To the small business owner who wants his/her website to be readily found for local searches but not for national or international, getting your business set up correctly with the local search engines is the key and is commonly more cost-effective than hiring a search engine optimization pro to optimize your web site. The major search engines, Google, Yahoo and Bing, as well as Yelp and Citysearch have local versions which must be set up to make this work. We can handle this task for you.

In addition to setting up new businesses we can help established businesses get their listings corrected. It's not uncommon for a business to move several times over the years. These moves which can result in confusion with your business location can be corrected, although it does take time and a bit of grit to untwine the mess. This is another service that is offered by dotted i. There are purportedly around 100+ local search engines in the list, not all equallty important. What follows is a subset or the more well-know or critical ones:

• Google Places (formerly Google Local) - intertwined with Google Plus (+) and Google Maps
• Yahoo Local (paid service now mnaged through Yext.com
• Bing Local
• Citysearch / Citygrid
• Nokia
• Yelp
• Foursquare
• Hotfrog
• Superpages
• InfoUSA
• Yelp

Many of the services on the list offer both FREE and paid versions. What's most important, regardless which services you are subscribed to and whether you opt for an enhanced paid listing or not, is getting your basic business information in sync across the board as this improves your local search visibility. The basic info is commonly referred to as NAP which refers to your name (business name), address (business street address) and phone (business).

This may seem incidental, but with various sources which feed others, it can be quite complicated. If you change your business name or perhaps your business contact information or address this adds to the complexity. For example, InfoUSA feeds bits of data to several local search services. Others get feeds from Dun & Bradstreet or perhaps the secretary of state where you registered your business.