The search engine local advertising market is booming, and it is only going to get larger and more important in the future as search engines learn how to better organize local listings, and 10 lb. phone books go the way of the dodo.

So, what can you do about this boom in local searches? Get listed of course! I will start with Google as it is by far the most important, and serves more searches than any other service combined.

Get Listed on Google Local

1. First, you will need to get a Google account. You can do that HERE 2. Second, login to your new account and go the Google Local Business Center Page: HERE 3. After you Type in all the information for your business, you will need to wait until you get a card in the mail from Google. This will confirm that your business is physically at the address you listed.

As this post is primarily for individual real estate agents, you will probably run into your first roadblock when it comes to the address. Assuming you work for a broker and a larger company... for our example we'll use Re/Max. If your Re/Max office is already listed in local.google.com, you will not be able to use that office address again for a personal business listing. This presents an immediate problem. You are trying to get your personal service listed under your office's address, but your office is already listed... There are a couple work arounds for this problem:

1. Use your home address. Many agents work from home these days anyway... but if you don't like the idea of your home address popping up on local searches... there is another alternative: 2. Since P.O. Boxes are not allowed, you can still get a mail box from a company like the UPS Store. They allow you to rent a physical address with a suite number, so it appears to be just another local address, when in reality, it is only a mail box. I haven't tried this personally, but I'll bet it would work as a physical mailing address in Google's eyes.

In my research, I found that most real estate offices are NOT listed in Google local... and in that case you can use just the office address. As of now there are no rules against this, but as the search engines get smarter, this option may go away, as a listing for an individual real estate agent isn't as valuable as an office listing for the same address in the eyes of the Search Engine.

I hope those suggestions were helpful. Your number one priority for Google is to get listed a physical address listed with them. This will give you a foot in the door for the other hints I'm going to give you now:

* Once you've been listed, you should be able to find your local listing in a search. For example: "castle rock, CO real estate" or "real estate agent castle rock, CO" You can either search directly on local.google.com, maps.google.com, or just Google.com * Depending on the competition in your area, you may have to browse through a couple pages of competing listings to find yours... but don't fret! You can change that...

Page 1 of 2 :: First | Last :: Prev | 1 2 | Next