ReleaseWire

Local Businesses Lose Hundreds of Dollars Worth of Free Advertising

Hundreds of local businesses are unaware that they are missing out on a large amount of free advertising from Google. This is due to local businesses failing to claim their free local business listings.

Posted: Monday, February 08, 2010 at 12:00 PM CST

Las Vegas, NV -- (ReleaseWire) -- 02/08/2010 -- Search for any local business in Google, for example, "Hair Salon Las Vegas" or "Masonry Las Vegas" and you will see a map with several business listings on top of the organic results. These listings get the best spot on the page, are free, and you don't even need a web site to get listed there.

However, the majority of these listings lay unclaimed by their owners and often have incomplete information, many have wrong or disconnected phone numbers associated with them! This leaves potential customers with no other choice but to find someone else.

This is mostly due to people not knowing they were given a free business listing and they are blissfully unaware that they are leaving a lot of potential business on the table.

Many will be surprised by the amount of people that use Google to find local businesses this way. To put it into perspective, 22,200 people searched "Dentist Las Vegas" in January 2010 alone, which will lead many to wonder how much free advertising they might be missing out on.

Local business owners would be wise to claim their local listing, make sure all their information is correct, add some photos, and add more details about their business. By doing this, it could help boost their listing higher than their unclaimed competitors and also help with conversions.

To take it a step further, you can hire a professional to optimize it for you so that your business can get listed at the top of the list.

Link Acquisitions specializes in optimizing local business listings to achieve top placement for its clients. Visit http://www.linkacquisitions.com for details.