How to Create the Perfect Business Listing
By Neil Patel
Local search visibility helps drive traffic, customers, and revenue. There are several ways you can improve local visibility.
The first is to ensure your business listings are included on major listing sites like Google, Yelp, and Yahoo.
The Importance of Business Listings
How often do you see a business listing pop up on Google with minimal information, no images, and few reviews? Did you trust that business enough to check out their website or get in touch with them?
Probably not.
Business listings give local businesses visibility and boost their online presence. A business listing with up-to-date information, reviews, and images attracts local users and helps convert them into paying customers.
The best part? It’s free and doesn’t require any special technical skills.
Which Channels Should My Business Be Listed On?
You’ve probably noticed there are dozens of platforms that offer business listings. Let’s look at a few of the most popular sites and explain why they are important.
- Google My Business: Google is the number one search engine in the world, commanding more than 88 percent of the global search market. If you’re going to create a business listing, this is the place to start.
- Bing Places: While Bing has only about 6 percent of the global search market, it still may be worth setting up your business listing there. After all, that’s 6 percent of billions of searches.
- Yelp: Yelp is probably the best-known business review site in the U.S. Businesses with high Yelp ratings and lots of reviews grow their revenue faster. In fact, 42 percent of people who visit Yelp make a purchase that same day.
- NextDoor: Nextdoor allows businesses to target customers with hyperlocal marketing. Businesses register for listings that are visible in their neighborhoods. According to their site, a quarter of U.S. homes use NextdDoor.
- Yahoo Localworks: Bing actually powers Yahoo searches. You’re getting the same traffic from Bing. Although Yahoo only grabbed about 2 percent of the search market, it’s still 2 percent of a whole lot of traffic.
Keep in mind these are just the most prominent listing sites. Other sites to consider include Foursquare, HotFrog, eLocal, and SuperPages.
The key is finding the business listing sites your customers are likely to use and making sure those listings are complete and up-to-date.
With so many business listing sites, how do you keep up? There’s no way you can cover all the listing sites on your own without spreading yourself too thin.
There are two ways to handle that:
- List your business only on the sites that make the most sense for your business. Choose the sites, such as Google and Yelp, that give you the most visibility. Put your business on a few hyper-local sites, such as Nextdoor, as well.
- Use an SEO tool, like Ubersuggest, to help you optimize your information for SEO and then distribute it to multiple listing sites at once.
How to Set Up Your Business Profile
Every site has a slightly different process for claiming and setting …read more
Source:: Kiss Metrics Blog