Local Search Marketing – Why It’s Important, Where to Begin, and Some Helpful Templates

These days more and more people turn to search engines (like Google) and local review sites (like Yelp) to find local businesses of all kinds. Any business that doesn’t take the time to craft this local search presence is missing out on a relatively cheap and easy way to generate customers. This benefits ALL types of businesses – pizza shops, cafés, accountants, acupuncturists, bail bondsmen…you get the idea. Do a search for your type of business (search “bail bondsmen in brooklyn”) – I can guarantee that at least some of your local competition is already showing up in this space. Because the search engines place a lot of value in the age of a site or listing, the longer you wait to market yourself the harder it will be. I will be showing you how to get your own listings and show up for these kinds of searches. I’m also including a spreadsheet template to list the sites you need to be on and help you keep track of your work. This will be a huge timesaver for you!

(note: I provide local search marketing services on a freelance basis, please contact me if you are interested!)

Starting a local search presence can be intimidating. There are lots of resources online on the topic, many giving differing directions and opinions. There are also plenty of marketing companies offering local search services that are unclear and seem like a scam. As a local business owner you have already probably been contacted by one of them.

For the most part though, submitting your business to these directories is relatively easy and should only take about 20-30 minutes per directory once you do the initial setup work. So for a lot of businesses that means that these efforts are paid off for after gaining just one or two new customers! Once these listings are placed they are active indefinitely so odds are you’ll be getting some kind of traction down the road, if not a noticeable amount of new business.

Template 1: Gathering the Relevant Information

Before you begin creating listings it’s a good idea to get organized. Start by taking a look at the local search marketing spreadsheet template that I am providing. One of the tabs contains all of the information about your business that you will be using over and over again. You will need to copy and paste about 10 different things for every listing so having it all in one convenient location ahead of time will save you a lot of time. Make sure you fill out this information correctly the first time! It is very time consuming to go back and change your listings after they are live.

Here’s what you will need to fill out:

1. business name
2. business address
3. toll-free phone
4. fax number
5. website url
6. year established
7. languages spoken
8. business contact email
9. business hours
10. payment options – Credit cards accepted, paypal, cash?
11. photos or videos – Keep these files on your desktop so you can upload them easily.
12. products and services offered – A quick list of services.
13. category – Most sites provide you with a generic list of categories, just pick the closest one to your business.
14. tag line – Usually a quick sentence that sums up what your business can do for your customers.
15. short description – if you don’t know how to describe your business look at competitors for ideas. You should also be including some of the keywords that you selected somewhere within the actual description. Know that this 1-2paragraph description is your chance to sell the customer on your credibility so make it count. Some sites only allow a few sentences, so have a quick description ready.
16. long descripion – Other sites don’t have a limit on description size you can have a few paragraphs, just don’t make it too long or people won’t read it all. Instead say “visit our site or contact us for more information.”
17. keywords – Be sure to include keywords that you think people will be using to search for you. Make sure each keyword has a local term somewhere in them. If you’re an accountant in Brooklyn make sure you include terms like “Park Slope accountant,” “accounting services Brooklyn,” “income taxes Park Slope,” etc. Just don’t use very general keywords like “accounting” because that keyword is very competitive. You actually have a good chance of ranking for a term like “accounting services Brooklyn” though.

Template 2: The Local Listings You Will Be Submitting

The second spreadsheet tab contains a list of sites that you will be trying to acquire listings on. You will be dealing with a lot of sites with various verification listing methods depending on the site. This can get confusing if you don’t keep track of it early on. The fields you are dealing with here are:

1. site name – Name of the local directory. This includes Google Places, Yelp, Yellowpages, and many more (see the spreadsheet). There are a lot of other sites that I’ve removed from the template spreadsheet. Sorry! I spent a ton of time compiling these sites over the years so if you’re interested, contact me for more information about my services. Or, if you have some sites that you recommend add them to the comments. If you have the time, you can search for local businesses and note the types of directory listings that appear. If a competitor’s listing is appearing you should probably try to get on that directory.
2. site listing url – Where you go to create a listing
3. login name – The name and password you used to create this listing, and how you can edit it later on
4. login password
5. profile url – After your listing is verified add the url of the listing here, so you can check on it later on
6. status – The status of the listing – 1. not yet submitted, 2. submitted, awating approval, 3. approved
7. next steps – Some notes on what needs to happen next, for ex. “waiting for verification email,” “need to call a phone number to confirm”
8. Notes – Any random notes about the listing for future reference

Get to Work

Now that you have everything in your spreadsheet ready it’s time get busy. Go to the first site – Google Places. Enter all of your information in the form by copying and pasting from the spreadsheet. Submit it. Google will confirm by calling your listed phone number. After the listing is live just give the listing a quick review to make sure it looks nice. Change the status to “verified.” Done. Move to the next listing. Do the same thing. Yada yada yada. Before you know it you’re a local search kingpin.

Over the next few weeks and months do an occasional search for your business. Try your business name, and a handful of different keywords that you defined above. As long as you picked some good local keywords you should have no problems showing up in the top Google results – either on the map results, which shows up on the top of local searches, or on the natural search results below that.

FYI, I Can Do This Work For You!

I understand that a lot of business owners don’t have the time or knowhow to do this work themselves. I offer local search marketing services on a freelance basis and can work with a wide range of budgets. I can also do this as part of a larger internet marketing or website development campaign. Feel free to contact me for a quote or if you have any questions.

The Local Search Marketing Template

Below is the template you can use for your own local search marketing campaign. If you would like to edit the document go here and click File>>Download As, and you download it as an Excel spreadsheet or just save as your own editable Google Document.

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