The need for each business to be visible to their local audience is undisputable.
The importance of local visibility is even more evident with the various options available to business owners to list their local businesses. Business owners can list their stores/products for free by submitting their listings to Google, Yahoo! and Bing local.
Two things of immense value come by virtue of listing businesses in the local directories :-
a) You get targeted traffic
b) You will show up on the SEPRS for local searches.
We can search for and find almost everything on the internet. I have found out store directions, timings, and contact numbers just by searching on the search engines. Search is becoming more and more specific, and most of us don’t mind typing in long phrases, if the results that we get, lead us to the exact thing that we were searching for. And more importantly we do not have to sieve through hundreds of sites to get to that information.
If your local listing is detailed and has complete information, it will definitely show up on searching. It is of utmost importance that business owners find all the possible ways of making it easy for potential customers to find them.
It is of little wonder that search engines are continuously finding ways of optimizing local search results. Keeping this in mind, Yahoo! has gone a step further and launched Yahoo! localworks:
The key features include-
1. Accurate listings across 40 directories
2. Easy to manage listings.
4. Track and analyze data
5. Customization of your listing by including photos, videos etc
With an introductory price of $30 a month, this listing is certainly worth having for business owners. You don’t need to have a website to be listed here. And I think of great value is your visibility across 40 directories! The added bonus is that you can manage it all from one place!
These interactive listings will enable you to check out new reviews for your business, you can add short term promotional events to your listings as well. This is a boon for any business owner looking for visibility in the online medium on local searches.
Check out more details at Yahoo! Localworks.