You can use many free sources to get your business listed in the the local business listings on the popular search engines. Here is a an example from Google on their LBS offering:

• Google Local Business Center: http://www.google.com/local/add
• Yahoo Local: http://edit2.ls.sp2.yahoo.com/csubmit
• MSN/Bing: https://ssl.bing.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx
• Superpages: http://advertising.superpages.com/spportal/freelisting2.do

Google 10-Pack – Once you are listed in these online directories, you have a chance of getting your Google local profile listed in the “Google 10-pack” for your local business searches. These are local listings that Google places directly on the first page of search results. Here is a sample of what a google 10-pack display looks like:

Tips for Better Ranking - The more complete your online listing information is, the better you will be ranked in Google search results. Here are some tips on what to keep in mind while submitting your listing information:

• Complete all business information
• Include your business hours, website, and forms of payment accepted
• Include a photo of your store or your logo
• Include Customer Reviews

The more places your business is listed on the web, the better your chances are of the search engines ranking your site higher in search results. Search engines like consistency in your information and quantity. The more websites that have backlinks to you and the more business directories that you are listed in, the better your chances are that your business will rank higher the next time someone searches for a business like yours in your local area.

Here’s to Your Online Success!

Betty Walker, the Wise Web Lady
http://www.wiseweblady.com/
http://www.ccstechpros.com/
bettywalker@wiseweblady.com

Hi, Betty Walker here with a Wise Web Lady Two Minute Tip where you ask the questions, and we find the answers!

Jennifer from Florida writes:
“My domain for my website is my company name. But someone told me that I should choose a domain name that is based on search terms and not on my company name. Does it really matter?”

Hi, Jennifer – great question!  But, my answer depends on how you’re planning to use your website to help build your business.  Let me explain by using an example..

Let’s say you own a hair salon in Funville, NC and the name of your business is “Jen’s Clip and Snip”.  So you get the domain name  jensclipandsnip.com and get a snazzy 3 page website built for your business that gives basic information about you, your services, and your contact information. 

Now I would say this makes perfect sense if your marketing plan for your website is to be used as a basic information tool for your business.  People can use your website to learn more about your services, find directions to your shop, etc.

But if you plan to use your website to drive traffic to your business and as a way for online searchers to find you, then you might want to think about this from a different perspective.

Let’s say someone is searching for “hair salons Funville NC”.  Unless you’ve done your online homework and setup your website to be “keyword rich”  or set your site up in the business local sections of the search engines (local SEO), this online searcher most likely would not find your website. In this case,  you might consider a domain name more like funvillehairsalon.com.

Now all that being said, you have to weigh several factors to know which is best for you.  It certainly can help you in the search engines if your domain name contains primary keywords that people use to search for your kind of business. But if name and brand recognition are important to you, then using your company name makes perfect sense.

And your domain name is only one way that search engines will send traffic to your site. More important is the content that is on your webpages. Be sure your content is “keyword rich” for these same search terms and that it is relevant to what your visitors would be searching for to find you. And, if your target market is mostly local, be sure to include your business address, city and state on your webpages to help in local SEO searches.

Now, if you’re thinking about purchasing both domains to point to your website, be careful!  Having multiple domains can appear as duplicate content to the search engines and will hurt your search engine placement rather than improve it.  Unless you are familiar with 301 redirects for your website, please be sure to consult a web professional to ensure you have things setup correctly.

If you still have questions, give me a call and I’ll be happy to talk with you in more detail about it.

Here’s to Your Online Success!
Betty Walker, the Wise Web Lady
http://www.wiseweblady.com

Do I need a robots.txt file for my site?

When search engines make a crawl through your website, one of the first things they look for is a robots.txt file – you can think of it as a welcome file to the search engines for your site. It tells them If there are certain files or folders that you don’t want indexed. And, it can direct them to your sitemap file, which gives them a roadmap to the files on your site that you do want to be indexed.

Your robots.txt is a simple text file that you place in the root of your site and is created using your favorite html editor. If your domain is yourbusinesssite.com, then the search engines will look for yourbusinesssite.com/robots.txt.

A sample robots.txt file would look like this:

Sitemap: http://www.yourbusinessite.com/sitemap.xml
User-agent: *
Disallow:

Here’s a quick overview of each of these:

1. Sitemap – The sitemap entry helps the search engines find your sitemap file, which in turn helps the search engines indexed more of your website pages that they might find on their own. You can learn more about sitemaps by visiting here.

Although this Sitemap entry is independent from the other statements in your robots.txt file, I typically place this at the top of my file for organization and consistency.

2. User-agent – The user-agent refers to the search engine spiders. By using the * wildcard, we are saying that this entry refers to all search engine spiders and robots. 

3. Disallow – The Disallow statement tells the search engines if there are any portions of your site that they should not index.  In our case, by having no file or directory listed on this statement tells the search engines it’s okay to index our entire site.

Even though we do not have any restrictions to report to the search engine crawlers, just having the robots file present will prevent unecessary errors from showing in your web statistics bad referral report.

The robots.txt file can be used to pass on specific instructions to each search engine.  For example, if you wanted to block Google from searching your site entirely, you can use the following syntax:

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /

One word of caution: Although it can be common practice to use your robots.txt file to disallow certain folders or directories from being indexed, you should keep in mind that anyone can access your robots file, and spammers sometime make it a point to check the robots.txt for excluded directories to spider.

So, in summary, you can use your Robots.txt file to let them know what you would like excluded and to point them to your sitemap file.  All this can be important steps in helping improve your search engine placement.

That’s it for now, talk soon!

Betty Walker, Founder & CEO
CyberCompany Solutions, Inc.
http://www.ccstechpros.com
bawalker@ccs-email.com

How hard is it to setup a Yahoo sitemap?

Setting up your Yahoo sitemap is not as difficult as you may think. A sitemap for Yahoo is used for directing crawlers in the search engines to your web pages so they can all be indexed. 

To submit your sitemap to Yahoo, you need to create a sitemap and then add a sitemap entry into your website’s robots.txt file.  How do you do this?  The following will help:

 1. Create your sitemap - First, create a sitemap.xml file on your site. You can find more information on how to do that in my post on Google sitemaps here.

2. Create your robots.txt file – Once you have your sitemap created, then you need to create a robots.txt file on your site.  You can find out more informatin on robots files here.

3. Add sitemap to robots file – In your robots.txt file, add this line:

Sitemap: http://www.yourbusinesswebsite.com/sitemap.xml

4. Submit your site to Yahoo – Once you have your robots.txt file ready, then submit your site to Yahoo so it will crawl your site, find your sitemap, and index all of your webpages. To submit your site to Yahoo, click here.

 And you’re done!  Here is a link that will explain this in a little more detail:
Yahoo Site Maps

Hope this helps.  Thx, talk soon!

Betty Walker, Founder & CEO
CyberCompany Solutions, Inc.
http://www.ccstechpros.com
bawalker@ccs-email.com