We have talked before about all small businesses should have their own Web sites. A new service being offered by MerchanCircle, which is launching today (June 5, 2006), makes it a whole lot easier.
Rafe Needleman reports on Cnet:
"MerchantCircle, officially launching today, is a site publishing tool aimed squarely at these very small businesses. The site has two things going for it. First, 14 million small businesses are already programmed onto the site, waiting for their owners to "claim" them and grow them into more robust micro-sites. If a business owner wants to get his or her shop online, and the site's barebones page is already set up, there may be no quicker way to establish an online presence.
"Second, the service is designed to make sure that search engines and mapping services find the pages on it. While potential customers of the businesses represented on the site can go to MerchantCircle.com directly, the system's CEO, Ben Smith, realizes that most people find businesses on Google, so he's built his system to create pages that Google (and other search engines) will find and rank highly. In this regard MerchantCircle is a lot like CitySearch, whose local business listings frequently show up at the top of Google search results. MerchantCircle, however, is targeted at smaller communities where online expertise is not common -- in other words, the team won't be marketing to the Bay Area, Seattle, or New York."
I think this looks like a good way to enter the online business world for those that haven't done it before. You could start with its free service and go on to its low $29.94 a month offering which includes one paid ad a month on large search engines like Google (GOOG) or Yahoo (YHOO).
Unless you know a lot about paid online advertising management, this is what gives the program its value. If you don't have a Web presence, I would use this ASAP to get your local online campaign going.
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