If you’re looking for local business listing management strategies for small business owners like yourself, then you’ve come to the right place! We are going to take a deep dive into understanding the impact of directory listings. Then we will give you detailed information about the steps needed to effectively manage your local online presence using them.
The Role of Directory Listings in Local Search Rankings
Directory listings significantly improve your business’s visibility and local search rankings.
You must make sure your directory listings contain accurate information across the board. That includes using a matching name, address, and phone number. Any information you put on one directory must match what you put on all the others.
Your local business directory listings should also contain relevant keywords and persuasive descriptions if you want to increase your chances of attracting potential customers’ attention in local search rankings.
The Importance of a Strong Online Presence for Small Businesses
Having a strong online presence helps build brand authority, reputation, trust, and credibility. That includes everything you publish online. Your website, social media pages, business directories, ad campaigns — everything — must be cohesive, positive, and professional. If you do these things, it will go a long way towards establishing credibility and trust with your target audience.
Understanding the Impact of Directory Listings
In case you don’t know, the impact of using directory listings as part of your local SEO strategy is huge! Let’s look at that for a minute.
How Directory Listings Influence Local Search Visibility
Business directory listings will give your home services business increased visibility and brand exposure. It will also improve your search engine rankings. And the more brand exposure you get, the more it will enhance your brand’s credibility and trust.
All of this will give you more targeted marketing opportunities. Not to mention the priceless data and analytics it will provide. And lastly, business directories give your audience valuable at-a-glance information about your business.
Why It’s So Important to Be Consistent and Accurate with Your Business Information Across All Directories
The information you publish on all your business directory listings must match on each one. That includes your name, address, phone number, your hours, etc. It’s true that this is extremely important for your search engine rankings. But it’s just as important that it matches for your customers. If it doesn’t, it will only confuse them. And this takes away from your brand’s credibility and trust.
Statistics on the Impact Directory Listings Have on Your Business
Statistics don’t lie. See for yourself!
- 92% of searchers choose a business that is on the first page of their local search results. That is a huge number! And it can’t be ignored! If you want to compete, your business needs to be on the first page of the local search results. The higher, the better.
- 60% of searchers will contact a business directly from the local search results (click-to-call option, etc.).
- Google’s “Think with Google 2022 Retail Marketing Guide” states that the search term “open now near me” has skyrocketed 400%. And that was in 2022. It’s probably much higher now.
- 46% of Google searches have local intent.
- 97% of consumers generally find out about a local company online.
- 88% of consumers who do a local search on a digital device visit or call a business they found there within 24 hours of that search.
Now, let’s look at these local business listings management strategies for small business owners.
Steps Needed to Localize Your Online Presence Through Managing Directory Listings
Here are some of the steps you will need to get your business’s local presence where it needs to be.
Claim and Verify Business Listings
You will need to identify as many relevant directories as possible for your business. Then you will need to claim and verify your business on all the major directories.
Yep, this is a lot of work! But don’t worry. We are going to show you where and how to automate this process in a moment. So keep reading.
Ensure Consistency in Business Information (IMPORTANT)
We can’t stress just how important this is. That’s why we keep repeating it. All the information on every business directory listing you publish must match exactly! That means your business name, address, phone number (NAP), your hours, and any other content you’ve posted.
You will need to check every directory you are currently on and look for any address and information discrepancies and inaccuracies and fix them!
This is important because the search engines use this information to determine your local rankings and relevancy. So if the information doesn’t match, your rankings could be affected, maybe even significantly affected, depending on how big the discrepancies are. This is because the search engines won’t know which directories are yours and which ones aren’t.
If that wasn’t enough, your business directory information also needs to match so as not to confuse consumers. For example, if your business hours say one thing on one directory and another thing on another directory, you are not only going to confuse people, but you are also going to infuriate them as well.
If someone visits your establishment based on what you have posted on your business directory, and you are closed when they show up, they are not going to be happy. This will damage your credibility and cost you trust. Not to mention, you will probably lose a sale as well.
Optimize Business Descriptions for Local SEO
You should definitely optimize your business directory descriptions. This will help your SEO. This is a step many business owners skip. They are in such a hurry to just get it done and published that they don’t take the time to do this. But they should! Doing so will give you an advantage because after this, your business directory listings will be perfect…right?
Your descriptions should include detailed and relevant information about your products and services. And any other information that would be helpful to your visitors. Think of your directory listing like an online business card but with even more information. It is an at-a-glance view of your business information. This makes it easier for people to see what you’re all about.
Utilize Additional Features of Directory Listings
This is another step many businesses skip. You should take the time to add photos of your business, products, services, etc. The same goes for adding videos. And don’t stop there. Post any other multimedia content you think might be of interest. All of this will enhance your listings.
You also want to encourage your customers to leave reviews of your business on your directory listings. Provide them with links to your main directories. This will serve as a reminder to give you a review. It will also make it easy for them to do. If it’s too hard or takes too long, they won’t bother.
Leverage Industry-Specific Directories
Identify and prioritize industry-specific directories. This will give you an SEO boost due to their relevancy. It will also help you highlight unique offerings to a target audience. And this will help drive traffic and boost sales.
Monitor and Update Directory Listings
It’s important to establish a regular schedule for monitoring and updating your business directory listings. This will keep your listings “fresh” (which is important to the search engines). It will also show consumers that you are actively engaged in your business.
Yes, this is another time-consuming task. Therefore, it’s easier if you utilize tools and services to streamline the management of your directory listings. More about this in a moment.
Analyze the Impact on Local Search Rankings
As always, if you are not collecting and analyzing your data, you are wasting time and money. Have systems in place to track improvements in visibility and search rankings. Then adjust your strategies based on those analytics and the performance data.
You guessed it! This is another very time-consuming task. But as promised, we are about to tell you how you can automate these tasks. We’re almost there. So keep reading.
Key Takeaways…
We looked at why a strong local online presence is so important, the role directory listings play in local search, and the impact they have on your business. We also outlined the steps you can follow to get the most out of your business directory listings.
It’s extremely important for you to prioritize and actively manage your directory listings. And you can do that with online tools and software like Surefire Local.
What Is Surefire Local?
Surefire Local is an all-in-one marketing platform that takes all of your most time-consuming marketing tasks and consolidates them on a single dashboard. We are all about helping small businesses like yours establish their online presence. This is done by creating local signals across platforms and profiles that make it easier for new customers to find you.
How Surefire Local Can Help You Automate Everything (including your business directory listings)
Here are just a few of the things you can do with it.
- Business Directory Management. Claim, edit, and publish new content like photos or a special offer for your business. And you can do this across 80+ online directory listing platforms.
- Content Marketing. Use our tool to create, manage, and publish locally targeted and relevant content on your blog, Google Business Profile, business directories, and social media profiles.
- Analytics and Reporting. Gives you unprecedented transparency into your campaign performance. It will also show you how much revenue your marketing dollars are generating. This is done using AI-generated recommendations on specific actions you can take to see improvements.
- Education Resources. Surefire Local gives you access to loads of webinars and blogs that are designed to help small businesses learn about all things local online marketing.
And so much more! You are going to want to check it out!
What’s Next?
Attend a Surefire Local Demo Today!
You have to see it to believe it. And once you do, you won’t want to go another minute without it. Guaranteed!
We hope you’ve enjoyed this article about local business listings management strategies for small business owners. If you have any questions or want more information, please don’t hesitate to reach out.