Online interactivity has become more important amongst local small businesses. With more business to choose from and even more competition between them all, having good reviews online can be excellent for business.

Local online reviews can create positive impressions about your business and influence actions for potential customers. Here is what you need to know to form a proactive strategy for getting more online reviews.

Simply having business reviews on the search engines or interactive directories like Yelp, InsiderPages, Citysearch, Yellowbot, Openlist, Kudzu, CityVoter, JudysBook, SuperPages, Dex Knows, Yellow Book, and Yellow Pages boosts your local search ranking in Yahoo and Google.

Interactive directories like Yelp allow you to join the online conversation about your business—you can address complaints publicly (and directly) and thank customers privately through the Yelp interface. Yelp is growing faster than the internet yellow pages (IYP’s) and has become the industry model.