I saw someone last week on Twitter complaining that getting their new site listed on DMOZ was taking forever.
Um, DMOZ was slow to list, and basically useless, ten years ago. Except for a little link-love, I don’t see the point.
Now here is something useful: From a post at Bumblebee Marketing’s “Notes from the Hive”: Protect and Promote
“Well, for safety reasons go to the Google local business add page and make doubly sure that your business is listed and if it is, start the claim process. If it is not listed, start the claim process! It is easy and fast and if you are a single practitioner of yoga or a multi-million dollar tech firm, you should still take this step. And if you have multiple locations, don’t stop at your headquarters, do this for each and every location.”
Doesn’t matter if you are a ‘local’ business or not. People are going to Google you, or Google-Map you to get basic contact info, ala Yellow Pages.
As a consumer, I just used this data-feature today on my iPod Touch to find out the hours of a local appliance-parts dealer via Google Maps. Slick!
I claimed & updated my company’s listing, uploaded a picture of our building, a link to my YouTube video, and added our office hours. I need to go back and figure out what to do about two other listings for our company that are erroneous–if I link those, will they go away, or can I fix them? (They call your main phone number and give you a PIN number to confirm ownership, so warn your receptionist.)
As Mardy says to end that post: “So stop whatever it is that you are doing, spend 5 minutes and protect and promote yourself. This is a critical step in securing your Google listing and promoting your company and web site search engine ranking improvements.”
Yellow Pages finally dead? Discuss amongst yourselves.
to the Local Business Center to make it easier to track how those visitors are finding your listing.
It looks like Google is making some nice < HREF="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/local-business-center-dashboard-opens.html" REL="nofollow">additions<> to the Local Business Center to make it easier to track how those visitors are finding your listing.
Wow, thanks for the heads-up, Chris!
Thanks for the excellent tips.
Thanks for the excellent tips.
My most sincere apologies! For not saying THANK YOU sooner. I appreciate that first you are reading my blog and second that you found some information helpful and worthy of sharing. My most humble appreciation!
My most sincere apologies! For not saying THANK YOU sooner. I appreciate that first you are reading my blog and second that you found some information helpful and worthy of sharing. My most humble appreciation!
No problem, Mardy. It's so hard to keep track of link-love when it happens these days. Thank yous are always appreciated!
No problem, Mardy. It's so hard to keep track of link-love when it happens these days. Thank yous are always appreciated!
Wow, thanks for the heads-up, Chris!