Local Business Listings
One of the best ways to make your business visible to as many people on the web as possible is to make sure that your business can be found no matter how the user accesses information. With our Local Business Listing and Citation services, you can rest easy knowing that your business will have a presence no matter where you search. Our local business marketing professionals will be constantly updating, and adding business listings that will help collect new customers that are trying to find your services.
WHY Local Business Listings is IMPORTANT?
Having an established, unified presence throughout many local business directories is vital in two different ways. By being on a vast array of different directories, you can make sure that the local customers that are looking for an service like you offers will find you in any search or listing they may prefer. We do this by editing, and creating listings on an ever growing list of popular business listings. When we do this, we make sure that each and every listing has verified and up to date information, as well as completely fleshed out descriptions, images, and more. Having this unified web presence also benefits your local service in another way. By doing this, we gain another valuable resource in Citations.
What are Citations?
Citations are mentions of your business name, address, and phone number on another webpage. By ensuring that you are listed far and wide on the web with the same correct information, we have links and mentions of your business that directly link back to your local business website. This is key requirement because search engines such as Google put value not only in having your website linked and present in popular business listings, but also that these listings have the same information. This authority with google leads to higher search results for your business, bringing in more local traffic. With the Business Listing service you can ensure that your local business visible to your potentials local customers.
Business Listing Verification
Hundreds of Internet directories act as a verification sources (by providing citations) for business data on Google, Yahoo! and Bing. When these search engines can match specific business data from a webpage or business directory to the info they have on file, this serves to verify the information, which in turn makes your data more authoritative. That’s why it’s so important for your business to have consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone) information across search engines and directories.
How To Enhance Your Business Listing
Although your NAP information is the most important in terms of consistency, many online directories (as well as Google+ Local) allow you to include a wide variety of information about your business. You can often enhance your listings with a description, store hours, payment types accepted, products, services, images, videos and even a logo. Generally, you can also select one or more categories under which your business might fall.
These fields give search engines a better understanding of your business. Understanding the format types and optimization opportunities for each individual directory is key to your brand’s performance in local search.
How To Get Top SERP Placement?
Search engines like google rank the businesses they know more about in their top search listings. Their aim is to deliver a good user experience, and to do that, they constantly crawl for other sources of business information on the Web to verify your data. Gathering your local business data while keeping this data updated and current is therefore critical to high rankings.
In addition to providing search engines with a way to validate local business data, directories often link back to the business’ website. This natural, trusted backlink provides a local and relevant link that enhances your local SEO results in the SERPs.
Updated Information & Data Consistency
Consumers will find your local business first when all of your business data is updated, optimized and linked naturally on the Web. Search engines and directories rely on updated optimized local business data.
Local listing management, or business listing management, starts and ends with your providing:
- A consistent data source for ALL of your data feeds
- Providing properly formatted and optimized feeds for each individual directory based on their specific and accepted fields.
This is time-consuming, & detailed work. Need Help? Contact Us!
Managing An Enterprise Level Local Search Presence
Below is a priority list for a systematic approach to managing an enterprise local search presence:
- Claim each business location and locally optimize for major search engines Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Include a local landing page URL when appropriate.
- Optimize and submit to one or more of the big three data aggregators (LocalEze, Infogroup and Acxiom). This is done through paid agreements; make sure to include a local landing page URL for in-car GPS, mobile apps, Apple maps, niche directories and Yellow Pages. This provides data validation for Google, Yahoo! and Bing.
- Submit to Facebook, Foursquare, Superpages, and Yellowpages (free) and include your local landing page URL. Social citations are generated from an active presence on the networks and may boost ranking in search engines.
- Target any smaller niche directories based on industries served and include a local landing page URL. These might include Angie’s List, Merchant Circle, Local.com or others.
Following a systematic approach will provide the in-house Local SEO marketer or agency with the best chance to optimize and manage a complete local search presence across the Web. It also allows each directory to understand the content a brand is communicating when each feed is optimized and reviewed by the stakeholder prior to submission.
In some cases, transparent, automated software may be required if you rely on scale and constant updating of optimized local business data for multiple locations.
Throw Caution To The Wind
One size does not fit all when it comes to Local Search. Local Search vendors vary significantly in their capabilities and quality of service. There’s a significant need for consumer education in this area.
Thousands of companies, large and small, are being under-served because they don’t understand all the detail work they should be requiring within their Local Search campaigns. There is a huge opportunity for vendors to step up and provide quality, in-depth, meaningful local search deliverable.
I know of several trusted local search vendors, and since I’m not associated with the three below, I’ll pass their information to you for further investigation if warranted.
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