Are you doing business in your Local area?
Google is great if you want to do business nationally or regionally. Working at developing your SEO & SEM strategy is worth your while to build your page rank organically with Google. But what if the majority of your business is local. What do you do? Where do you go? How do you get found by the searcher looking for your product or service? Well, Google does have it’s local search version called Google Maps but this article is to inform you that there is a lot more going on in local search now and it isn’t slowing up any time soon!
There is no doubt statistically that the internet has replaced the BIG printed yellow book for search… and that’s local search too!For lots of stats on Local Search visit Borrell Associates.
Local Search can be defined into 3 categories, Local Search Engines, Internet Yellow Page Directories and Local Social Networks.
Some of these top Local Search Engines include: City Search, Local.com,AOL Local, Ask City and Yahoo Local.
Internet Yellow Page Directories abound. They include the names like: Info Space, Any Who, Superpages, Bigbook, Switchboard and Yellow Book.
Local Social Networks is a market that is developing quickly. These are few you might be interested in checking out to list your business: Insider Pages, YellowBot, Mojo Pages, City Squares, Yelp and of course our own Quest Social. The development in the Local Social Network arena is huge partly because of the development of open source software, just about anyone can now very easily establish their own local social network.
For a complete list visit SMLife Guide section. I will point out, while I am always interested in bringing you the most recent information, if I have not included your site in my list, please let me know by leaving a comment. I will be making every attempt to keep our guides current by revisiting and updating the lists on a regular basis.
While this guide is to provide you with some of the main sites to get started listing your business locally I will advise that there are many more sites, far too many to list here, where you can register and list your business. Some of these are vertical specific categories like real estate. A growing trend are the Local Mobile sites that are emerging.
So come back and let us know if you have found a great local network site, new local directory or new Local Search Engine.
Visit the SMLife Guides and Resources area of this site a list and links to Local Search Engines, Internet Yellow Page Directories, and Local Social networks.
