June 21st, 2007
in
Free Advertising, Marketing Products and Services |
1 Comment »
When I wrote up a post on my Entrepreneur.com blog on ten free advertising opportunities, I would never have guessed just how popular one of the ideas would be – free online local business listings. Recently, I came across another one of these great services, so I figured everyone would want to hear about these two great services for small businesses.
MerchantCircle.com
is a combination of a business listing site with business reviews. If you don’t have a website or don’t know how to optimize for search engines, you can take advantage of their free listing which will have a good chance of showing up in the first page or two. The free package also allows businesses to upload photos, coupons, and create a business blog.
You can also upgrade listing packages to include more local advertising opportunities that Merchant Circle will manage for you, which is perfect for those business owners who don’t have the time or patience to learn about Pay Per Click advertising or buying their own media spots on top publishing sites such as USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, or FOX News.
TouchLocal
is a similar service for UK-based businesses. They also have both free and paid listings, and offer similar Pay Per Click assistance in their paid package (and even offer a minimum number of guaranteed visits). Although TouchLocal has been around since 1999, I’ve only recently heard about them – so I was thrilled to know I could help my UK friends with a service similar to US based MerchantCircle.
Happy Free Advertising, everyone!
Related Posts
Dell Latitude TM D531 on SALEYahoo Search Marketing Coupon | $25 Free AdvertisingShoestring Smarts is Moving to a New Home SoonChoosing and Comparing Email Marketing Providers
November 13th, 2007 at 6:41 am
Hi
My father was contacted by TouchLocal yesterday, who tried selling an enhanced listing to his FREE touchlocal account.
What the gentleman said to us on the phone disturbed me so much I ended up contacting Google about it, who in turn asked me to fax their legal department.
They were claiming that they were friends with Google and buy keywords direct from Google themselves (this is not Adwords – he said), I told him that Google do not have favourites and I very much doubt they are affiliated with Google, Google did not know who they were!
I would like to warn people away from TouchLocal because of the underhand sales tactics they are using.
Why lie? They have a good service they offer customers so why do they need to lie in their pitch and claim to know Google personally and that Google personally tell them what keywords should be allocated to a website to make it number 1.
In fact, the keyword they suggested we needed to use was “executive private hire hampshire” they wanted 10GBPs per week to get this keyword to the number 1 spot – guess what? This keyword is already at the number 1 & 2 spots on Google but was done organically, without paying 1 cent to anyone!!!
So, be wary of TouchLocal and I would take anything they try telling you with a pinch of salt, it is basically all a load of old bull!!