This is important for businesses who cannot hope to compete against the marketing muscle of big players in their niche. These ‘big boys’ have the resources to leverage any and all tactics to come up trumps on SERPs, while small businesses usually walk a tightrope between their SEO budget and SEO strategy. Many times, it is the budget that wins hands down.
For these businesses, a local business listing is like a gift that keeps giving. Unfortunately, people (read internet marketers) see these listings as just another SEO tactic that needs to be implemented; but it’s time we change the way we look at local business listings. They are not an important part of local SEO; they by and large are THE lifeline of a solid SEO strategy.
Before we get deep into the workings of local business listings, it is important to see them through the prism of local SEO.
If you want local customers to find your business, huge helpings of local SEO are a must. Local SEO is for everybody. You could be a local restaurant, dentist, plumber, electrician, mom and pop store, web design firm, law firm, home based business or something else. If you have a physical address at a particular location and you want people to go there, local SEO acts like a “transport” that gets people to this location.
So you are a tattoo store owner in the SF Bay Area….lots of competition….don’t fret…with local SEO you can own your geographical niche.
A mom and pop store in Anaheim, CA….. Can’t attract enough customers… Local SEO will help you attract more customers than Disneyland… just kidding…. but it will work.
A rock band in New York….. the locals will queue up to hire you for “gigs”… courtesy local SEO (provided you are actually good)
Local SEO takes customers closer to your brand. Remember the six degrees of separation? Well those degrees all but disappear with local SEO.
The search for ‘burger places in Manhattan’ yields the following results (when I wrote this piece, results may be different now, but I trust Shake Shack’s ability to stay at the top of SERPs):
You get those directions and you can’t miss Shake Shack for the world, yes, even if you are really bad at following directions.
When it comes to a local business nobody really wants to know who’s running the place; they want to know its operation times, the reviews it’s received, price and any other relevant info to make sure they’ve hit upon the right local business for their needs.
I am sure this has piqued your interest in business listings. Great! Now we can begin exploring this facet of Local SEO in earnest.
The phrase ‘local business listing’ is self-explanatory. It is your business’s listing on a range of online directories that contains every bit of information relevant for your business.
Through the course of a consumer’s search for locally available products and services, if a search engine finds your listing appropriate, it will be displayed on SERPs showing the physical location of your business on a map along with other critical information that will help this consumer get in touch with your business such as website URL, information about products and/or services, phone number etc.
Google wants to make search results even more relevant and wants to satisfy the requirements of users who want to find and compare local businesses and their services offerings from standard SERPs. The data on your business listings tells Google whether your business, its offerings and its location is in sync with the users’ search query. If it is, the listing will be displayed on SERPs showing the physical location of your business on a map accompanied by all relevant business information.
Who decides whether your business listing is the first thing that a user sees when they get results for their search query? Google Algorithm of course, but it’s the quantity and quality of your local business listing that determine, in large part, whether your local listing is top of the heap or bottom of the barrel.
Irrespective of the fact whether you are a local business or a multinational corporation that wants a local footprint, in order to rank on Google’s local search results, you need to maximize the use of local listing.
But for this to happen, you must know how Google Business Listings work. No don’t go elsewhere to look for an answer, just read on.
For most businesses, the journey towards high ranking on local search results begins with Google, to put it more specifically, Google Places and Google+. They tell Google about their business, for example if you are running a pizza place, you’ll tell Google about your business, the kind of pizzas you offer, location of your restaurant, hours of operation, post pictures and offer any and every information to help the search engine get a better idea about your business.
Yellow Pages Karachi CompaniesBut, there’s a surprise in store for you. Even before you start entering business information, you’ll find Google is already aware about your business. It’s not magic.
The truth is, Google is not just getting information straight from the horse’s mouth, which is the business owner; it is also finding business information from business data aggregator sites such as Infogroup, Neustar and Acxiom (US); The Local Data Company, Market Location and 118 information (UK) and others. Google will either buy or lease data from these companies and this goes into a massive server cluster.
Google can also pull data from various citation sources including industry specific sites, business directories, internet yellow pages, government entities/institutions (local, state and federal), etc.
Google is pulling data from everywhere across the web, if your business information is incomplete or erroneous on the sites that Google trusts, there is a chance that this could lead to misleading information coming up in the search results. You must make sure that its only correct business data that is pulled into the Google index.
A mention of your business name, address, phone number etc. on an online source like Yelp, Ask Local Pages etc. is called a citation. The idea is to gather as many citations as you can to boost your business’s visibility on local SERPs. Google indexes all this data; the more citations you get, the more chances of your business being listed at the top.
Another thing – The next time you get a call where the caller says he/she is calling from Google don’t hang up. There is a chance these are Google’s human reviewers verifying your business’s information with the information they’ve found online. This is Google’s way of validating information and improving local search quality.
David Mihm the Director of Local Search Strategy of Moz has come up with a revealing infographic that gives a visual overview of the complex local search ecosystem.
David Mihm the Director of Local Search Strategy of Moz has come up with a revealing infographic that gives a visual overview of the complex local search ecosystem.
While this ecosystem is complex, you don’t have to worry. The brains at Google are taking care of it and they are doing a pretty good job. You just focus on listing your business on prominent online directories and yellow pages.
Here’s a re-plug of an old article on Yext about the Most Important Business Directories for Local SEO. It’s a huge list but your business needs to be on this list to get Google’s attention.
It’s Affordable: It brings down yourspending on SEO services. Most local directories are free, so what you are essentially paying for is the talent and time of the SEOs.
Protect Your Business Identity: Internet offers miscreants the kind of anonymity that allows them to wreak havoc with your business. It is very simple for somebody to pretend to be your business on the internet. A customer might think he is contacting your business, but will actually be getting in touch with someone else. Claiming your local business listing allows you take control of your business address, content, products & services and a whole lot more.
Prominent Placement in SERPs: Local business listings can drive rankings northwards. At the end of the day, SEO is all about creating valuable backlinks to your websites. By listing your business in high authority citation sources, you are also creating the ideal links juice to rank better on SERPs and at the same time improving your search authority.
Enhanced Reputation: Plenty of factors go into the making of your online reputation, this includes business listings. The more information you add on your listings, the more it helps your reputation. Adding rich content like photos and videos will do wonders for your reputation because it gives more information about your business, which jacks up its credibility. On the other hand, inaccurate brand listings mean people canlose trust in your brand.
Seamless Integration With other Online Marketing Efforts: Internet marketing is all about synergy. All online marketing activities need to blend smoothly with one another to deliver the results you are looking for. Everything is connected. So local SEO cannot exist in isolation and this is true for business listings as well. Both are linked at many different levels to the business’s other online marketing efforts.
Business Listings are Mobile Friendly: Business listings are crucial to mobile SEO efforts. You can find two great reads on the subjecthereandhere.
Enables your Business to Show Up on Google Maps: Put your business on the map figuratively and literally. This is one of the best ways for letting people know where your business is located and getting customers to your store.