Put Your Business On The Map

One important thing every business needs to do is put yourself on the map. Literally. One major way people search for local services these days, whether it's for party supplies or pizza, is to use one of the major map sites. Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps, and Bing Maps. You've probably done it yourself. Need to find an ethiopian restaurant in town? Go put Ethiopian Restaurant into your Google search and hit the map button.

Well if you're a business owner, hopefully at one point you've asked yourself "Man, how do i put my business on there?". Well it's really easy. On all three of these major search engine maps you can quickly and easily put your business, your web link, your phone, address, organization description, and more right there onto the map. They'll be displayed in different ways on each map, but the most important thing is they'll be there. It doesn't cost you a dime. All you need is the time to put them in, and a phone number that some of the services will call you to verify your location.

Google Maps

Google Maps is the preeminent mapping software still. They took over from the original leader Mapquest and never looked back. To add yourself to google you'll have to go to the Google Local Business Center and log in. You'll need a Google Log-in in order to proceed, so if you don't have one associated with your business yet, it's a good time to get one (You can use the same login for all your google business needs such as analytics and adwords). Once you've logged in you'll get a form to fill out with your information, a map that you need to confirm, or edit if the pushpin is in the wrong location, and a few other pages of information. Once you've entered the information you're good to go. Google will send an automated phone call to the number you entered to verify your information.

Yahoo! Maps

Yahoo Local Listings is very similiar. You'll need a Yahoo! log-in, and then you can sign in and fill out similar forms, confirm map placement, etc.

Bing Maps

Lastly Bing Local Listing Center. Once again you'll need to create a login if you don't have one, and then you can fill out the forms and get onto Bing's map.

Once you're on those three maps you're covering over 90% of user's map searching, and it should take you no more than 5-10 minutes to get it all set up. Your listings won't show up immediately, all the companies review the listings before they're officially added, but hopefully within a day or two your business will be on the map.