4 ways your small businesses can dominate the search engines.

One of the best ways to take control of your small business’s online reputation is to make sure that your small business owns all the first and possibly second pages in the search engine results. Using the following strategies, any small business owner with a limited budget can use this cost-effective strategy to dominate the search results for their company keywords and reduce the “space” for any external negative search results.

1. Build a website with your complete company name as the domain name and use a .com extension.

So if your registered company name is Michael Benoit Assoc., register a domain name such as http://www.mbenoitassoc.com. This improves your search engine optimization (SEO). Make sure you use your company keywords in your content to help with your SEO

2. Do you have a blog?

Make sure your website has a blog where you can post up to date articles, news and have discussions with your clients.

3. Build complete profiles on all major review sites and business directories.

Verify that your business name, contact details, and category information are 100% identical on all sites. Make sure your profile includes videos and photos, and your name and those of your prominent employees. Important sites include:
* Yelp!
* Insider Pages
* Google Maps
* Bing Local
* City Search
* Yahoo Local
* Local.com
* Merchant Circle
* Angles List
* Better Business Bureau
* Yellow Pages
* InfoUSA
* BrownBook
* SuperMedia
* InsiderPages

4. Sign up to all major Social Media Sites

Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and YouTube being the main four. You should use your small business name as the profile username for better search engine optimization. Make sure to add content to these sites. You can automate this by setting up your Twitter and Facebook to get updated with your latest blog posts and YouTube video uploads. You’re Videos, profiles, tweets, status updates and notes can all find their way to the search results.

I hope you found this information helpful.