Lesson

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Top Highlights

• Local directories are a great way for local businesses to connect with potential customers in their area. The first step is to create a listing in local directories.

• These online listings include your key information, like your business name, your address and your telephone number.

• any local directories require that your business has four walls or a local service area in order to be listed, so virtual businesses that don’t meet with customers directly are usually ineligible.

• consistency is key.

• Just like with your business name, enter your address in the same exact way for every directory.

• Telephone numbers should be local as well, including area and country code, so generally you won’t want to use a freephone number.

• You’ve got to have these three things—name, address, telephone number—to land local customers.

• ull together the name of your business as you want it to appear everywhere online, your street address,

• and your phone number.

• For the address, you’ll need a physical address or location

• First, you want your business and all those great local details to show up on the most popular search engines, like Yahoo!, Bing and Google—and all of these have local versions and local business listings for you to use.

• You should also explore options on major local directories, social networks and review sites, and some of these might be industry specific

• Try searching for a business that’s similar to yours to see where they appear.

• Not sure where to find them

• include those three key pieces—name, address and phone number—plus additional business details like your working hours, photos of all those beautiful bikes, videos of your shop, and anything else they’ll let you list. You may be asked to choose one or more categories to describe your business, and while you might not find the perfect category, you should always try to choose the closest fit.

• local listings consistent and up-to-date. Remember if your name, address or phone number change, you need to update all those listings immediately.

• you want to connect with your local customers, and that means taking advantage of the major search engines’ local business listings and creating profiles on business directory websites, review sites and more.

• If you’re listed on a bunch of directories—and you should be—you’ll want to keep track of what you’ve got where, maybe by making a spreadsheet.

• the directories will ask you to prove that you are, in fact, the owner of the business you’re verifying

• most will verify you by doing things like mailing you a postcard with a special code on it, leaving a voice or text message for you with a code, or sending you an email with verification instructions.