Educational material for Professional Listings.

1. Get More! from your Professional listing.
Thank you for selecting Professional . There are many advantages from getting found
on 200+ top websites included in the Professional package. Advanced pro les can get people
seeing your business pro le, media content and contact information. It is a great way to
improve you rankings on the national search engines as well - speci cally, the important local
map results. Please take the time to explore the topics below to maintain your visibility across
the Internet. Your Professional Listing is a great way to Get More! from the web.
Learn How To Standout on the Popular sites like:
Table Of Contents
The Next Step - Overview of your listings and what to expect next.
Local Maps - Get in front of search results by local customers try to nd you.
Reviews: How to have your existing customers help you get more customers.
Blogs - How to use two-way communication to connect your business online.
Social Networks - Get the advantage of millions of users seeing your pro le.
Business Networks - Promote yourself and your business to other businesses.
Video Sites - How to use video to improve your professional image.

2. The Next Step
Thank you for your order of the Professional listing service. Your business profile, website
link, logo, images and custom video have been submitted to over 200+ websites across the
internet. All sites, described in this eBook, have been submitted to with your business profile.
Please use the log-in information we sent to you to access your profiles. You should have
received a confirmation email including a completion report. Your personalized email address,
username and password are located in the middle of the first page. You profile on some
websites may not appear immediately. This is especially true for local directories that require a
review process of the submissions and/or technical updates to their databases. The data you
submitted in your Professional order form has been submitted to those sites. Please be
patient with those websites that display incorrect or missing data.
The most important step today is to confirm you on Google Maps, Bing Local and
Yellowpages profiles. The status of your required and/or completed confirmations are
found on the first page of your completion report sent to you by email. Confirmations are
completed with a letter sent to your business address via mail. Within two weeks of your order
placement, you will receive these letters from Google Maps and Bing Maps. Please complete
the instructions in the letter. That will include logging into your Google Places and Bing Local
accounts and entering in the PIN found within the letters. YellowPages require phone
verification.
Google Places - http://www.google.com/lbc
Bing Local - https://ssl.bing.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx
YellowPages - https://listings.yellowpages.com/Registration/Login.aspx

3. Local Search Marketing
Local online search is growing dramatically, as ever-greater numbers of people are throwing
their old school, phone books into the recycle bin. It won't be long until children today have
never even heard of the term "phone book". People want instant and robust results - local
online search offer that today and even with more features in the future.
Do you want your site to be seen by the most local prospects possible? More people are
using the internet, to search for local businesses, more than ever. Search engines have now
designed their sites to help local customers get local search results much easier. Sites like
Google Places, Yahoo Local and Bing Local have designed specific pages for local listings.
The local listing are now accompanied with a map to help you carry out a search that has a
local objective - for example ‘Dentist in Chicago’. Smart phone integration with GPS guidance
is becoming now the new “phone book”.
For developing and further improving your internet-wide local presence, the best way is to
increase the appearance of business address and name on maximum number of websites
and view these appearances as “citations”.
Citations are key to your local search efforts
Citations are comparable to the back links for an organic and natural search engine
optimization. More quality citations received by your site, better it is for Google local rankings.
To be more specific, a citation is a collective mention of the business name and your
business address collectively. For instance, Yelp website mentions “Happy Smile Dentist” and
displays their address as “123 Main St. Los Angeles, CA 90210” adjacent to their business
name – that is well thought out a citation for Happy smile Dentist. The maximum of such
mentions received by a business helps the local search engine results to get better rankings.
Keep business name and address consistent
Keeping your business name and address records consistent in as many citations as
achievable is really significant. Differences can mislead the search engines into believing that
you are two separate businesses exiting at two different addresses.
Consistency will help in:
- Making your company contact information effortless to find online
- Raise the amount of investigate phrases that help in locating you
- Get your search listings rank higher in the search engines.
- Getting your business potentially featured on major search engines such as Yahoo,
Google, and Bing along with several other foremost sites.
- Persuade consumers and customers to evaluate and advise your business to others.
- Involuntarily gather innovative inward associations on the flourishing amount of metro
and other geo-targeted sites.

4. Looking Your Best
More content found on a business' profile leads to more click and views. It’s a well
accepted fact that rich content equals better results. This comes as good news for all the
local businesses that endeavor to be found online.
What is good content?
Online business profiles with more details, images, video and branding receives more
attention. Advertisers know this and make it their business to charge for more space and
features. This is similar to the phone book companies charging for additional colors, images
and details on a business' phone book ad. Your online profile is an important tool to convey
features, professionalism and brand.
Options for additional content to be placed on local sites including:
Details - The more your prospects get to know more about you, the more likely they will
call. Detailed maps are now integrated with turn-by-turn directions and actual street views,
even Google photo tours inside your business!
Logos - Set your business apart from your competition with a professional identifying look.
Images - Get attention with pictures of your store, advertising copy, location, staff and
products.
Video - More local directories are displaying videos in their results. Take advantage of the
power of sight and sound to get your message across. Video messages, greetings,
testimonials and product demonstrations are options as well.
Communication - Sites are now offering the ability for users to post comments, feedback
and reviews about a business within business profiles. Additionally, communication data
from other websites can be integrated for easy content posting from other websites like
Twitter, Facebook and youTube.
One of the quickest and most effective ways to get your business' “best face forward” and
get more citations is to submit your local business using a Professional listing service. The
service is an easy way to get listed and keep most of your citations consistent. The
Professional listing service saves business valuable time and money by helping local
businesses easily submit and update their local business data to a growing list of local data
providers including Google, Yahoo, MSN/Bing, Ask, Dex, Superpages, City Search,
Superpages, Yelp, Yellowpages.com, Merchant Circle and much more. It also now includes
411 Directory Assistance and GPS navigation devices as well as OnStar.

5. Reviews
User reviews that are submitted on sites as Yelps or Google Maps are becoming
progressively more significant for local business. It is also expected that they will be
even more significant in the nearby future. These user reviews will also advance your
business local rankings and consequently depict additional populace to your business
on the web.
Positive reviews about your company will obviously invite visitors for you. This
further lends a hand in making your rankings high on Google Maps. Companies can
view the positive reviews that are submitted on new local directories. Furthermore
they can introduce them interested in your Google Map profile. The more the positive
reviews establish, the more room for improvisation on rankings exists.
Next step you need to take in is to propose your clients to visit the local sites that are
mentioned below and pen an account with them. Later they must seek for your
business and then further tender a positive review about your company. Make this
prologue of customer reviews a regular practice. So after the consumers get linked up
to your social media accounts, they will spot reviews submitted by their acquaintances
and links. The swaying potency of reviews will in future progressively turn out to be
even more commanding. If you’re, without fail and from time to time being solicited
for getting reviews, you’ll be geared up.
Top Local Sites for Review assignment are
- Citysearch.com,
- Yelp.com,
- Judy's Book.com,
- InsiderPages.com,
- Yahoo Local and
- Google Maps.
YELP was originated to assist people stumble on colossal local
businesses including dentists, mechanics, and hair stylists. Therefore,
Yelp is monthly visited by over 32 million people. Users of Yelp have
written nearly 11 million local positive reviews along with around 85%
of users with a ranking of 3 stars or even higher business.
You can mandatory update your account to post some novel offers, messages and
photos for the customers; being the business manager on yelp. Now yelp is available
on iphone, blackberry, and palm pre and android or you can use yelp simply on your
phone by registering at http://m.yelp.com.

6. Local Maps
The positioning of your profile on the local maps is considered to be the lone and the
essential aspect of the Professional service provided to you. Google Places; at present
is the vital local map website that is believed to have swapped the yellow pages and
has emerged to be the most common place for people to find the local business.
Google is known for providing the most related search results for the pertinent
keyword being typed in the form of images, data and maps.
Internet embarks habitually all the business exploration and daily actions, as
nowadays it has been recognized to be the chief advertising podium, to get hold of
your entity amidst the similar businesses serving the similar industry. Furthermore,
except limiting the search to getting you the address of the company, Google also
provides you with the exact location of the company with the aid of internet mapping
tools. At present a myriad of innovative GPS tools are developed for including the
most important names such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. These
innovative tools include GPS handled units or mobile phones.
Google Maps considerably is a liberated service. Google maps
facilitate you stumble on a picky place by typing in the keyword
or address in the search bar. The results appear in the form of
satellite photo, a map or the combination of both. Moreover the
search bar bestows you with several search alternatives that are
classified as businesses, locations, real estate and maps created by
users. For the businesses, the search can be conducted by typing
service or product in conjunction with the city. Then the search outcomes are instantly
revealed on the central part of the page.
NOTE: The organic Google map listings provide “free of cost services”.
Most users have a preference to be amongst Google’s natural listing as compared to
the paid listings. A commonly observed fact is that the local map listings, amongst the
regional based searches, harvest the utmost quantity of clicks. Consequently, chief
aspect in local online marketing is preferably none other than local map listing
optimization. Therefore it has emerged out to be a BIG platform to advertise your
business all the way through the Google mapping service which provides the
extensive and instant features.

7. Blogs
A blog can be regarded as a part of a complete website or even a whole website in itself.
Generally, the individuals having regular and timely entries of descriptions, commentaries,
or other things such as video or graphics maintain the blogs. In any typical form a blog,
there will be a combination of images, text, or links to other blogs text related media, or web
pages.
Blog as an effective marketing tool
If according to you, marketing is two way communication – kind of trade shows involving
the speaker who talks to the prospective customers, or workshops enabling users to put
forward their queries, or specific kind of customer service that throws light on the problems
faced by the clients, surveys that involve putting forward the questions - then blogs can
certainly help in marketing.
Twitter is another mini-blog that allows its users to receive, send, or
read the messages (or tweets) from the other users. These tweets are
text posts that have nearly 140 characters published on the profile
page of the author. By default, these tweets are visible picly. However,
the authors can strictly restrict sending their messages to only friends.
The authors can even subscribe to the tweets from the other people – in which case they
will be known as followers, and this process is following.
Question arises – how to carry out online marketing with Twitter?
Using Twitter as a marketing tool is relatively easy. Several internet marketers have already
been using it as a powerful tool for marketing.
Owing to the short length of the messages – just 140 characters – Twitter is often referred
to as micro blogging. The ease of use and instantaneous connection with the lives of the
people, accounts for the popularity of Twitter. The use is not just restricted to established
businesses; several small businesses have also been leveraging the power of Tweeting.
For building a good client base, you must have more people pointing to your account in
Twitter.
Some of the steps you must follow for effective marketing are –
- The email signatures of your company must have a link to your Twitter account.
- Encourage your clients to become your twitter friends as a part of your daily
communications and conversations.
- You must always keep your clients posted about the new products or services or
even the last-minute notices or changes. You can try something like - “We are
running a special today!” or “We have changed our hours to 7:00pm Monday -
Saturday”.

8. Social Networks
A social network can be understood as social structure comprising of a group of individuals,
wherein people are connected to each other due to one or more particular types of
interdependency, including kinship, friendship, financial exchange, common interest,
profession, dislike, or relationships of prestige, beliefs, or knowledge.
If the way to successful business is through establishing a stream of loyal clients that
frequently visit your online or offline store, then social networking sites are the most
powerful medium to get your clients to you. There is a huge growth potential for the
businesses of small size due to the content generated by the users. It has been observed
that even the small businesses that feature a good product on these networking sites can
get higher rankings as compare to those large companies that display sup par products
despite their large marketing budgets.
Are you still wondering about using the social networking sites for targeting your
potential customers?
It’s the time to get started! The business owners can either post news about their new
services or products to the message boards; or even mail the information to the clients
through the targeted emails. While some other business might build their own forums that
circulate around some particular ideas. Irrespective of the menu chosen by you, you can
follow this road map to get connected through the social networks.
Facebook, a premier social networking site started in 2004, enabling the
users to add friends and send messages to them. It also allowed the
users to create personal profiles and notify their friends about any new
happenings. It also enabled the users to join networks that were
organized by schools, workplaces, or colleges.
Various companies were using Facebook for getting successful while marketing their
business.
Why to use Facebook as a tool for marketing?
- Facebook can be used for gaining new customers and staying connected with present
customers; and promoting new sales offers and products.
- It can also be used to create viral buzz particular to your business.
You get several marketing tools by Facebook. For successfully marketing your services or
business, you need to first understand its features. Several professionals have created their
own business page. You now need to login in to your account and explore the various
features that are offered by social networking.

9. Business Networks
Business networking site can be understood as a marketing website which facilitates
the development of business opportunities through the network of like-minded
professionals or businessmen. There are a couple of prominent and established
business sites that are proficient in creating the networking models. Such models
enable the businessmen to form new business relationships; while also opening ways
for them to generate business opportunities as well.
Quoting the business people, they regard the business sites for networking to be a
cost-effective way to generate new business as compared to advertising efforts. This is
due to the fact that business networking does not involve high costs but lays
importance on personal commitment as against company money.”
Professionals use the professional sites for networking, majority of whom are online
business persons. One can find various professional participants on these networking
sites that serve to be a social network. LinkedIn is one such site that is well regarded
for its professional image. But here you will also discover several general users too, as
this site has rapidly grown for its usefulness even for the non-professionals. Twitter
and Facebook too have the similar story. Twitter, known to be micro-blogging site,
sees several professionals using tweets for their personal advantage. Facebook has
also developed as a powerful professional network.
Some of the known networking sites for businesses include:
- Entrepreneur Connect
- LinkedIn
- Partnerup
- Biznik
LinkedIn is widely recognized to be most developed network for
professionals over the world. It allows you to exchange ideas, information,
or even job opportunities. It enjoys an international network; wherein you
can upload photos and even show links to your website.

10. Video Sites
Video sharing websites are those where the users can freely upload, view, and share
videos. Video marketing online is now a notorious necessity; where the users are able
to upload their chosen videos for the purpose of advertising and earning money online
via their services and products.
In order to practice effective marketing, the experts widely recognize the uploading of
videos to a variety of websites including Myspace, AOL Video, Metacafe,
DailyMotion, Flickr, Facebook, Viddler, and Yahoo Videos. Video sharing forms a
wide approach to grasp and captures one’s mind.
Why are Videos Important?
Did you know that people remember just 20% of what they hear, 30% of what is seen
by them, but a whopping 70% of what is seen by them!
The advertisements regularly trust the power of videos for answering their advertising
needs. Videos published online are the most preferred form of advertising as seen by
the advertising agencies. Not only these, the businesses of all sizes are also exploiting
the power of online videos for expanding their growth potential and reaching a wide
base of the clients. The trends regularly demonstrate that one out of two viewers
performs action after seeing the video ads.
The present day online marketing established the fact that those websites that are
devoid of the promotional videos are increasingly regarded as obsolete. This survey
clearly highlights the fact that uploading the related videos on the video sites is also
an essential marketing practice that is apt for the promotion of all businesses
irrespective of the size of the business.
YouTube Is the leading platform for sharing the videos online. The users
are able to upload or even share their selected videos with the world.
Google own YouTube that forms a good example for assorting the videos
that the users upload in combination with the media companies in the
form of music videos, personal videos, motion picture clips, business
commercials or the TV clips.