Free Online Local Business Listings
Most photographers are location–based and there are a few different free services that should raise your visibility quite a bit in local online searches.
For today's issue of Lucrative Lumens I am going to tell you the ones that I think are most important and recommend for all of my clients. Listings in these locations may get you traffic directly (especially Google Places) or indirectly by being reputable, high–traffic
sites that link to your site thus raising your profile in search engine results.
Speaking in broad and common–sense terms (read as: I don't know of any sites that directly admit this...feel free to read through their intentionally volumnious Terms of Service and try to decipher the legalese and get back to me), like almost all other services, they reward participation. Since these are listings not forums what that translates to is that you should fill out everything. Upload logos and pictures and samples of your work (watermarked, of course), link to your YouTube videos, fill out every field as completely as possible, check every menu, sub–menu, and setting to make sure you have really filled out everything possible.
And be specific, if you are a wedding photographer, then classify yourself as a wedding photographer (rather than, or in addition to, photographer).
- http://www.google.com/placesforbusiness
- http://listings.local.yahoo.com/
- http://www.bing.com/businessportal
- http://www.manta.com/claim
- http://www.merchantcircle.com/signup
- https://www.yelp.com/signup
- https://business.angieslist.com/default.aspx
Many of these services create mobile–friendly listings for your business as well so even if your website (asuuming you have one) isn't mobile–friendly, the listing probably is. There is no shortage of other services and depending on your region, country and specialty there are likely other services that you want to uitlize.
Notably, I don't pay for any of these listings (although you can, and then you will get preferential treatment), and some of them (yeah, that's right Manta, I'm talkin' 'bout you, with your spammy emails) will send you stuff frequently—maybe once or twice a week—trying to get you to upgrade to a premium subscription. Personally, I create an email filter that marks every message from the spammy ones as read and skips my inbox and routes it straight to a folder that I review periodically when feeling masochistic...only becuase every once in a while they may notify you of a problem with your listing or something important so I'm not comfortable marking it as spam; you have been warned.
I'd say that you should allot a half–hour to an hour for each listing.
As always, I offer these services (and more) professionally, through my company, Adam Infinitum, should you be uninclined to do it yourself.
