Local Business Listings Can Kick Your Online Presence Into High Gear
- Having a local telephone number matching up with your city of location. This should not be a toll-free number, call tracking number or shared a phone number.
- Having a DBA or business name.
- Having a physical street address. This should not be a virtual office, shared the address or PO box.
- Work on making face to face contact with customers, where business is not conducted virtually.
- Be an active participant, write a review on a business.
When you meet all of the criteria listed, business listings by city, you will be ready to move onto the next phase. A lot of the indexes will require that you verify every listing created. Knowing what to expect will help you for the claiming process.
Important Attributes
In order for the listing to be successful, you need to pay close attention to the listing attributes like categories, social profiles, reviews, photos and name, address and phone number.
Category Importance
When you add categories to the business listings, it may seem a bit trivial. However, this is one of the more important attributes to a business listing.
Claiming Your Listings
Knowing what to expect and how you can best claim your business online is next. The business verification can happen with a post card, email, or phone call.
Local Search Citations
The local citations are mentions of the business name, location on the other sites and websites. The listings will send qualified signals out to Google of your real business, thus helping you to rank better.
Getting Citations
There are business listing platforms that will fuel the search engines, including Acxiom, Infogroup, Factual, and Neustar Localeze.
Business Local, Citations by City
Look for listings of the best places where local businesses can gather citations, either vertical or based upon your industry.
Issues With Duplicate Listings
A range of negative outcomes can come from the presence of duplicates, which will detract from local businesses and their ability to rank highly and win customers.
Cleaning Duplicates
There is plenty to do whenever your business switches locations, however when you forget local search, the customers might not find your latest address.
Local Search Ecosystem
Have you found your business information to be wrong in the listings with Bing Local or Google Business? try to learn where they gathered their data from so that you can ensure it is right.
