Claim your free business listing on Google Places, today, as part of your local SEO strategy. And it’s not just Google, by the way. Yahoo! and Bing both offer similar local listings for free. If you have limited your local advertising to the Yellow Pages, it’s time to step out. The potential effect on your local search traffic is huge.

Most searches are for local results. Google’s SERP (search engine results page) now regularly incorporates a map view with markers for local businesses that may satisfy the searcher’s request.

Whether you like it or not, you may be listed. Google finds businesses through Web sites and through public directories of all kinds and incorporates them in to its database. But since it’s in everyone’s interest to find the best information possible in the search results, Google makes it easy for you, the business owner to claim your listings and edit it with good, current information and even pictures.

For example, if you search on “business coaching long island” you’ll see that the results include a map with a number of markers, some larger than others. Marker “A” belongs to our friends at TAB Suffolk. Click on the “A” next to their name in the search results and you’ll be taken to this Alternative Board listing on Google maps. Note that in the top-right corner it says, “Owner-verified listing.” That’s what you want to do too!

This listing can incorporate a great deal of information that is likely to be immediately relevant to the searcher including, a company description, address, phone number, reviews, photos, hours of operation and types of payment accepted (if relevant).
And it’s an easy way to extend your reach to millions of searchers. Did I mention that it’s free?

Don’t delay. And then rinse and repeat with Yahoo! and Bing as well.

Read Google’s own description of for more information, and let us know if we can help.