Greater Knoxville Chapter

Local Internet Marketing

A Free Billboard for Local Discovery by Your Sales Prospects

You are probably aware that Google, Yahoo, MSN and most other search engines have provided their own local search services to assist people who use their PC instead of the yellow pages to find local product and services. Why is local search become even more important to your business? On April 1, 2009 the search engine industry started to recognize the user searcher's computer location, identified on the Internet as the Internet Protocol (IP) address.

On Google before April 1, 2009 in order to search you had to enter the product/service and your city and state. Now for a general product/service search most search engines recognize your computers location and automatically provides businesses in the searcher's location. For example enter "shoe repair" with a computer located in Knoxville, TN will show some local shoe repair businesses in addition to the national search results. The top few are usually sponsored searches and identified accordingly. The next few positions are the best indexed natural searches for all locations. The local businesses are listed and placed on a map for specific location. Google for example lists about ten local businesses placed in approximately the fourth position of natural searches.

The good news: Listing is Free.
The better news: You do not need a web site. It may help but a web site is not required for listing.
The best news: It is not a technical task as you only need be registered with the local search engines.

In our local example of shoe repair searched on May 12, 2010 there were three shoe repair shops that did not have a web site. Two businesses had one listing each and one business had three locations and each had a separate listing. This total of eight listing illustrates the current immediate opportunity for other local shoe repair shops. This example gives you an idea of the marketing power of local search. For Google you can select a territory, city, state or even hand draw your unique service area on the map upon registration. Imagine one billboard erected exactly where you want your marketing coverage.

However, like any Search Engine Results Positioning (SERP) you need to be on the first "page" results. Competition for local search positioning is following the same history as positioning for general search. Businesses who get listed and indexed early have an inherent advantage with search engines. After reviewing this article it should be obvious to focus on the big three search engines and in order of their market share of search users. Be thorough and consistent to get your SERP position well established as soon as possible.

Click on the appropriate logo to list your business with the three major local search engines:

Google Local Registrtion
Yahoo Local Registration
Bing Local Registration

Targeting Internet Yellow Pages

You can improve your chances of higher page rank positioning with the major local search engines by making sure your business and/or your web site is listed in the top Internet Yellow Pages (IYP). The following table provides a list of top IYP in roughly their order of the important metric of traffic density. Many are free but some have a registration fee.

IMPORTANT CONCEPT: In addition to getting listed, it's also advantageous that your business information remains consistent throughout all of the IYP sites. Information consistency across IYP sites is crucial to the process of getting your business listed quickly and accurately in the major local search engines. Be sure and register each business physical location with a separate entry.

Internet Yellow Pages Registration

Internet Yellow Page

Source

Registration Page
SuperPages.com
same
Click HERE
YellowPages.com
same
Click HERE
SwitchBoard.com
same
Click HERE
Dexonline.com
same
Click HERE
YellowBook.com
same
Click HERE
MSN Yellow Pages
same
Click HERE
CitySearch.com
same
Click HERE
RealPages.com
YellowPages.com
  
SmartPages.com
YellowPages.com
  
AOL Yellow Pages
YellowPages.com
  

A Local Edition of Search Engine Relationship Chart has been developed by Bruce Clay, Inc a popular Search Engine Optimization company. See that chart to identify the drivers and sources for the major Local Search Engines and Internet Yellow Pages. You will always want to focus on Google, Yahoo and Bing in that order. Google has dominated the market for the last decade for all searches including local. Here is the April 2010 SE Market Share report by comScore, Inc.

comScore Search Report April 2010

Google Sites

64.4%

Yahoo Sites

17.7%

Microsoft Sites

11.8%

Other SE Sites

6.1%


Other Search Engine Sites and their Sources

Search Engine

Sources
Google
Yahoo
Google
Yahoo
Google & Ask
Google
Bing
Yahoo

How To Check Your Listing

To check your listing, enter your business name and zip code into the search fields at the following locations (the minor search engines will show up if the business name is in the local yellow pages):

  • Google Local - http://www.google.com/lochp
  • Yahoo Local - http://local.yahoo.com/
  • MSN Local - http://local.msn.com - Still not yet quite as extensive as most other search engines. Don't be surprised if you're not listed.
  • Ask Jeeves Local - http://city.ask.com/city- Not quite as good at word parsing as Google and Yahoo. For instance, sees timeshare as different from /time share. Be specific in your spelling and punctuation of your business name or category.
  • A9 Local - http://a9.com - Not really a local search engine, but A9 does have local features, as well as their own Yellow Pages. Type in your business name and zip code and see results

    LOCAL NETWORK: Knoxville and Surrounding Area

    • Consider listing your business in the local network, formerly called KORnet, now changed to Discover East Tennessee at http://www.discoveret.org This provides a unique local network for 16 surrounding counties, the same area as the East Tennessee Development District including most of the assigned counties for Greater Knoxville SCORE..

    May 2010
    Walter Williams, SCORE Counselor

    The material in this publication is based on work supported by the U.S. Small Business Administration under cooperative agreement SBAHG-04-S-0001. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Small Business Administration. The information contained in this publication is believed to be accurate and authoritative but is not intended to be relied on as legal, accounting, tax or other professional advice. You should consult with a qualified professional advisor to discuss issues unique to your business.

    Copyright 1990. SBA retains an irrevocable, worldwide, nonexclusive,
    royalty-free, unlimited license to use this copyrighted material.

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