My thanks to Ed Dale for his wonderful YouTube video; I just want to flesh things out a bit for you, and put things in a slightly different order.

The first thing you can do to help your business is free, other than about 15 minutes of your time. Get it listed with Google Local. Google is the largest search engine in English-speaking countries, and feeds results to many smaller niche engines.

People often prefer to deal with a local company when possible, and online search is fast becoming the preferred method to finding businesses, rather than those old phone books. The internet is more up-to-date and complete, providing more information to them, at a lower cost to you. Everybody wins.

Google will often find your information from other sources, such as Localeze or InfoUSA, but don’t rely on these, as they may be incomplete or inaccurate.

Visit Google Local here: http://Google.com/local/add

In addition, Google checks authority sites like these for ranking purposes. If your information is consistent across these authority sites, your reputation is stronger and ranking is improved. So it makes sense to visit these sites to ensure your listings are up to date and complete.

If you are a member of your local Better Business Bureau, make sure that your listing there is complete: http://www.bbb.org

Some other Local Business Directories Authority sites to visit:

InfoUSA: http://www.license.infousa.com/UpdateListing.aspx

SuperPages.com: http://advertising.superpages.com/spportal/businessprofilebegin.do

Localeze.com: http://webapp.localeze.com/extranet/

Make certain all of your listings at these directories are correct and current. Next: Your Domain