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Greetings!
If this recession is prompting you to look for a lifeline, ask your existing clients or customers to help you by writing a review of your company on Google!
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Local Search has become the hottest marketing tool on the Internet. Small wonder when you consider the following:
- 70% of US households use the Internet when shopping locally for products and services.
- 24 billion searches for local information will be made in 2009.
Yet, the explosive growth of Local Search has left many Internet users in the dark about how to best use it for their business.
Two Easy Steps to Drive Traffic to Your Business
Of course, there are a lot of things you can do to drive people to come to your business, whether it is online or off-line or both. Let's look at two really easy things you can do.
1. Visit Google and Setup Your Listing on Google Maps
Visit Google's Local Business Center to create your free listing. When potential customers search Maps for local information, they'll find your business: your address, hours of operation, even coupons to print out and bring to your shop. It's easy, free, and you don't need a website of your own.
 Now search Google for your business, and when you see the map at the top of the search results, click the More link after your business name. The information you entered is now displayed there. You can edit or expand this information by clicking on Add or Edit your Business.With this basic business information in Google, and showing up at the top of the FIRST PAGE in the results (hooray!), you're now ready for the secret weapon of search. . . see item #2 below.2. Have Your Clients/Customers Write a ReviewNear the top of this search results page, there is a small text link that says Write a Review. That's where you want your clients or customers to click and to write a glowing review of your business, your products or your services. It doesn't have to be long. . . but it DOES have to be truthful.Your customers and clients will need to be able to FIND this page, in order to write a review for you. Can you help them with this? You bet!While you're still on this page, put your cursor in the address bar of your web browser, and click once. This should highlight the entire (very long) address of this page. Now click Ctrl-C to copy that long web address.In a new browser tab or window, go to www.tinyurl.com. Put your cursor in the text box right underneath "Enter a long URL to make tiny" and press Ctrl-V to paste the URL there. Click "Make TinyURL!"Presto! You have converted that ridiculously long URL into a tiny one!Now you can give that timy URL to your customers (by email or in person) and they can go write a review for you. More reviews will provide better search engine rankings for your website, and will help drive visitors to you business. And that's the goal here, right? |
