South Orange Village, view from South Orange Avenue

Local news sites are important to their communities for many reasons: providing news coverage of local government and schools that residents can’t find anywhere else; connecting residents with events and celebrations in town; and plugging residents in with charitable organizations and people in need in their community.

Local news sites are also vital to local businesses — and vice versa. Sites like Village Green provide news about who’s opening, who’s closing, what’s being developed, and special events. We also provide a platform for advertising that gets the word out about local businesses to a targeted market.

Now, Village Green is upping its offering for the business community and local shoppers: We’re launching a business directory powered by Bizyhood (see the “Directory” tab on our home page).

At Village Green, we are really excited about the Bizyhood-powered directory. There are nine hyperlocal sites throughout the region already using it and more in the pipeline. We’re seeing this as a way for retailers to get some measurable benefit out of online advertising — including improving your SEO (a fancy way of saying we’d like to help you be found online more easily) and controlling your online reputation.

We have three tiers of business listing that you can sign up for:

1. Starter (FREE) — this gives you the ability to have your business name, address, phone, website and logo in the directory. In addition, you get your own individual page on our website which is automatically coded for search engines to find it once you “claim” that page. You get to select a business category which is where your business will be listed (and another way users can find you via search). You will also be included in our promotion of “claimed” businesses once we roll this out officially. This tier is FREE.

2.  Plus ($15/month) — This tier gives you everything in Starter, and also gives you the ability to promote up to three events and promotions each month, which will show up on your directory page and also be promoted on the site. In addition, you get an Image gallery to add a more visual feel to your page, and you get to choose up to three categories for your business, making you even easier to find. You also get to add up to five “tags” that describe your business, which will also be used for search purposes. This tier is just $15/month.

3. Pro ($50/month) — This tier gives you everything in Plus, except now you have unlimited Events and Promotions. You also get premium placement in the directory and in search results. Most important, we will make sure that your Name, Address and Phone information is consistent across all major Internet directories — not just Village Green. This is a major rating factor for SEO and a huge headache for small business owners. We’d like to take that headache off your hands and manage it for you. This tier is $50/month.

All three tiers come with a very easy to use self-service dashboard that works via web and mobile. You will need just minutes to setup and manage your profile. There is no time commitment on the tiers – you can cancel at any time.

Ready to start? Simply visit here, search your business and click the “Claim it now” link on the page. Our new service is powered by our partner Bizyhood – they will process your signup and help manage your listing.

(Note: See any out-of-date listings in our directory? No worries; we’re expecting that as we continue to clean and perfect the data. Just let us know at villagegreennj@gmail.com and we’ll fix it.)

We will also be launching a new search engine on our site which will promote businesses in the directory and specifically those that are most engaging — just like the major search engines. Your efforts here locally on Village Green will have benefits in the local community as well as positive impacts with Google and Bing. And we have even more goodies to offer you later this year to help you engage with your customers and community! This is just the start of something big.

If you have any questions about the directory, contact Scott Barnett of Bizyhood directly at scott@bizyhood.com.