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.
But, 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.
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.
Yellow Pages Karachi CompaniesBecause a lot of people search for products online: According to a multichannel survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), more than 80% of respondents said they conduct online research on products before buying them. Wouldn’t you like your business to turn up in their search? That’s why business listings.
Better Deliverables: Local SEO exposes your business to people who have immediate need of your products and services. This immediacy leads to better conversions, sales and profits.
Local Listings Beats Organic Listings in Prominence:Local business listings are displayed firston SERPs followed by organic results. This in itself is huge advantage for businesses.
One of the Easiest Way towards Local Visibility and Business Profitability: Finally, do it because it’s easy. Do it right and you get disproportionate results to the amount of time you spend in creating these business listings. And we are talking positive results here.
Before you begin creating a business listing, you will need to find the right citation sites. How do you go about doing this? No, this activity won’t ask you to invest a lot of time and effort into the proceedings, far from it actually.
Let me first clarify this isn’t a plug for Yext or Moz Local; I just think they are two great services that are simplifying the process of building listings.
Yext: Yext answers a problem that most people have with business listings. If all directories need similar information, why is it necessary to submit to each one of them separately? Good question, Yext thinks so too and offers you services that allow you to submit business information to more than 50 directories at the same time. These include all the big guns out there and the great benefit of Yext is that submissions happen immediately and you can even update information quickly. Just make the update once and see it reflected across all your listings.
Yext: Yext answers a problem that most people have with business listings. If all directories need similar information, why is it necessary to submit to each one of them separately? Good question, Yext thinks so too and offers you services that allow you to submit business information to more than 50 directories at the same time. These include all the big guns out there and the great benefit of Yext is that submissions happen immediately and you can even update information quickly. Just make the update once and see it reflected across all your listings.
Moz Local: With this service, you can submit or update business listings to the biggest data aggregators, Foursquare and 3 business directories. The biggest benefit of Moz Local is that you can run a listing audit to check where you have listings, where you don’t, their completeness, incompleteness and duplication.
Other services along the same lines include BrightLocal, Whitespark and Universal Business Listing (UBL). Yes, I know what you are thinking, why Moz Local and Yext, why not the other three? You are right, compare the various services on offer, and pick the one that suits you best.
Mix the old methods with the new. You’ve already tried the newer methods for finding sources for citation, so how about going back to the good old days of searching for services on Google.
Enter phrases like ‘ local business listings sites’, ‘competitors names and/or address’, ‘a business name, phone, address or anything else that you believe will help you zero in on names of local business directories.
If you have searched for local business listing sites, SERPs will display a list of listing directories; if you have searched for business names or phone numbers, SERPs will display business names which are listed on local business directories.
Say you are a Burger joint in New York, trying to looking for the right citation sources. Who’s your competitor? Burger King is one of them. So enter ‘Burger King, New York’ in Google to find the right listings.
All you need to do is scroll through at least 10-20 pages to get a list of sites that you can add to your citation database.
Something else you can do is take the help of one of the most famous Google operators in the “history of the search engine” – ‘RELATED’. Use this operator before the name of a listing directory and it will show you a list of directories similar to the one that you have entered.
By now you must have found tons of sites for business listing, but if that’s not enough, here are a few links that will complete the job for you: