When building an online presence for a local business, one of the first places to start is to create local listings. The simple reality is that there are tons of free local listing websites that consumers frequent quite often. Think about it, Google has local listings, Yelp gets an average of 138 million unique visits per month, and YP.com seems to show up in just about every search for a local business we do. So, without taking advantage of the free local directory listings available to you, you’ll be missing out on a pretty large portion of your target market. However, you don’t want to just slap a local listing together. Here are a few tips to make sure that yours stands out!
Accurately Display All Possible Information
When creating local business listings for your business, it’s important to remember that accuracy is key here. Think of your listings online as a legitimacy report. Search engines crawl and compare the data in these listings to learn more about your business. If your business name is spelled differently in some listings than it is in another, or you’ve got multiple phone lines and use more than one of them in listings, you’ll have discrepancies in the data. These discrepancies could cause search engines to trust your business less; ultimately leading to poor placement.
It’s also important to remember that it’s best to include all information possible. If the listing website allows you to upload a logo, do it! If they give you a place to insert a coupon, come up with one to put in that place. The more information you have available in your local listing, the better. Including as much as possible will give search engines more and more keywords to show your business for!
Write A Quality Business Description
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come across business listings with one line descriptions. Think about it, your company offers a great service or product. Is it really possible to explain why your company’s service or product is better than the competition in one sentence? In most cases, the answer is “no”! Try to give your potential customers all the information they need to know about your product or service in your business description.
Aside from helping potential customers get a feel for what you offer. Quality business descriptions also help your listing to rank well in search engines. As I’ve mentioned before, the more data search engines have available about your business, the more reasons they have to show your listing for several keywords!
Pictures Say A Thousand Words
Most local listing websites give you the ability to add pictures. Some may allow you to add 1 picture, some may allow you to add 10. No matter how many pictures you can add, it’s best to try and fill all slots. This will give your listing more color, ultimately making it more appealing to the potential customers that happen across your page. Also, search engines have learned that users tend to enjoy pages with lots of color and pictures than they do pages with just text. So, adding pictures will help you rank better as well.
Final Thoughts
Local listings do so much for businesses. They not only give customers another way to find you, if done properly, they can help improve the overall visibility of your website in search. So what are you waiting for? Start creating quality local listings today! You can even start right here at our directory!
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