5 Ways to Improve Your Local Listing
As of late, there are around 29.6 million small businesses in the country.
Around 63 percent of consumers and small business owners make use of the Internet to gather information about local business.
Among that 63 percent, 82 percent make use of search engines in order to get hold of information. So… it is extremely crucial that small businesses have a strong online presence.
Because local businesses cater to consumers within a certain place, their websites should be optimized for local search.
Although there are limitless ways to do this, here are a few suggestions.
1. Claim Your Profile. This is the first and foremost thing that a local business must do. Claiming listings does not have to be difficult. Google Places, Bing Local and Yahoo Local may require individuals to go through a number of verification steps. This will include a phone call or a post card to make sure that you really do hold that address.
2. Get Reviewed. Currently, Google has stopped displaying reviews from third party review sites like Yelp from their local search results. But that does not mean you no longer have to think about getting reviews from consumers. You still do but this time you need your customers to review you on Google. So the next time you’re handing over a customer’s receipt, you might want to express how much you’d appreciate a review from him or her.
3. Accept Negative Reviews. No business is perfect. As much as you might want to please everyone, this might prove to be impossible. But don’t hide under the covers when you finally get those dreaded reviews. Instead, respond directly and promptly to that review and try to correct the matter or make sure that the error does not happen again. Besides, getting nothing but good reviews might make your business seem questionable too.
4. Upload Pictures. This tip may sound very basic but your local listing will look more professional and legitimate with pictures. You don’t have to get a professional to snap a few pictures of your store. As long as the pictures are decent and represent your business, then everything should be fine.
5. Include Your Contact Information and Website Link. The point of having local listings is so that consumers can get hold of local businesses a lot easier. But if you do not include your business’s contact information, then you’re defeating the entire purpose of having a local listing to begin with because your consumers won’t know how to reach your business anyway.
Chris Marentis is the founder and CEO of Surefire Social, the world’s leading local Internet marketing platform and services company in North America. Surefire Social helps businesses optimize local search and discovery to generate sales. Marentis has been prophetic in identifying the best ways to leverage and harness breakthrough technologies, platforms and new media to drive sales growth for companies ranging from startups to billion-dollar organizations.
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There is one more thing that I think should have been mentioned: making use of the offers section of Google Places to give local searchers a reason to interact with the business online and create some type of emotional response to the search result.
Mark Upshaw recently posted: Best 3D Blu Ray Movies List updated Wed Aug 31 2011 3:01 am CDT
@Mark: Good point. Engagement and a good call to action will work well.
Chris Marentis recently posted: Increasing Sales Conversions
Chris — #3 can't be stated strongly enough. It sure does look strange when every review is 5 stars.
Absolutely agree on #3, but I'm having troubles explaining the value of it to one of my clients. To all my reasons he says that he needs to build a positive brand for his local business and can't afford any negative comments. Should I give up? How do you reason?
Alexander Zagoumenov recently posted: Off-page SEO factors affecting rankings