It has become common knowledge the news about recent changes in the online search engines and how important business local listings have become, but what does it mean for your business? If you browse to Google and type in any type of service or business followed by a city. This would look like this, “plumber in Birmingham” or “electrician in New York”. Your search results will no longer be just a list of websites. The local listings as well as a local map appear above the regular organic search results. Notice that it’s the same 7 or local listings on the front page that also appear highlighted on the map. That’s 2 links on the front page that these businesses do not pay for. Their customers and new clients can easily find them without costly online pay per click advertising or yellow pages advertising. I have nothing against paid ads for a business if these are tracked properly but one can not argue against what just a few extra free leads a week from the internet could do for a business.
Here are five tips that your business can use to help improve its chances of ranking in the local listings;
1. Ensure that the physical address of your business is on your website. Simply putting your address on your website can have a very positive effect. You also should have your business hours as well as a phone number all on the front page of your website. Make sure they are in text and not on a graphic image. Also be careful to list your hours of business, phone number, and address exactly the same way every time you put your business information somewhere online.
2. Insert images into your Google Local Listing. Recently you can also add a webcam feed. While a webcam certainly wouldn’t apply to all businesses it could work great for a pet shop or any other business that wanted to show it’s current stock to users online.
3. Get into social media. Twitter, Facebook and even YouTube have simply become too powerful to ignore. This is much important that boosting your rankings though. Odds are that your customers, like it or not, are talking about you online. Your business needs to be in the conversation. Social media is also a great way to keep old customers coming back and acquire new customers with special deals and coupons.
4. Positively gather reviews from your satisfied customers. Online reviews of your business now play an incredible role in your local online ranking. It’s important that the reviews be genuine. Never hire someone who promises to increase your reviews over night and certainly do not try to do it yourself.
5. Make sure that you have definitely claimed your google listing. One last thing you can do is if you haven’t done so already you need to claim your local listing in google places. This will not only help you do better online but it will protect your local listing from being hacked as well. Businesses used to be able to do this over the phone but no more. you will have to wait a few weeks for Google to send you a postcard through the mail. This certainly isn’t everything that can be done to help your business online but it’s a pretty good start.
To have our team of experts at Local Listings Company do all these for you and much more just contact us today and you will be very happy that you did.
