If you’re reading this, you most likely intend on having or already have a website. Search Engine Optimization is an entire beast within itself, but here are sites that I recommend taking the time to register (or check) to see if your business is listed on. All listings referred to are free, and many require very little hassle to submit your business information to.
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Facebook Pages –
Creating a Facebook business page allows customers / clients, friends, and families to stay up-to-date with your business. The process is very straight forward, and it’s essentially “word of mouth” advertising in the digital age.
Google+ / Places for Business –
Google currently has around 85% of the search engine market share, so becoming “friends” with Google definitely provides some benefits. Registering your small business or claiming your listing allows you to appear in Local Results, list your hours of operation, add photos of your storefront, receive reviews from users with Google accounts and more!
Yahoo Small Business –
While Yahoo may not control the majority of the search engine market share, Yahoo offers a somewhat “more personal” insight into tracking user behavior and a “marketing overview” style control panel. Some information is available for free, but for nominal rates more information can be gathered.
Local Web Directories –
Getting a business linked from a Chamber of Commercial or Professional Associations website generally requires a membership fee and / or certain applications, but there are several key advantages to being listed on these types of sites. While most social networking sites link to an encoded version of your web address, mostweb directories link to your actual web address. I will shed more light on the differences between encoded/raw URLs in another article, but this provides a large advantage over an encoded url.
While there are many other sites such as Bing, Yelp, and Yellowpages, the list is literally endless with new “directory” styled sites appearing every day. However, from my personal experience and research, these are often the most important.