Page 136 - Duct Tape Marketing

Get Found Online in Your Town

 SuperPages (www.superpages.com)
 SwitchBoard (www.switchboard.com)
 YellowBook (www.yellowbook.com)

Having more natural listings in directories can also help
you compete in the battle for top local placements. Get those
association, alumni, and trade group listings filled out and
up-to-date, too, as these citations can also carry a lot of local
weight. Two very good sources on this topic are GetListed.org
(www.getlisted.org) and Universal Business Listing (www.ubl
.org/). This second site offers a service that will get you listed in
numerous online directories and portals that are used by many
applications and tools. It may be the best $30 a year you spend.
5. Spread the local social love.

One powerful local play, and perhaps a good strategy to
get some extra local links, is to start a local niche group and
build a community of users around the local theme on social
media sites such as Flickr, Facebook, LinkedIn, MeetUp, or
Biznik. If you can find an area of interest to others, you may
be able to build a useful and vibrant local tool while greatly
enhancing your own local presence.

Here’s a good example: The Boston Networking Club on
LinkedIn was founded by Jeff Popkin, owner of BostonEvent
Guide.com. With more than 5,000 members, there’s a pretty
good bet this group serves as a conduit for Popkin’s main busi-
ness locally.

And last, don’t forget to locally optimize all those YouTube,
Flickr, Facebook, SlideShare, and LinkedIn profiles and vid-
eos, and any other social networking profiles, and point those
profiles back to your main Web site. Every little bit counts in
this very important and increasingly competitive world of local
search.

117