IMPORTANCE OF LOCAL BUSINESS LISTING IN GOOGLE, ASK, YAHOO, AND BING
The purpose of local listing in leading search engines such as Google, Yahoo, etc., is to boost our visibility in the local area. In the long run, it will add weightage for specific keywords and thus help to push the website to the top slot of search results. One of the basic and primary task in SEO is to do local listing in leading search engines.
The normal tendency of users are to find people in their own vicinity. When the user searches with the city name, search engines list the local business profile in their area with a map, which helps the user to find the directions and distance of the service provider from their area.
The below is the brief overview on major search engines and see how local business listings are done,
Google Local Listing:
It’s a part of google maps. Adding local business is something you mark your business profile on google maps.
URL to add your business on Google – http://www.google.com/local
Bing Local listing
As like Google, Bing also makes an entry to maps when user add their listing.
URL to add your business on Bing – https://ssl.bing.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx
Yahoo Local listing
Like Google and Bing, Yahoo doesn’t provide local listing on the common Yahoo search, but it has separate section on the left pane to optimize the search in local listing.
URL to add your business on Yahoo – http://local.yahoo.com
Ask Local Listing
Ask and Yahoo looks similar. Instead on common search, they have separate URL to search for local listing. Ask.com has a separate text field to provide city name or zip code.
URL to add your business on Ask – http://ask.com/city
Even though it is one of the basic processes in SEO, you got to follow it up and make sure that is done.