Last updated on 7 Apr 2010
How to Get Listed in Google Almost Immediately

Although not a new feature, not everyone is aware of how to be on Google's Local Business listings. This is a particularly useful feature if your website or business targets a particular locality.

Besides, Google tends to display the results of this listing before the rest of the search results, thus yielding greater exposure to your website. The downside is that you will have no control over whose business Google chooses to display on the first page, and even when that does happen, your listing may not stay there forever. For this feature, the usual SEO strategies will not work in ensuring better rankings.

Still, it pays to be listed. And even if it only lasts a few weeks, that should give you plenty of needed FREE exposure before your SEO efforts kick in for your website. This is particularly useful when you have a new business started and you need all the leads possible. The best thing is, you don't even need a website to get listed. As long as your business is included in the Local Business Center's database, it will be listed.

Take for example: Restaurants.

Say, you are looking for Indian restaurants in Singapore. In Google, you type "Singapore Indian Restaurants". The following result will be displayed:

If you are using a mobile device, the first 3 listings will be displayed before the usual search engine results. So, for the above example, "Tiffin Room", "Spices of India" and "The Song of India" will be displayed first, immediately followed by "Indian Food in Singapore & Indian Restaurants in Singapore" and so on. Also, mobile device users will also not see the map, which makes the listing appear to be part of the normal search engine results. So you can imagine the kind of potential exposure your business may get just by being listed here. We did mention it's free, right?

So, how do you get listed in the Google Local Business Center?

Go to this URL: http://www.google.com/local/add  and sign in. It's that simple! You can also do an SMS or phone verification so that you could flag the information as being supplied by the business owner.

And how long do you have to wait for your business to be listed? Well, experience has shown that it can be as little as a few hours. So get cracking!

If you prefer not to do SEO on your own, you might want to consider our extremely affordable SEO Packages for a Top 10 listing in Google. Best of all, with our SEO packages, you will enjoy the security of a 100% money-back guarantee!