Optimize You Business for Local Search Step 3: Yellow Pages Listings

There are a few yellow page directories online. Many of them have free listings that you can upgrade for a small fee. For local search purposes, the basic, free listings are sufficient. We recommend creating listing on the two main directories: SuperPages.com and YellowPages.com. (Read the post Optimize Your Business for Local Search for a basic introduction to local search.)

If you have some extra time or just want to go that extra mile, check out the other directories and create listings on a few. I’ve included an excerpt from Planet Ocean’s “The Professional SEO’s Blueprint to Local Search Optimization” for more information.

Deciding which internet yellows pages to list your business with is a 3-step process:

1. First, do a search for the keywords your business is targeting. Ask yourself: Do any of these Internet Yellow Pages come up in the main (not local) search results? If so, then listing your site with them will help get your business indexed on a site that is already doing well in the organic (i.e. non-paid) search results. In essence, you are piggybacking off a site that is already doing well in order to achieve top rankings.
2. Second, determine how many other businesses are already advertising in your target category on that IYP’s service. If there’s just a few, then you can probably get a prominent listing without having to compete very hard for attention. However, if there are already so many advertisers that your business won’t show up until the second or third page, then the effectiveness of your listing is greatly diminished. You might want to look elsewhere.
3. Finally, determine which of the IYPs is likely to be the dominant provider in your region. Users in your area will tend to focus on the IYPs that cater to their part of the country. You can usually tell who targets your region by finding out who produces your local phone book — that’s probably the dominant phone company in your area. For instance, YellowPages.com is put out by AT&T, while SuperPages.com is put out by Verizon. Determine which phone company has a lot of users in your area, and then find which IYP site(s) they own.

Internet Yellow Pages	http://www.yellowpages.com/
SuperPages.com	http://superpages.com
YellowPages.com	http://yellowpages.com
Yahoo Yellow Pages	http://yp.yahoo.com
Yelp.com	http://www.yelp.com/
AOL Yellow Pages	http://yp.aol.com/
SwitchBoard.com	http://switchboard.com
DexKnows.com	http://www.dexknows.com/
MagicYellow.com	http://www.magicyellow.com/
Local.com	http://www.local.com/
YellowBook.com	http://yellowbook.com
CitySearch.com	http://www.citysearch.com

Check back tomorrow for Step 4: Tips for Success which recaps the essentials to a successful local search campaign.