Basic PPC Strategies For Every Advertiser

Basic PPC Strategies For Every Advertiser

Pay-Per-Click advertising changed the Web. The perfect fit for the new point and click, immediate gratification Internet world - and advertisers flocked (and still do) to providers both large and small. What was missing however was strategy - many advertisers got burned and that alone was enough to dissuade the majority from using the advertising method.

PPC Strategy: Budgeting
Applying strict budgeting rules to your PPC campaign is a exceptional way to derive more value from your advertising spend. One of the simplst strategies is to set a monthly budget and divide it amongst your advertising channels, but daily budgets can also help as they enable advertisers to throttle the traffic and distribute it throughout the month - something which as a monthly budget alone can not accomplish.

In line with budgeting, sophisticated advertisers are increasingly testing the waters with day parting whrein bid strategies are changed throughout the day and possibly turning off bids at different times of the day - ideal for companies that only want calls during normal business hours or those that want to avoid foreign traffic. The most savvy advertisers (those that understand the buying cycles of advertisers even engage in day excluding. Ecommerce websites are some of the most frequent users of day exclusion as they can minimize costs if regular shipping options become too extreme.

PPC Strategy: Bidding
The essence of PPC is bidding, but there are many advanced PPC bidding strategies that are not used by the vast majority of advertisers. It is a basic principle of Web marketing that higher on the SERPs is better, so the first position must be the best.

Bidding to position is common, but depending on the keyword can quickly become cost prohibitive as bidding wars and bid inflation result. As such, requiring that your campaign be in the first position on each keyword is not recommended. Instead, bidding to just the second and third positions, while driving less traffic overall, lowers the cost of traffic considerable. Focus outside of the top three positions will be less competitive for bids, but count on much less traffic than positions 1-3 can provide. There are much better bidding strategies to employ however than bidding to position.

Bidding to your enterprises specific ROI goals is the best PPC bidding strategy. While it is important to pre-define performance metrics for each and every keyword, understanding the maximum amount you are able to spend on the whole while still turning a profit is the choice of many professional PPC advertisers and marketers. The most successful PPC management agencies take great care in understanding your business model, product pricing and sales funnel to understand the bid threshold.

PPC Strategies: Keywords
Website Magazine has discussed keywords and match types specifically at great length. Since both Yahoo and Google have some form of keyword matching deployed on their platforms, it's essential to understand these features and leverage them for the betterment of our PPC campaign initiatives.

PPC Strategies: Ad Copy
Much like price is the easiest factor to modify to test conversion, Ad copy is an important part of PPC strategy and one that can make all the difference in the success of a keyword and an entire campaign. Once you become familiar with the more basic PPC stragies, engaging in inserting keywords dynamically into listings can be quite beneficial. Each PPC platform, both on the first and second tier have specific keyword insertion rules, so make sure that you are setting up campaigns correctly before going live (more on that in a later post). Other tips for stellar ad copy include developing variants, utilizing capitalization, modifying based on seasonablity and including geo-centric references to search queries.

7 Ways to Be Sure You’re Writing the Best Ads Possible

7 Ways to Be Sure You’re Writing the Best Ads Possible

You may notice that writing the best ad text possible can be quite overwhelming! To make it easier for you, we’ve devised a guide or checklist to writing the best ad text. When beginning to write from scratch or re-write your existing ad text, go through the first 7 points of the ad text checklist. Get a piece of paper and begin writing down the answers to these seven questions:

1. What are the top keywords from your ad group that should be incorporated into the ad?
2. What is the main message you want your customers to know? What solution do you provide?
3. What is the advantage your company has over your competitors? What are the top 3 benefits you offer your clients/customers?
4. What promotional offers (if any) does your company currently offer?
5. What would get you to click through this ad if typing in x keywords?
6. What answer is the searcher trying to find? i.e. Are you fulfilling the searcher’s needs?
7. In the end, why should the searcher click on your ad?

Once you’re finished answering the seven questions, you can begin to write your ad text. Once you’ve completed writing your ad text, use the checklist below to be sure you’ve written a benefit-oriented, attention-getting, call-to-action driven ad text!

1. Title
   1. Does the ad title grab your audience’s attention?
   2. Does the title contain at least one of your keywords?
   3. Does the ad title initially answer a question?
   4. Does the ad title differ from your competitors?
2. Description
   1. Does the description contain at least one keyword?
   2. Does the description answer the searchers question?
   3. Does the description engage users to read on?
   4. Does the description contain a call to action?
   5. Is the description limited in any way?
   6. Are there any promotional offers in the description?
   7. Is the description different from your competitors?
   8. Can the searcher tell the benefit from reading the description?
3. Display URL
   1. Is the display url contain sentence caps?
   2. Does the display url match the destination url?
4. Destination URL
   1. Does the destination url take users to the correct page?
   2. Does the destination url need any tracking?

If you find it helps, use this guide and checklist every time you write or re-write your ad text to ensure you’re targeting the right customer and gaining a competitive advantage over your competition.

PPC advertising resources for small business

Instantly drive targeted traffic to your web site

Books

Google AdWords Handbook: 21 Ways to Maximize Results from Andrew Goodman.

Google Cash - Learn how to make money with Google AdWords by Chris Carpenter

PPC Search Engines

Google Adwords - Sign-up for and manage your Google account

Google AdWords FAQ

Overture - Now owned by Yahoo and delivering ads to Yahoo and MSN

Google AdSense - Place AdWords ads on your web site and receive revenue from clicks

Google AdSense FAQ

Local Advertising Options

CitySearch - Advertising guides for most major cities

Yahoo Local - Free and enhanced listings plus free web site

Google Local Business Center - Directory of local businesses that includes all the fun Google features like satellite maps

Verizon Super Pages - Get a free business profile

Yellow Pages.com - The leading online Yellow Pages, business directory and phone book for local and national searches.

Keyword Tools

Adwords Analyzer - This tool will identify how many campaigns are in place for a keyword with Google or Overture - Great way to find keyword opportunities.

Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool - Free tool to help with your keyword research.

Overture View Bids - Find out what the top bids are on Overture for keywords and phrases

Ad Writing Software

AdWords Generator - Software that automatically creates AdWords ads utilizing proven sales terms from successful campaigns.

Tracking

Conversion Ruler - a subscription based "performance tracking" reporting service that provides detailed information on the effectiveness of your site marketing efforts

Click Tracks - Software and hosted వెర్సిఒన్స్

Further Reading

Search Engine Watch - http://searchenginewatch.com/

John Battelle's Search Blog - http://battellemedia.com/

PPC & SEO Enhancing Tools

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Ad Watchers - Tired of losing money on PPC? Discover the most profitable AdWords, Yahoo, and MSN PPC campaigns! Plus, you can quickly find out what affiliate programs (or products) are hot and which ones to avoid at all costs!

Ad Word Analyzer - Your ultimate keyword tool to find out *exactly* what people are looking for and to provide you with the ultimate database of researched keywords. Use it to uncover niche markets that you can easily dominate!

Ad Word Strategies - Proven AdWords visionary reveals the next wave of secrets that you can exploit to always turn a huge profit from your campaigns, even while others struggle to stay afloat during the escalating small advertiser bloodbath!

Competition Equalizer - Don't advertise on AdWords blinfolded! Uncover who your competitors are and analyze their Google AdWords advertising with a few easy clicks of a button. This will help you cut ad costs and increase sales.

Search Engine Optimization

RSS Equalizer - A powerful tool when optimizing web pages for search engines. This PHP script inserts fresh content into your web pages (search engines absolutely love this) to increase search engine spidering and improve rankings on all search engines.

SEO Equalizer - If you're not taking link popularity or search engine optimization seriously you're sabotaging your OWN websites - and if you're still trying to get the work done manually you'll NEVER be in a position to compete with the big dogs!

SEO Spider - Quickly and easily analyze your rank in Google, Yahoo and MSN. Reveals Link Popularity, PageRank and Alexa Rank. Plus you can also take a peek at your competition without all of the intense labor of manually doing it yourself.

SiloMatic - Now you can build search engine optimized "silo" websites that are better and more powerful than what you can create manually. In fact, these websites have proven time and time again to rank much higher than regular websites!

Social Media Inspector - Get your website link inside top search engine listings with Google PageRank using an easy-to-use and highly-effective social media marketing tool that taps directly into the incredible power of Squidoo.com and Hubpages.com!

Traffic Equalizer - Create thousands of search engine optimized pages nearly instantly to quickly and easily take advantage of this free traffic source. Use it to drive additional traffic to your primary websites or to promote affiliate programs.

More to come in future articles

How to master "Local Search" to promote your business

Local search is the flavor of the day. But what is it? What is the buzz all about?

At its core, local search is simply understanding today’s consumer, their behavior and their needs, and providing a product or service where and when they want it. It’s exciting because local search works equally well for small- to medium-size businesses trying to get found, as well as big regional and national brands.

First, understand that in a search driven world there are two types of user searches: 1) consumers who are looking for your brand and 2) consumers who are looking for your type of services. For consumers, it’s all about being in control and having choices.


Brand Seekers

If users are looking for your brand, they will most likely look for you on your corporate website. But the trend is moving towards consumers entering in your brand name and a local qualifier (city or zip code) directly into a major search engine to find the nearest location: for example, “Red Lobster locations in NJ” or “Coupons for Red Lobster in Illinois.” The worst-case scenario is if it doesn’t show up at all. The second worst case is that it shows up, but takes them to your corporate website home page, meaning they have to do the search all over again. That’s not very user friendly.


Service Seekers

If consumers are looking for your type of services (a restaurant, office supply, grocery store, sporting goods) then they will most likely start their search on a major search engine. The trend is going towards consumers entering in your generic services and a local qualifier directly into a major search engine to find products and services: for example, “Crab legs Lewisville TX,” or “Seafood Luzerne PA.” Worst case is that you don’t show up at all but your competitors do.

Traditional marketing methods include print yellow pages, TV, radio, billboards, direct mail, email marketing and referrals. But to ensure success in today’s highly competitive market, advertisers must embrace not only the major search engines, but increasingly an array of other relevant and effective new media platforms such as local directories, corporate websites, mobile devices and even portable navigation devices. Casting a wide net will ensure customers find you anytime or anywhere they are ready to buy.


Major Search Engines

There are three distinct areas on a search engine results page (SERP.) It’s very important to show up in at least one of them if not all three, called the Search Trifecta.

By now most of you have heard of Search Engine Marketing or SEM. It refers to the paid search or sponsored listings that show up on the top and right side of most search results. Most of the ads are Pay-Per-Click (PPC) or Pay-Per-Acquisition (PPA.) The top search engines that businesses set up campaigns with are Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask. You can try to manage it in-house but there are third party companies that can manage it for you.

Local search is a widely-used term, but when referring to search engine results it’s the section that’s associated with a map when a local qualifier is used.

Organic listings, (SEO, also referred to as free listings) show up after the paid and local results. If someone searches your brand, then you will most likely appear. But if they use a local qualifier then you might not. There are many companies jumping into the SEO/SEM bandwagon who want to help. Make sure to do your homework before hiring anyone who wants to convince you that it’s too complicated to explain what they will be doing for you. Local landing pages or micro-sites are key in helping out businesses with multiple locations.

For businesses with multiple locations it’s important to have local landing pages to drive this online search traffic. If a consumer searches for a local location, they won’t want to be directed to your corporate website home page. They will want location specifics. These landing pages can be used for paid search, local submission and organic search. Reporting should be set up in order to track where your traffic is coming from (what search engine and what area of the page) and call tracking to evaluate ROI.

It’s important to get listed in local directories that include Citysearch, Yellowpages, and Superpages as well as Google Local, Yahoo! Local and MSN Live since they attract significant amounts of traffic.


Corporate Websites

In this day and age every business has a corporate website. But you may not know of all the different ways to increase your foot traffic or online sales.

For retailers, it’s important that users can quickly and easily find your locations and the specific details of each. Interactive maps and driving directions (preferably without the user needing to leave your site) is a must-have these days. With Web 2.0 capabilities it’s the user experience that counts. Content such as store hours, menus or flyers, credit cards accepted, brands carried and reviews can help consumers with their search and items such as coupons or local events can add a call to action. You can also engage visitors with registration for e-newsletters or club discounts. Send to Phone/Email is a good way to track location traffic as well as provide driving directions. Remember that locator functionality is the top decision-making tool consumers use when visiting a retailer’s website. A customer who uses a locator is most likely going to walk into your local business.

For manufacturers, embracing the new shopping trends of “Buy Online” and “Buy Local” will give you a business edge. Compared with customers who shop only at stores, multichannel shoppers buy 12 percent more often, and spend 32 percent more every year. That’s good news, if you ride the trend. Product locators, for example, will help you tap into multiple sales channels, increasing opportunities for additional sales and expanding your brand recognition. For buy online, you need the ability to show multiple online retailers (etailers) complete with inventory and pricing, as well as the ability to take the consumer directly from your product page to an etailer product page so that the user doesn’t have to do the search all over again. For buy local, you need the same features mentioned above for retailers.

Regardless if you are a retailer or manufacturer, your corporate website needs to be SEO-friendly in order for the search engines to crawl and find the data in order to have the links show up in the organic listings.


Mobile Devices
There are now over 255 million mobile devices in the US with more than 69 million people using mobile browsing and 125 million people using text messaging.
Users are going to be searching for your products and services, so it’s imperative that you enter into this arena soon. Around 80 percent of phones are WAP enabled (versus smart phones with full internet access), so they will need reduced text for their smaller screens for finding a location. SMS text can be sent to a phone from a PC (1-way SMS) or text (for example a zip code) can be sent to a common short code CSC (mysbux) to get locations text-messaged back. Interactive Voice Response can also be used to reduce overhead costs. For example, call an 800 number, enter in your zip code to hear an automated response of the locations near you.


What are Consumers Searching For?

From Retailers

• Where is the closest location?
• Can I find locations along the way?
• What hours are they open?
• What credit cards are accepted?
• Do they offer any discounts or coupons?
• Do they have wi-fi?
• Do they have RV parking?
• Can I send the driving directions to my mobile device?

From Manufacturers

• What products are offered?
• Can I buy it online?
• How does the price compare between retailers?
• Is it in stock?
• Can I buy it locally?
• Where is the closest retail location?
• How do I get there?

Remember, today’s consumer likes to research online, demands choices and wants to control the buying process. It doesn’t matter if you’re Seiko, Darden or John’s Catering, every business must understand who they are and the needs they fill. Mastering local search is not rocket science but it’s an ever-increasing skill set required for marketers in today’s search driven world.

Business Listing Sites To Promote Your Biz

Local Search Engines & Popular Local Search Listings

Considered the most popular local search engines and local listing sites. Many merchants add their business location or list locally using these popular local search engines. Getting a business listed is easy, all you have to do is decide where you want to begin and follow the links from this page for instruction. We suggest adding your business to the FREE local search engines first to get an idea of how aggressive to be when launching your local listing campaign.

Google Local Business Center (Free)- Allows business owners to add their company address location, hours of operation, storefront or product photos and more to Google. Listings appear within Google Maps and Business searches. Free to list, comes with account listing and management tools, no website needed. Google account required. Local business listings update every few weeks.

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Yahoo Local (Free Basic, Paid Enhanced) - Allows merchants or business owners to add their business name, website, address, phone number, relevant categories, hours, payments accepted and more to Yahoo local. Free basic listing or paid enhanced listings available. Yahoo account required.

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Windows Live Local (InfoUSA Affiliate) - Allows local business owners to list their company name, phone number, address and line of business within Windows Live Local. Free to list and update information. Submit listing through InfoUSA affiliate. Listing may take several months to update after changes have been made.

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AOL Local (InfoUSA Affiliate) - Allows merchant business owners to add their company information including name, phone, address and line of business within AOL Local. Free to list and/or update business information. Submit through InfoUSA affiliate. Listing may take several months to update.

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TrueLocal (Free Basic, Paid Enhanced) - Get your local business information listed including company description, website, specialties, hours, payments and more within TrueLocal search. Accepts both free and paid enhanced submissions. Ability to update listings or information. May take several weeks for listings to update. No account required to submit.

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Local.com (Free Basic, Paid Enhanced) - Allows local business owners to list company name, address, phone, email, website and relevant categories. Listings appear within the Local.com search results and participating affiliate sites. Both free and paid enhanced listings available. Listing may take several weeks to update within results.

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Citysearch (Paid Programs) - Get your local business listed within Citysearch including the company name, photos, address, map, website, coupons, personal messages, offer types and more. Citysearch listing look like recommendations or reviews but work like advertisements. Only paid programs are available at this time. Listings are updated within a few days from the time businesses update information.

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Local Yellow Pages & Online Yellow Page Listings

Local yellow pages and Online yellow page listing sites have been in existence for years, but are quickly gaining more attention as technologies and data delivery methods are constantly improving. The following local yellow pages are for merchants who wish to list and maintain a number of IYP listing over many yellow page portals or other inclusion programs offered by the site. We recommend using Online yellow page selling as a part of your eCommerce strategy rather than focus primarily on these listings. Use local search engines and yellow page sites to help saturate search results with your business brand and product information. Having many paid yellow page programs can get expensive so be sure to monitor your budget and consider listing in the most popular Online yellow page sites rather than each and every one you find.

SuperPages (Free Basic, Paid Enhanced) - Allows business owners to list relevant information including location, hours, contacts, categories, optional enhancements and more. Free listing option along with paid enhanced listing options. Listings appear within SuperPages and affiliate sites. Listing may take several weeks to update.

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BigBook (SuperPages Affiliate) - Allows local business owners to include relevant information such as name, location, phone, website and more. Free basic listing options along with paid listing enhancements. Listings appear within BookBook and other SuperPages affiliates. Submit through SuperPages.

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InfoSpace YP (SuperPages Affiliate) - Get local business information listed within InfoSPace YP and affiliate sites. Include the business name, address, phone, email, site and other optional information. Listings appear within InfoSpace affiliates and SuperPages affiliates. Listing updates may take several weeks to display. Offers both free and paid enhanced listing options. Submit through SuperPages.

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411.com (SuperPages Affiliate) - Allows merchants or local business owners to include relevant company information including name, contacts, location, website and more. Listings appear within 411.com and other SuperPages affiliates. Listing may take several weeks to update within SuperPages and affiliate sites. Both free and paid enhanced listing options available. Submit through SuperPages.

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Switchboard.com (InfoSpace YP Affiliate) - Allows business owners to list relevant information about their company including names, locations, contacts and other optional information about the company being listed. Listing appear within Switchboard.com, InfoSpace and SuperPages. Listing may take several weeks to update or list for the first time. Free listing and paid enhanced options available. Submit through SuperPages.

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Yahoo Yellow Pages (InfoUSA Affiliate) - Allows business owners to list and display company information including name, phone number, address and line of business or services offered. Listings appear within Yahoo Yellow Pages and other InfoUSA affiliates. Free to list and update business information. Submit through InfoUSA affiliate.

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YellowPages.com (Free Basic, Paid Enhanced) - Allows local business owners to list relevant information about their company including names, locations, contact information and more. Listings appear within YellowPages.com and affiliate sites. Once updated, listings may take several weeks to display. Both free basic and paid enhanced listing options available. Free account required to list.

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AnyWho (YellowPages.com Affiliate) - Get listed within AnyWho search services and YellowPages.com by listing your information including business name, location, phone, site and more. Offers both free and paid listing options. Free account required to list a business. Submit through YellowPages.com affiliate.

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Yellowbook.com (Paid Programs) - Allows merchants or local business owners to list company information for display within Yellowbook.com and affiliates. Business may include name, location, contacts, website and additional optional information. Paid listing program options only. Free account required to list a business.

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MagicYellow (Free Basic, Paid Enhanced) - Allows business owners to list phone numbers, type of company, contacts, location, website, description and keywords. Listing appear within MagicYellow search and yellow pages. Listing management options and tools available, may take several weeks to update or list. Both free basic and paid enhanced listing options available.

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Dex (Paid Programs) - Allows merchants to feature local business within Dex Online and other Dex affiliates. Featured, business, starter, enhanced, sponsorship and even video options are available. Listings appear right away and update in real time. Only paid listing options are accepted. Allows purchasing of ad services via the Web and shopping cart.

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YP.com (Free Basic, Paid Enhanced) - Allows local businesses to expand presence online, display relevant business information, including maps and listing management tools. Business listings appear within YP and their network. Listings update within a few days. Offers both free basic and paid enhanced listing options.

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Local Meta Search Engines & Special Local Listings

Local meta search engines and special local data listings are often times overlooked by merchants, physical business owners and Online sellers, however it's a great, easy way to spread data about your local business around the Web. Meta search engines automatically scour the Web using crawlers in search of specific data about a site, company or whatever the intended purpose of the crawler is. Some of the special local listing sites, including MapQuest are great places to gain additional exposure for any business, online or off. Many of the special local sites will get your business listed in prominent areas across the Web that many marketers traditionally have to pay for. Because these meta crawlers and special local listing sites share data with so many places, your chances of getting listed within hundreds of authoritative sites increases depending on how many meta cralwers or special listing sites can access your data. We recommend using these sites as part of your overall marketing strategy rather than focusing on just meta crawlers or special local listings. As with any other paid marketing, be sure you can track ROI and always monitor your spending/profit to be assured you are getting a return.

MapQuest (InfoUSA Affiliate) - Allows local business owners or merchants to list company information such as name, location, contacts, site and more within MapQuest search results and map results pages for MapQUest and affiliates. Free to list, comes with management tools. Listings may take several months to update. Submit through InfoUSA affiliate.

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Dogpile YP (InfoSpace YP Affiliate) - Gives local business owners the chance to be discovered within Dogpile yellow page listings and local Dogpile search results. Business submit useful information including their company, address, phone, email, contacts and more. Offers both free basic listing or paid enhanced listing options. Submit through SuperPages affiliate.

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WebCrawler (InfoSpace YP Affiliate) - Allows business owners to include data about the company like name, location, phone or contact information, website and more. Listing appear within WebCrawler search results and affiliate partner sites. Both free basic and paid enhanced listing options are available. Submit through SuperPages affiliate.

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MetaCrawler (InfoSpace YP Affiliate) - Gets merchant or business information included within MetaCrawler search results and appears on other MetaCrawler affiliate or partner site results. Businesses can list their name, address, contact information and other useful information about the company. Free basic and paid enhanced listing options. Submit through SuperPages affiliate.

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WebFetch (InfoSpace YP Affiliate) - Allows local businesses to list information about themselves including name, location, site, references or contacts. Listings appear within WebFetch search results and other affiliate sites. Offers both free basic and paid enhanced listing options. Submit through SuperPages affiliate.

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Metrobot (Free) - Allows local businesses to include data about themselves including website links or business name, address, zip, business type, events, polls, maps and more. Update and management tools available. Listings appear within Metrobot and affilaite sites. May take several days for listings to update. Free to list, free to update.

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Tyloon (Paid Programs) - Allows local business owners to upload a company profile and mange it within an easy to use platform. Listings are distributed across a network of at least 30 local/YP listing sites. Unlimited products, categories or business content. Includes ability to interact with prospects. Only paid programs are available. Listings update rather quickly.

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ZoomInfo (Paid Programs) - Allows businesses to list useful data about the company, people, jobs and more. Create a local business profile and get relevant business data displayed on ZoomInfo, a free business information search engine. Listings include company profile, history, education, affiliations, Web references and contact information. Listing update often, only paid listing options are available.

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Local Business Data Providers & Data Listing Services

Local business data providers mantain enormous databases of information about small businesses, companies and merchants all over the world. Data proviers work in conjuncture with data listing services to collect and display local business results. Common ways to list these companies include by category, service market, service offering, name, phone, geography, zip and more. Many of the largest data providers share their content with hundreds of other sites and even other data listing services. By including your company information within the popular local data providers you can be ensured that your business name, address and site will appear within the majority of local/business listing services available to Web consumers. Once you have listed with traditional local search engines and internet yelow pages, consider adding your items to local business data providers and data listing service sites.

InfoUSA (Free) - Provides data to thousands of the most popular listing service companies. Allows local business owners to include relevant information about themselves within a database that is shared with many of the best local listing sites and IYP listing sites. Listings may take some time to get included or update. Free to list and update business information. Submit here and show up in multiple sites with only one submission.

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MacRAE's Blue Book (Free Basic, Paid Enhanced) - Allows companies to list detailed product or service headings, live links to sites, company email links, contact information, description and other inportant corporate information. Listings update often. Offers both free basic and paid enhanced listing options. Also offers ads to highlight business logos or products.

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Localeze (Free Basic, Paid Enhanced) - Allows local business owners to include their corporate information within over 40 of the largest search engines that provide local results. Offers a merchant profile manager with the ability to add, edit or delete listings easily. Manage multiple listings and enhance them at any time. May take up to 30 days to process listing requests or updates. Free basic and paid enhanced listing options available.

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Experian (Paid Programs) - Allows businesses to list their corporate information within Experian's national database along with over 16 milion other companies. Listings may take several weeks to process or update. Only paid programs available at this time.

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DeepData (Paid Programs) - Allows local businesses to list and include data within severa local yellow page listing services. Listings include company, phone, localtion, lat/long, country, site, hours, products, brands and more. Listings are updated no less than monthly. Only paid listing programs available.

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Wcities (Free Basic, Paid Enhanced) - Allows businesses to list name, address, location, site and more within Wcities, data provider for many of the most popular local search engines and IYP listing sites. Listings may take several weeks to update. Offers both free paid and basic enhanced listing options. Provides data for several authoritative sites inlcuding Yahoo Local.

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iBegin (Free) - Provides both U.S. and Canadian listings for millioins of businesses. Listings inlcude name, address, phone and category, in addition to closest intersections. Listings appear within many popular local search engines and IYP listing sites. May take several weeks for listings to update. Free to list and update local business information.

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UniversalBusinessListing.org (Paid Programs) - Allows local businesses to include name, address, location, phone, site, hours, payments, logo, products and more. Listing appear in a variety of locations including yellow pages, search engines, business portals, city guides, 411 and more. Listings may take several weeks to update. Offers only paid listing options. Data provider for several large, authoritative third-party sites.

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Local Social Networks & Online Business Networks

A large part of selling Online and getting others to know about your product line is by using peer to peer networks and word of mouth tactics to increase business or brand recognition. Having others who share or recommend the products you offer is a great way to increase sales, increase brand awareness and inform others about the location of your local business. The sites listed below are ideal for merchants who want to leverage and use local social networks, product or service communities and online business networks to help spread the word about the items they offer or where to find those items. Local social sites are quickly becoming one of the best places to include your corporate, company or business information. Once you have listed with local search engines, yellow page sites, business meta searches and data providers consider adding your corporate or company information to these local social communities and business networks.

Yelp (Free Basic, Paid Enhanced) - Allows local bussinesses to gain exposure and brand awreness through business or company reviews. Business owners can manage or enhance reviews listed within Yelp pages and can even join their word of mouth program. Listing update in real time. Free to review, paid enhancement and word of mouth program options available.

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Judy's Book (Free) - Allows local business owners to bring more customers, gain exposure online and increase word of mouth awareness about their brand. Listings include reviews, ratings, business email notifications and the ability to add comments to reviews. Free for businesses to list. Free account required.

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MojoPages (Free) - Allows business owners to review and get reviewed in MojoPages' people powered yellow pages. Using intuitive search, helpful features and tools for users or businesses, anyone can find nearly any business and write a review. Helps to increase awareness and word of mouth hype about a company. Free to review or get reviewed. Free account required.

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Tupalo (Free) - Allows users to add spots in their local area, rate and review those spots and receive feedback from the social community of users. Allows local businesses to increase word of mouth hype, exposure and brand awareness. Useful features available inlcuding recent reviews, photos, maps, popular stuff, recently added and recent users. Free to add spots. Free account required.

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Insider Pages (Free Basic, Paid Enhanced) - Allows users to find popular local businesses through friend recommendations. Allows local businesses to gain exposure, increase brand awareness and word of mouth within their niches. reviews include business name, city, state and zip. Cose matches are presented to choose from or list a new business. Listings feature ratings and reviews which are then shared with friends and the entire Insider Pages network. Offers both free basic and paid advertising options. Free account required.

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YellowBot (Free) - Allows users to find, rate and review local business they admire within a local region. In addition, patrons and business owners can then share or exchange tips and experiences within one another. Allows local businesses to gain exposure, word of mouth, additional credibility and more. Includes popular tags, users and cites. Free to list and update reviews. Free account required.

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Citysquares.com (Free Basic, Paid Enhanced) - Local search site designed to connect people with businesses. Allows users to find, rate and review businesses in local regions. Allows business owners to increase brand awareness, word of mouth exposure and overall online exposure. Offers both free basic and paid advertising options. Free account required to add or review.

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LittleEngine.com (Free Basic, Paid Enhanced) - A local social community around small business for both patrons and business owners who want to support, connect, and communicate in a human-to-human manner. Allows business owners to include relevant information to be displayed in the LittleEngine community. Offers both free basic and multiple paid enhanced listing options. Free account required.

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Yokld (Free) - A local business social ranking platform allows merchants to list their business and have it voted on by other local socilal community members (sort of like Digg for local businesses). Listings appear within Yokld for community members to vote on and rank. Free to list favorite businesses, free to participate in the community. Free account required.

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Lopico (Free Basic, Paid Enhanced) - A local social business directory that allows local business owners to add related information about their company into Lopico. Community users can then rate and review businesses they have visited and know of near or around their location. offers both free basic and paid enhanced listing options. Free account required to list or review local businesses.

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Need Help Listing Businesses & Picking Portals?

Sifting through the various places to add your local business can sometimes be an exhaustive task which requires much spare time and planning. We have done our best to list as many of the most used and authoratative local business search engines, yellowpage listings, meta crawlers, data providers and local social network sites as we possibly could. If you are having issues getting your company included in one or more of the local portals or business listing sites we may be able to assist you in getting the answers you need. If you are looking to get listed within ONLY the popular or most used business portals you may find that listing with InfoUSA and SuperPages is the best way to go as they provide data to many of the major local business portals. I recommend adding your items to as many of the places listed on this page as possible for the most exposure, the most traffic and the best chance of early success. Keep in mind, not all companies or businesses will fit well within each and every local listing portal, so find the ones that fit best around the items you sell, the services you offer or the physical location of your business.
If you find misspellings or typos, try to ignore them, but let me know so I can fix those too!

Get Indexed in less than 24 hrs

 Get Indexed in less than 24 hrs

You created a web site over a month ago and expected Google to index it pretty quickly. Much to your dismay, however, the site hasn’t been indexed yet. When you type the name of your site into the Google search engine, nothing comes up. This is quite frustrating to you because it means that your site cannot be found by internet users. Your site is, essentially, missing. What if, however, you could get indexed by Google not in a week, not in a few days, but in 24 hrs? Seem unlikely? Well, it might be to some, but to others, it’s something that is expected and achieved regularly.
What Can I Do to Get Indexed Quickly?
A lot of people suggest to submit your site to Google by using the add link form. However, this never results in a quick listing. The reason is because the submission isn’t review for weeks and weeks due to how busy Google is. So you might as well forget about link submission because it’s not going to do any good.
What, then, can you do to get indexed by Google quickly? There are actually a few things you can do, each of which are pretty effective and can lead to getting your site listed in as little as 24 hours. Try all of them and see the positive results it brings.
Method #1: A link on an existing site
In some of our other lessons, we touched on the fact that incoming links are of great importance to being listed in Google. They can increase the likelihood of a spider going to your site, thereby getting your site listed and ranked in the search engine. When you’re first starting out, it can be difficult to get such links because your site is unestablished. Thus, you must try other ways of doing this.
One of the easiest ways is to join a forum for a relevant site and to begin posting. You don’t have to make a lot of posts, just a few quality ones will do. Put a link to your site in your signature. Search engine spiders will pick up on this quickly.
Another easy way of doing this is to go to a relevant blog and post a comment there. Now, when doing this, you should be careful to not make your comment seem as though it is spam. Write an intelligent comment and sign your name as “name here of www.mywebsite.com”. This lets blog owners know you’re not a bot, just a regular person who cares about the subject at hand.
Method #2: Create an External Blog
Blogs are well liked by Google. So well liked, in fact, that they are very quickly listed. A blog posting might be up in Google within 24 hours. You can go to any free site like blogspot.com and create a blog on there. You can then write a few posts and casually slip in a link to your site. With some luck, you site will be listed in the Google search engine quite quickly.
Method #3: Add a Blog to Your Site.
Adding a blog to your site can be a lot more effective than creating an external blog or even posting on forums. Free software like Wordpress allows you to quickly and easily add a blog section to your site. You can then add a couple quality postings (be sure to use some keywords) to the blog. Because Google loves blogs and indexes them quickly, you can expect them to take notice of your blog and your site very quickly. This is the most effective way of getting indexed quickly so do not ignore it.
Method #4
Here is how to get indexed within 24 hours using this proven system:
Step 1 - Create Keyword Rich Web Pages : If your web pages are keyword rich and targeted to specific keyword phrases, they are more likely to be indexed faster. And you're likely to get much better search engine rankings too.
Step 2 - Submit A Story On Digg: Submit a story about your website on Digg. This is one of the key steps in the system. Usually doing this alone can get you indexed, but we don't want to take any chances.
Step 3 - Use OnlyWire To Submit To More Social Bookmarking Sites: Submit your site to even more social bookmarking sites like reddit and del.icio.us by using OnlyWire. OnlyWire will submit your site automatically to about a dozen social bookmarking authority sites. This will give you a deluge of instant backlinks.
Step 4 - Submit Your Website craigslist.com : This is a given - you need to submit your website to craigslist if you want it to be indexed faster! So take this simple step now.
Step 5 - Create A Site Map: Google loves site maps, so if you have one, it will be a competitive advantage for you. Search engine spiders like to index site maps, so it will get your site indexed far quicker than 'normal'.
Well, now you might say, Adams, you missed out Dmoz. Yes you are right. But Dmoz takes lot of days to get your link approved and we are talking here about getting indexed quickly. But you should always get listed in Dmoz for further benefits.
Why Do These Methods Work?
In the case of the first and second methods, you are getting inbound links to your site. That means that when Google visits the site and sees a link to your site on it, they’ll go to yours and then list it. Links, as you know, practically always increase rankings in search engines because there are more chances for the spiders to visit your site. So don’t ignore links and how they play a role in getting listed quickly.
With the third method, you are taking advantage of the fact that Google lists blogs quicker than normal sites. By adding a blog to your site, you are opening your site up to Google listing much quicker than they normally would. This is perhaps the most important method, so be sure you use it.