7 Ways to Maximize Free Business Directory Listings

With a plethora of marketing tools at your disposal, it can seem that free business directory listings often fall to the bottom of the pile, perhaps never getting much attention at all. While certainly these listings do not require the ongoing level of activity that social sites do, they are more than worth some time from you. Following are seven ideas from our team here at Advice Local on how […Read More]

Local Search Part 5: Three Good Reasons to Amplify Your Reach with Social Media

Smart use of social media networks like Facebook and Twitter enhances your local search strategy in three important ways: It captures leads. Social media takes your message to places where thousands of prospective customers are already congregating. Take Facebook, for example. Millions of members have volunteered tons of psychographic data to Facebook, as well as left a digital track showing what pages, ads and other links they’ve clicked on in […Read More]

Local and Organic SEO – What’s the difference? Is it Important for My Business?

Looking to reach more customers in your area? Local and organic SEO are both important for your business. Once upon a time, a business could purchase an ad in the newspaper or Yellow Pages and customers would start coming in. Remember those days? Well times have changed… With so many new aged marketing techniques—think social media, SEO, sales funnels, Google ads, Facebook ads, email marketing, retargeting display ads, and so […Read More]

9 How To Tips for Real-Time Brand Management

Brand management is not easy and real-time brand management is even more difficult. It is very important that you have systems, tools and people in place to help you. Before I get into the systems and tools, let’s talk about why this is important to your business success. Real-Time Brand Management All it takes is one unhappy customer that has minimal influence to create a viral social media crisis because […Read More]

8 Tips on How to Use Pinterest for Local Business Searches

As a local business owner or marketer, you have no doubt learned the importance of local searches in today’s world. Many things can contribute to your ability to be found—or not—in any local search. At Advice Local, we work with clients every day to help them learn new ways to boost their local SEO results, and today we will look specifically at how to use Pinterest for local business search […Read More]

Local Search Part 4: Making Your Website Local Search Friendly

Once you’ve ensured that your business shows up in local search results, prospects will visit your website to see if your products and services are right for them. This is a make-or-break moment: If your website is cumbersome to navigate or doesn’t show well on a mobile device, it’s unlikely that those prospects will ever become customers. In this post we’ll discuss how to optimize your website for local search […Read More]

What Is Ello and Should You Even Care?

Ello is a new, invite-only social network that has recently received a lot of press for two main reasons. First, the site vows never to sell information about its members to advertisers or to allow ads to appear in its network. Second, this idea of an ad-free social media experience has resonated strongly with the public, resulting in a record number of people requesting to join the new site. At […Read More]

The 3 Most Effective Steps to Creating a Business Google Plus Page

Google+ may not have taken off like a rocket when it was first launched, but it has stood the test of time and is now proving to be well worth the investment for any business. Creating a business Google Plus page that drives engagement and the related benefits need not be difficult. Following are three tips that we at Advice Local recommend when you want to get the most out […Read More]

How to Find Niche and Geo-Specific Business Directories

One of the most important lessons that businesses have learned since the introduction of Penguin is that the quality of your directory listings matters — a lot. If you have not yet cleaned up your directory link profile, now is the time to do so. One part of this process is to get rid of all junk links. The other part of this process is to keep or add good […Read More]

Why Yelp Reviews Are So Important to Your Business

Whether you are a small locally owned business with one location or a local arm of a larger business, you have likely heard people talk about why Yelp reviews are so important to your business. Depending upon whether you personally use Yelp or not, you may or may not be so convinced about this. Well, it’s time to set the record straight. Yelp reviews matter. It’s that simple. The New […Read More]