Bayview Marketing

What It Is & How It Works
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Yahoo! Local is Yahoo’s answer to Google Maps.  It’s that company’s local search engine service, providing consumers with information about nearby businesses.  It also is ripe with opportunity for the business owners themselves.
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A high ranking on the Yahoo! Local searches can put your business in one of the coveted top positions.  The highest ranked listings are always considered prominent (naturally!) when their category is searched.  If you’re using this type of marketing, that’s where you want to shoot for in the placings.  While consumers have access to the information and maps accompanying all the listings, it is human nature to gravitate first to the top of the list.  If you aren’t there, your competitor is.
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Yahoo! Local wants to promote quality and connection between consumers and businesses.  To that end, they have stepped up their spam catching capabilities, and have added a feature whereby consumers can edit listings.  If someone knows that a business has moved, for example, but the address hasn’t been changed, they can go to Yahoo! Local and add a note with the new address.  This will help the next person looking for that business.  In that way, it is an interactive local search engine.  People can also leave reviews that help others to learn more about the products and services they’re looking for.
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What all of this means for business owners, is that they’d better be in the listings to get in on the opportunities and claim their share of the local market.
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Some Elements of a Great Yahoo! Local Listing
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The most important thing you can do is to make your listing as robust as possible.  Consumers are now querying differently than ever before.  They are being more specific and using long tail keywords when doing their searches.  That’s one of the reasons that businesses need to ensure that their listings are precise and properly categorized.  The target audience is targeting their queries.  You want to make sure you’re there for them to find.
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In a nutshell:
•    Make your listing detailed, interesting, keyword rich and very precise.  Ensure that your listing is properly categorized for correct and optimum exposure
•    Have your business listed in various search engines to boost prominence with the local searches.  Local search engines have greater trust in a listing when the same source is published across several domains
•    Upload photos and logos.  This will help consumers to feel that your establishment is trustworthy
•    Make sure that you are using targeted, higher revenue ad campaigns
•    Use tracking URL’s to monitor your campaigns
•    Always keep your listing(s) up-to-date
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With some initial effort to set up correctly, a merchant’s Yahoo! Local listing can be a golden opportunity to draw customers with little further effort.  Seems like such a perfect way for businesses to claim local customers and sales.
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