local profile will increase your exposure to local clients.  You can use the same business information and photos as you used in your Google Local profile. Most local search engines require the same information.

Claim Your Google Local Profile >

3. Claim your Yelp profile.
Right now Yelp is the center of the online review world.  Not everything Yelp does sits well with small business owners, but for better or worse, they are the leaders in the market and getting Yelp reviews is one of the best ways to get actual business from the web.  When a potential customer reads 10 reviews about your business through Yelp, it gives them a very good sense whether they want to do business with you or not. 

Claim your Yelp Profile >

4. Use the Universal Business Listing service.
At 30$ per year, this service is an absolute steal and will allow you to submit and manage your profile to a ton of local search engines, directory services and more.

Use Universal Business Listing >

Your local business profile should always be updated and maintained.  You should include your hours of operation, and verify that your street address is accurate.  Adding a photo or three is a great way to make your business seem fresh and open to people on the internet.

You should include a link to your website from your local business profiles.  If you are using our Online Business System, or have your own website statistics, you should check them weekly, if not daily to see how people are finding you. Sometimes you will be surprised with the results. Perhaps your business is in a suburb of a larger city and you are surprised to find that most of your website visitors are located in the city on one side of you, but not the other.  

By looking at your website statistics, you can learn a lot about your customers and what they are looking for. Who knows, you may even discover an untapped market that relates to your business. Seriously!

I hope this helps get you started with local business search optimization. If you need any help with your local marketing efforts, or want to make your business soar, please consider our paid local search marketing services.