I’ve talked a few clients through the process of registering their business with Google and, based on that experience, the idea of talking someone through the same process on Bing is a little more daunting, but doable. Here’s a comparison of the user experience for each site:

Google’s Home Page:

The process:

Step 1. Get a Google Account, if you don’t have one already.
Step 2. Go to Google.com and click on “Business Solutions” below the search terms window.
Step 3. On the next page, click on “Local Business Center” in the bottom half of the page.

Now you are all set to start listing your business with Google. One precaution: Make sure you are near your business phone so you can verify your listing with Google’s automated call to your business phone. They will call with a PIN that you will need to verify that this is actually your business.

Bing.com’s Home Page:

The Process:

Step 1: If you haven’t already, sign up for a Windows Live account (click on “Windows Live” in the top left corner of the page to get started)
Step 2: With your Windows Live email and password on hand, go to Bing’s home page and select “Maps” from the search options listed under the main search field.
Step 3: In the Maps page search field, enter either your business name or your location and business category.

Step 4: In the listing of search results, scroll all the way down until you see the words “local listing center” in page gray and click on that to get started with your listing.

Now for the real way to do this.
Go to: https://ssl.bing.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx
-and sign up from there.
I only listed these steps out to illustrate the fact that Bing’s method is; 4 (non-intuitive) steps as opposed to Google’s 2 somewhat obvious ones and that trying to explain this to a client over the phone is not high on my list of fun and easy activities. The only bright spot in all this is that, at the end of the sign-up process, Bing.com promises to send you a letter for verification about your listing as opposed to a phone call that can take some people by surprise.

I am in the process of updating a map for a site I developed and it involves googling almost every local retail business in order to link to their websites. Surprisingly, quite a few don’t. Instead, when I google their business name, what tends to come up are: 1) Newspaper articles that mention the business, 2) blog posts that mention the business and 3) Review sites such as Yelp and Merchant Circle.

The last category is where a lot of businesses lose out on a great free tool for getting their name out there. Some sites are membership-based, requiring people to join before they can post their reviews of local businesses. Others are more focused on the business owner and helping them to develop a business to business network. Here’s a list of the sites that I visited and a little about the ins and outs of listing your business with them:

• Superpages/Switchboard: When you land on this site, go to the bottom of the page where it says: “Add or Edit Listing”. Click on that and you’ll go to a page where you will be prompted to enter your business phone number in order to find out if you are already listed. If you are not, then you will need to go through the process of filling in your business info and then signing up for a free account. Of course, they will offer you options such as having your logo with your listing for “only” $25 per month, but there are free options out there, so try it, see how you like the services and then decide if it’s worth the money.
• Yellowpages: Just like SuperPages and Switchboard, Yellowpages is part of the Idearc Empire and, like any empire, they want to control the world. If you own a business, you’ve probably received a few sales calls from them, but, it is possible to sign up for a free business listing. The only catch is that they inform you after you’ve gone through the listing process that it may take 30 days to display your listing and “you will be contacted by a sales representative”. Oh boy. To get started, just go to the home page and click on the black button at the bottom of the page that says “Get your free listing”.
• Boston City Search: At the bottom of the home page, there’s a link entitled “List your business on City Search”. It does cost, and they don’t tell you how much it will cost until you start signing up for a plan. The “$30 off” offer tells me that it’s kind of costly.
• Manta: Manta pulls its listings from Dun & Bradstreet. Therefore, you should get a listing with them first before attempting to get into their listings. I wish they had told me this before I went through the fairly involved process of setting up an account on their site. The site seems to be focused on business to business interactions, so if you are constantly scouring the web for suitable vendors, then this may be worth your time to set up.
• Citysquares: Basically the way this works is that you search for your business, sign up for a free listing, and then they want you to pay upwards from $50 a month to upgrade your listing including being able to link to your site from the listing.
• Merchant Circle: On the home page, you will be prompted to enter your business number, then it shoots you onto a page where you can sign up for a membership. They email you, you confirm the email and then you go to another page where there’s a list of the plans offered. They range from $30-$250 a month. Never fear, there’s a light gray link next to the plans that says “But I thought it was free!” Click on that. Now, on the next page, in the top right corner, click on “No Thanks, set up my profile”. You get a pretty meaty listing, with a link to your own site and the ability to generate coupons. I signed up and within 48 hours, my listing showed up near the top of a search for “Web Design” in “Salem MA”
• Yelp: At the top right of the page, click on Yelp for Business Owners. From there, you simply follow the prompts to set up your business listing.

Then what?

Recruit your network of friends, relatives and loyal customers to support your business by asking them to post some reviews on the various sites. Trade reviews with other business owners, offer discounts/deals to customers who post reviews, cook dinner for people, whatever. Every little bit helps to enhance your presence online and drive traffic to your business!

Here’s how it’s done:

Step 1. Go to Yahoo’s home page, yahoo.com and log in with your Yahoo ID and password.

Step 2. Once you are signed in, then go to the left side of the page and click the Small Business button.

Step 3. Now, in the next page, you need to click the small business button on the top right side of the window.(and yes, for the life of me I can’t explain why Yahoo has things set up like this. Maybe they are trying to force the user to check out Yahoo’s offerings)

Step 4. Once you click that second button, you will need to sign in again. Once you’ve done that your web site’s traffic displays in a graph by date.

We’re all familiar with the SEO mantra “ranking is determined in part by the number of pages that link back to your site.” While that is a big slice of the magic pie of good search results rankings, it is a concept that leaves many people wondering how all those wonderful links are created. Plenty of companies are poised to pounce on your money with their promise of acquiring links by the bushel for you, but do you really need to spend any money at all?

Heck, no! Here are five strategies that can be used to seed the web with quality links back to your site. (But no spamming!)

1) Be A Joiner:
A nice thing about social networking is that many sites allow you to join for free and you can instantly start looking for other people you may know on a particular network. When you build your profile page on a service such as Twitter, Facebook or Orkut, you can list your website(s) as a live link.

2) Weave Your Web:
There are plenty of blogging services out there and most of them give you the option of putting links to other sites in a sidebar. So if you have a couple of blogs out there and maybe a site for your business, make sure each of your sites includes links back to the others.

3) Holler Back:
Chances are there are lots of sites/blogs out there related to your business. Find some good, high-traffic ones. Then check out 1) If they have comments enabled and 2) If the comment form allows you list your web site’s url. Then, follow your favorites when you find their content useful, post a comment and include your url.
A few tips:
Do write a comment that is worth reading. While “Great post! Thanks!” is nice, it’s not really saying much is it? Why did you like it? How do you plan to make use of what you learned?
Don’t treat it like a Super Bowl commercial. Most bloggers have approval over which comments get posted and if I smell a “comment commercial” I tend to go for that spam button.
Do check the freshness date on the content you are commenting on. Posts more than a year old are not as likely to be read as something posted up to 3 months ago.

Another method for connecting with other sites is to utilize trackbacks and pingbacks. While this method does not necessarily put a link back to your site on another web page, it will let another blog know when you link back to it. Diligent bloggers like to know who is linking to them and it will help others to know you are out there. I included these because sometimes blogs do not allow for comments, only tracks and pings and it’s good to know what they’re about. Sometimes pings can be utilized via a service like Technorati to let it know when you have added new content.

4) Be A Critic:
Amazon has some great benefits to joining. You can sign up as an Associate and sell products through your web site and create a user profile that can include your website’s url. When you write a review of an Amazon product, your name is linked to your profile. So, if you take care to write helpful reviews for popular items, you can help generate that much more traffic to your site.

5) Be Your Own Press Agent:
If you took the advice of tip #1, then you have a ready-made media outlet already. Whenever you write new content for your site, update Twitter and Facebook and any other sites to reflect that. (Twitter has a function where you can incorporate your tweets into your Facebook wall. Useful in the way of saving time, but try not to create too much “clutter”) For example: “Jenn has just written a post about SEO on jennmearswebdesign.com”. Keep it short and simple.

There’s also an array of aggregate services out there where you can volunteer links to your content. Here’s a few:
Del.icio.us: Bookmark a link to your content on your page.
Stumble upon: Go to your page and click Stumble icon if you have it on your toolbar and/or embedded on your page.
Digg: Submit your new content’s url in the appropriate category.
Reddit: Submit your link.

Jenn Tip: Of course, you join all these services and before you know it, you’re dealing with an onslaught of usernames, passwords and invite emails. How do you keep it all straight?
1) Ensure your browser has the ability to remember signin info (on a secure, personal computer) and take advantage so you won’t have to keep looking up your password.
2) I actually use a similar password for each site. You may want to encrypt a little more than this, but it helps when I use a different computer.
3) Most services you sign up for send you a confirmation email. Create a “memberships” folder in your online inbox and store it there.
4) Maintain a text file that lists your accounts in alphabetical order and keep the usernames and passwords updated.
5) Organize how you are going to find all these sites. I use the bookmarks tool on my browser. You could also use another bookmarking service such as Del.icio.us and a common tag such as “Daily” or “Social”.

Above all, remember that quality link building is an ongoing, proactive process. Make the time to develop your network. Just create a simple goal like: “I am going to create at least 3 incoming links to my site every day.” and go from there. Good luck!

So I started noticing how much time I actually do spend in front of a screen and realized I had enough time to start looking more closely at social networking sites and strategies. But it does take a while to fully examine all the options out there and hopefully this series of posts will save you some time and you’ll walk away with a better understanding of how to make these tools work for you.

I started by taking a few hours and signing up for the 4 most well-known services; Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter. Here’s my initial impressions of each:

Facebook:
Profile Address/User Name: Jennifer Nickerson
Sign Up Process: A little involved, but it’s damn eerie how the names from your past start popping up when you fill out where you’ve worked and gone to school.
Ease of Use: Fairly easy and basically what happens once you sign up is you are allowed to contact people you may know who are already on Facebook and ask them to be your Facebook friend. Then they can post messages for you on your “wall” and you can track what they’ve been up to as well.
What’s in it for me?: Online networking that doesn’t feel like “speed dating in a tie”. You can post a link to your website in your profile. Your profile includes your Wall, Info and Photos on a tabbed page.

LinkedIn:
Profile Address/User Name:http://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifernickerson
Sign Up Process: Fairly involved, but the more complete your profile, the better your chances of getting a connection to a potential client/employer/employee
Ease of Use:Fairly easy, once you enter the Profile process. Similar connections look-up functionality to Facebook.
What’s in it for me?: This is Facebook and MySpace’s older sibling with a briefcase and a firm handshake. You can connect with other members and trade recommendations for each other. A couple of nice features are the Amazon Reading List (lots of potential for you Amazon Associates out there) and the ability to list more than one website in your profile.

MySpace:
Profile Address/User Name:http://www.myspace.com/jennnickerson
Sign Up Process:Not bad, but there’s no lookup function built in.
Ease of Use: Could be better. You have to be fairly pro-active to take advantage of all there is and there’s 18 themes to choose from. I now understand all those Craig’s List “Pimp My MySpace Page!” ads. Also, when I tried to add my profile photo it seemed to upload fine, but the photo placeholder was still in place. Nothing tells one to click on the uploaded image and then designate it as the “default” photo. In these days of instant Avatar creation, this seemed a little lame to me.
What’s in it for me?: It’s another way to get your name out there and if you want to create a profile focused on your business, it couldn’t hurt. If I was a little bit (OK, a lot) younger, I would focus on it a little more, but for business/colleague networking purposes, there are better options.

Twitter:
Profile Address/User Name: http://twitter.com/jennsweb
Sign Up Process: Painless and there’s a look up function for finding other users you may know and the ability to send them invites.
Ease of Use: Pretty easy and their blog is fairly useful.
What’s in it for me?: You can stay in touch with your friends and co-workers but it’s passive tracking. You just check on people you are “following” and if they’ve made updates you can read them, but there’s no need to respond if you don’t have to.

Jenn Tips:
Here’s a few things to bear in mind before you plunge into the bottomless pool that is online social networking.

1: Gather together a list of all your email contacts and have it handy. Any format is fine. I actually keep a handwritten one since my webmail doesn’t have the capability to print out a list. LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook allow you to search for potential connections via popular webmail services such as Gmail and Yahoo, but if you don’t have a full contact list on each account, then the reference list comes in handy.

2: Build good Linked In karma by offering to trade recommendations with others.

3: Decide which website you will always list on each service and get that website in good shape before signing on.

4: Take advantage of RSS feeds, Favorites Folders, bookmarks, or whatever it takes to make these sites easy to find while you are online. Use easy-to-remember but not obvious passwords and treat these accounts like you would your best friend’s dog while they are out of town. Cobwebby profiles can be a kiss of death to a potential connection.