From the Yellow Pages to the Web: How to Make Sure Your Business Listing is Google Approved

We have seen tremendous transformation during the past 10 years. Cellphones have gone from being bricks that gave us static-filled conversation to devices with slim touch screens that allow you to text, answer email, update your Facebook status, or check for the best Zagat-rated local restaurant.

The choice of viewing television has gone from over-the-air or cable to now include satellite, Fios or streaming services like Netflix and Hulu.

Radio now includes over-the-air HD, satellite and streaming services like Pandora and Rhapsody. Literally millions of us are connected to people that we thought we would never be in touch with again thanks to sites like Xanga, MySpace, and now to the ubiquitous Facebook.

Does anyone remember the Yellow Pages? Ten years ago, every business HAD to be in the Yellow Pages or they were invisible. Seeing the direction that the business was going, the phone companies sold off the Yellow Pages at the top of the market. Why would a consumer use a product that is out of date as soon as it hits your sidewalk when you can Yahoo or Google a company to check it out (or even check out reviews on Yelp)?

How are newspapers making out? With the Inquirer back out of bankruptcy and now owned by its creditors, that answer seems pretty clear. Then again, newspapers across the country have failed to develop a model to allow them to monetize their investment in people and relationships. New, electronic entrants have nicely flowed into the news and information vacuum created by newspapers’ coverage retreat mandated by their need to reduce cost.

Direct mail? Do you really have time to sift through that stuff or does it go right into your blue recycle can? That doesn’t keep businesses from putting money into it. The smarter ones are cutting deals with Merchant Circle, Neighborhood Promos, Living Social or Groupon. The smartest ones craft their own deals with those or even one of the many start-ups that are moving into the electronic discount coupon space.

Larger businesses have dealt with this diversity of media and technology by throwing money at everything and seeing what sticks. Perhaps they scale back their television and radio buys to cover their bets on interactive media.

What is a local business owner to do in the face of advancing technology? Your customer has thousands of media choices, and clearly you don’t have an unlimited budget to reach them. You could play the marketing equivalent of “Whack-A-Mole,” but really, isn’t that better left to the boardwalk?

There is no cookie-cutter solution for local businesses, but there are some steps that you can take to make sure that your business in not invisible on the Web. Your goal should be to provide your business as much surface area as possible so that when the Yahoo and Google search robots come crawling through the Web, you give them something to find. You do not need to spend a ton of money on a flashy website to do this.

Type your business name into Google, and see what the results are. If your business shows up with a little map next to it, you can seize control of that result and enter useful information about your business such as phone number, business hours and other useful tidbits. Similarly, if one of the results takes you to Yelp, you can click on that link and again, seize control of that result, entering your relevant business information.

In the next column, we will discuss social and business networks to discover how these free resources can be utilized to drive traffic and ultimately increase business for your business going forward.

You can find out more about me at www.NLAWorks.com. Have a question or marketing challenge for your business that you would like addressed in a future column?  Send it along to Patch@NLAWorks.com.