It seems like the only thing everyone can agree on regarding Local Search is that it is a highly fragmented space that presents a unique challenge for small to medium businesses. In the past, all it took was a yellow pages ad, but now these same enterprises must have a good online presence, too, in order to bring purchasers into their stores.

The general opinion is that about half of these prospective buyers are still using the print yellow pages for local business information and the other half are trying to find that information on the internet. Therefore, the small business person has the challenge of balancing his/her advertising dollars between the two and must appeal to both types of shoppers.

Take Advantage of Free Listings

Your first attack should be on the free front. Google Maps, Yahoo!Local and Windows Live Local all offer free business profiles on their search platforms. Even - or especially - if you don’t have a website for your business, you absolutely need to be listed in these three places. They are a major source of business information for many internet searchers.

The most cumbersome thing about creating or updating a profile for your business is the verification step. All three will let you create an account, log into it and add and modify information about your business. However, before they will publish the changes, they’ll need to ensure that you are indeed the owner or representative of the business. Without this step, unscrupulous people could sabotage the online data about competing enterprises. Even on a small scale, this would cause chaos and a justified lack of trust in the information they publish.

Then, make certain you have a free listing in as many of the Internet Yellow Pages as is practical. SuperPages, Yellowbook, Verizon and the Yahoo Yellow Pages are all musts. Then, see if you can justify paying for an enhanced listing in the print version of whichever print Yellow Pages dominates in your locality. Remember about half of the Yellow Pages users are looking for you online, so allocate your advertising appropriately.

While this won’t cover the whole Local Search enchilada, it’s a great start and will zoom you ahead of many of your competitors.

Also read First Steps for Local Search