If you are a small business owner who has a limited-to-no budget for SEO or online marketing campaigns, you are not alone and you can do something about it.
What you can do and what you should do is Local SEO by making sure that you are listed on the major review/business listing websites. Often times, these sites are free and you can add your business there yourself. Here are the listing citation or business listing sites that I highly recommend you sign up to first:
2. Yelp
3. Yahoo Local
4. Bing
5. Mapquest
6. Foursquare
7. Angie’s List
Make sure that:
1. You create these listings with the same NAP (Business Name, Business Address, and Business Phone Number) for all of these citation sites.
2. You build out these listings as much as you can, nicely and consistently.
***You can check your online visibility from Universal Business Listing (UBL) and Yext.
Why you would want to get your business listed?
1. You want to be found. With smartphones, more and more people are looking for business contact information on the web rather than looking in the Yellowpages book like in the past. That’s why it is important for you to make it easy for current and potential customers to find information about your business online.
2. If you have a website, being listed on citation websites is the best way to build trust for your website. This will also allow search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo to gather information about your website much easier.
3. If you don’t have a website, this is a great way to make sure that your contact information that people can search for you is correct.
Here are more reading about Local SEO:
2013 Study: 79% Of Consumers Trust Online Reviews As Much As Personal Recommendations
Saeng Muangcharoen 