10 Local Search Links That Will Get You Much More Traffic

The yel­low pages are a thing of the past – con­sumers now let their fin­gers do the walk­ing on their key­board or smart phone touchpad.

So with prop­erly researched,local­ized key­words you can posi­tion your busi­ness as the promi­nent one in your city or town! Use these local search resources to boost your busi­nesses posi­tion in the local arena.

Local Keywords
This is a par­tic­u­larly help­ful site as it allows you to enter the zip code and search terms to gen­er­ate local adwords and key­words. Also includes var­i­ous options to help you nar­row the results down a bit.

Bing Local
While there are many Google fanat­ics out there,there’s also a large pop­u­la­tion of peo­ple who pre­fer Microsoft prod­ucts. Utilize Bing Local so as not to alien­ate those poten­tial clients who don’t swear by Google.

Google Places
OK,so not every­one is a Google fanatic but 70% of them out there use Google as their search engine of choice.  So fanatic or not,your busi­ness needs to be there!

Universal Business Listing
This site will get you cita­tions from over 140 local direc­to­ries in min­utes.  This does 2 things right off the bat for your web­site.  First it rein­forces your Google Places and Bing Local list­ings with "cita­tions."  Second it deliv­ers over 140 high value links to your web­site that in and of itself can get you on page one for your local key­words if you choose your key­words right.  This one is not free ($30.00) but is well worth it.  I got one of my SEO cus­tomers on page one for about 5 of their desired key­words using just this and Google Places.  The whole process took 45 min­utes and about 48 hours later… Tah Dah!

Insider Pages
Customer review sites are the best way to get clicks because you get (hope­fully) pos­i­tive reviews that will influ­ence other cus­tomers and free adver­tis­ing! InsiderPages.com is the one of the largest con­sumer review sites and shows up in search engine results,so this is a must use!

Yelp
This is another pop­u­lar site that is much like InsiderPages.  Google Places will even pick up reviews made on Yelp and post them on your Google Places page.  List your busi­ness here as well.

Linkedin
This is kind of like Facebook for busi­ness.  It's a web 2.0 prop­erty that can get you some good expo­sure not only in terms of search engine results but also local peo­ple (poten­tial cus­tomers) as well.

Facebook Pages
If you are not on Facebook and have a busi­ness page (a Facebook Page) yet,you are going soon find your com­pe­ti­tion there in your stead. You won't like that feel­ing if you let that hap­pen to you. You need to be there and you need to be mak­ing at least 3 post­ings to you Page Wall per week.

Merchant Circle
Signing up for Merchant Circle as a free adver­tiser means your list­ing is pre­sented to local users. Merchant Circle pro­files are quickly indexed and usu­ally rank pretty high,so I def­i­nitely rec­om­mend sign­ing up.

Mobile Search Guide
People often use cell­phones and smart phones to look up local list­ings and find what ser­vices are nearby. Cellphones.org breaks down every­thing you need to know about mobile search and offers up resources to help sort through local search.

If you do noth­ing else,go to the links above and do these.  You will find that many more local peo­ple will start run­ning into your web­site.  That is what you want right?