Do you know where your Google My Business listing stands in the local search?
How do you fare with other Google My Business local listings?
You need to have an answer to the above questions, anytime and any day of the week. If you have an answer, it means that you are closely tracking your local rankings and your local listing and are aware of your numbers and positions in terms of local SEO.
Having knowledge of your local listing score as well as of your competitors is crucial to winning the local search game especially with Google.
What is a Local Listing ?
Local business listings are a necessity for any company that wants to be found on the web. These online portfolios provide information about your organization including: name, address, phone number and hours of operation (NAP).
The NAP Audits are a great way to make sure you are citing all of your sources correctly and it’s important for citation consistency across the web.
Most platforms provide this service for free but others may require payment; however either way users must manually add their own information or claim their place in order to use it.
What is a Local Listing Score?
The power of a high listing score can’t be understated.
Local business listings are another way to increase your reach online and make it easier for clients, prospects, or customers to find you. When you have a high listing score on Google Maps, it not only helps rank your local listings up well with GMB but also adds credibility to your business.
Having accurate content that is found when someone searches “your type of service” would be helpful in attracting more people into conversion rate customers.
Simply put: if your local listing score isn’t great, it means there is more work needed to improve it!
For instance, if we try to search for Menchie’s frozen yogurt, you’ll see that the results show their business profile appearing in various local listing sites.
To make your local listing score high, it’s important that you keep your business information as detailed, correct and updated as possible so that when customers will view your business profile on any of those sites, they will see consistent information. Many users rely on the information they find online so the correctness and accuracy of your information is a must.
Some of the most popular directories where you can find business listings are Yelp, Manta, Yellow Pages, Facebook, and Yahoo Local. Google My Business consolidates all of your business’s information, so it is imperative that you keep an eye on the data accuracy!
Importance of Using Local Listings
With all your local SEO strategies to boost your ranking in the search results, you may be curious to know if you still need to be included in local listings. A quick answer is yes!
You may not be aware but your company may have already been included in many of those directories across the internet.
In fact if you try to search for your business, you may end up seeing multiple citations in listing sites. And this is good news for your business as long as those citations are correct 🙂
Now that you know about the many great benefits of local directory sites, it’s time to take advantage and incorporate them in your company’s SEO strategy. We’ve been talking a lot recently on our blog about how consistency across multiple citation is one of GMB’s top ranking factors. Check out our recent article where we delve into more detail!
As you know, the quality of local SEO traffic is paramount to how relevant a business will be on Google Maps.
If your GMB listing has high-quality local traffic it can result in more engagement signals for your site which ultimately improves metrics that are important when competing against other businesses locally.
How to Check your Local Business Listing Score
Managing an accurate and consistent listing for your business online is a challenging task.
It requires attention to detail if you’re going to get it done manually across multiple directories.
Only a small percentage of businesses actually manage to create accurate and consistent online business listings and even if this not a rocket science, it does require attention to detail if you’re going to do the work yourself ^___^
We recommend getting help from professional companies like White Spark before taking any action so that we can get started with this process right!
4 Ways to Improve your Local Business Listing Scores
1. Ensure accurate information
A good SEO strategy involves ensuring that your business listing contains accurate information about your business so that when the business listings appear in the local search, your target customers will get the right information they need to make a decision or action.
When it comes to the accuracy of the information in your business listings, it goes beyond just your business name, address phone number (NAP). Accuracy also covers other details such as hours of operation, zip code, descriptions, categories, social media account (especially Facebook), certifications, photos, payment accepted and other attributes.
Since many people would refer to the business listings for information that they could use to contact you or visit your location, we can’t emphasize enough the importance of having a 100-percent accurate business name, address and phone number to the dot. Accuracy of information is a vital part of your local SEO campaign as it can improve your listing position and increase your online visibility.
2. Be credible and consistent
Before you begin creating your listings, it’s important to remember that Google and other search engines will try to match your information across different sources including directories, Facebook and other platforms. If your information is not consistent, it will decrease your credibility, which in turn could also affect your local rankings. So be consistent so that Google will see you as a credible business.
3. Respond to Reviews
Responding to reviews (across all your local listings ) will have a significant impact on the image of your business and your online visibility. If you receive a review, regardless if it is a positive or a negative review, you should respond to it in a timely manner. This tells your customers that you are reading their feedback and value what they say.
4. Get your business in front of potential customers
When you create business listings, think of where your customers will most likely look for you. Aside from using the search engines, they may visit industry-specific directories!
Those are the places where you could start creating your listing to help boost your business’ visibility in various local sites and not just on Google.
Manage and Monitor Your Local Listings
Do you know how to manage or monitor your listings? With many businesses competing to rank in search engines, the game isn’t just about the effectiveness of your SEO but also about having the knowledge of where your business stands compared with your competitors.
Listings management and monitoring can be an extremely time and you need to significantly reduce the processing time.
Now that you have created your business listings on the web, it is time to stay vigilant and monitor them for accuracy, completeness and relevance.
Download our Google My Business Audit Template here! You will find there a specific section which helps with audit/monitoring of local citations–make sure they are accurate, complete and relevant.
Final Thoughts
The number of citations a business collects, the accuracy of the data they feature, and the quality of their platforms can all impact rankings.
Citation errors are not a risk you should take. When someone looks up your business on the web, they want to find it in one place – yours! An accurate citation will lead them right there and allow for increased traffic from all angles: phone, website visits, footfalls.
But what if that’s nigh impossible with an incorrectly cited number or address? You’re giving customers who might have been interested in doing business with you bad directions – leading them to pay another visit somewhere else instead of at your doorsteps.
Happy Crush!
SEO Lover, my motto is Action Over Words.
