In the fast-paced modern era that we’re currently living in, one of the most important things to keep in mind as a small business owner is that you need to create meaningful interactions with your audience sooner than anyone else can.
That is to say, the vast majority of people will discover your optometry practice for the first time via a search engine. Rather, they’ll discover someone for the first time via an engine like Google. If it’s you, you’ll have a chance to book an appointment, have them come in, and let your services speak for themselves. If it’s one of your competitors, they’ve likely found what they need – to the point where they’ll stop looking for alternatives.
That’s why having a strong online presence is crucial for small businesses. Yours needs to be the optometry practice that someone discovers first if you have any chance of actually converting them.
One of the most invaluable tools to help make that happen has to do with directory listings. There are countless directories out there on the Internet where your practice could be listed. There are location-specific ones, industry-specific ones – you name it, they’re out there.
Directories are a great way to build quality backlinks to your site online, which helps improve your search engine rankings while also building authority with your audience as well. Getting to the point where you can start using directory listings to your advantage, however, requires you to keep a few key things in mind.
Understanding the Impact of Directory Listings
To get a sense of how directory listings influence local search visibility, you first need to understand a bit more about how SEO works to begin with.
Search rankings are influenced by a lot of factors, but one of the biggest ones has to do with backlinks and domain authority. The more often your site is linked to by highly reputable domains, the more authoritative and trustworthy it is seen and the higher it will rank.
Directories are essentially a free backlink to a highly reputable domain. You don’t necessarily have to do anything to “earn it” – you can just add everything yourself and give your site an almost instant SEO boost.
When you do this, however, it’s always important to make sure that you’re including accurate, consistent business information across directories. Your address, phone number, and contact information should always be the same across all directories, for example. If it isn’t, you run the risk of causing confusion among prospects.
The reason all this is important is because not only are the majority of searches happening on Google those with local intent, but about 57% of those local searches come from a mobile device or tablet. Someone will be in their car and will search for “optometrist near me” and they’ll typically call whoever is ranked highest until they find what they’re looking for. Even though the Google algorithm has over 200 factors, and we’re certainly not privy to all of them, directory listings can go a long way towards making sure the number they call is yours.
Steps to Localize Your Online Presence Through Managing Directory Listings
Claim and Verify Business Listings
An essential first step towards using directory listings to increase your local visibility involves identifying relevant directories for your business and claiming as many of those profiles as possible. Google’s Business page is the most obvious one, but look for optometry-specific directories and even those that are focused on the precise geographic area you serve.
Claim and verify those business listings on all the major directories for the best results.
Ensure Consistency in Business Information
As you claim and start to build out these profiles, make sure you update and maintain consistent NAP information – that stands for “Name,” “Address,” and “Phone Number.”
Again, you don’t want to have one phone number on Directory A and a totally different one on Directory B. Not only will it cause confusion, but it will also make it seem like something suspicious is going on. If any discrepancies or inaccuracies exist across directories, try to address them as quickly as possible.
Optimize Business Descriptions for Local SEO
Another thing to keep in mind as you claim and start to build out these directories is that you should incorporate location-based keywords and local lingo in your descriptions wherever possible. Never overlook the opportunity to work in a local reference or two. At the very least, it lets people know that your description was written by a living, breathing human being.
You’ll also want to provide detailed and relevant information about the optometry services you offer. Directories are supposed to be helpful to people, after all.
Utilize Additional Features of Directory Listings
Make sure to add photos, videos, and other multimedia content to enhance your listings wherever you can. Even though many of these directories started out as basically just an online version of the phone book, they don’t have to stay that way. Photos, videos, and other types of multimedia content are naturally engaging, which can help grab someone’s attention.
Throughout your daily operations, you should also try to encourage your customers to leave reviews on your directory listings whenever they can. Social proof is huge these days and people often trust online reviews more than they trust reviews from their friends and family members.
Leverage Industry-Specific Directories
Throughout your online travels, you’ll find no shortage of general business directories to which you can add information about your optometry practice. This is good – but you’ll also want to identify and prioritize those industry-specific directories, too.
Use these listings to highlight the unique offerings that your practice has that nobody else can match. It’s once again a great way to grab someone’s attention and give yourself a competitive advantage, too.
Monitor and Update Directory Listings
Keep in mind that maintaining directory listings for local SEO visibility is not something you “do once and forget about.” You’ll want to establish a regular schedule for monitoring and updating those listings moving forward.
If your phone number changes, guess what? You have to update that number on all optometry directory listings that you’re working with. The same is true if you change the way your name is presented, or if you move to a new physical location.
Thankfully, there are various tools and services that you can use to streamline the management of directory listings, with Surefire Local being a top example of them.
Analyze the Impact on Local Search Rankings
Finally, be sure to track improvements in visibility and search rankings moving forward. You can’t improve upon that which you’re not measuring, after all.
As you continue to put in this effort, your optometry practice should start to rise through the search rankings. As that happens, you’ll start to get more clients – especially new ones. Don’t take any of this for granted.
Always adjust your strategies based on analytics and performance data. Find out what is working and double down on it. Figure out what isn’t working and try to get rid of it. Adopt this same mentality for everything you do in the future.
Surefire Local: The All-in-One Marketing Platform You Can Rely On
Overall, localizing your online presence through directory listings is less the product of any one major move and is more about a series of smaller ones. You need to claim and verify those business listings so that you can ensure consistency in business information across them. You should optimize business descriptions for local SEO and always utilize additional features of directory listings.
At Surefire Local, we’re all about helping small businesses with localized online marketing – taking all the guesswork (and a lot of the stress) out of the situation. We help create local signals across platforms and profiles that make it easier for your prospective optometry clients to find you.
In terms of directory management, we allow you to claim, edit, and publish new content like photos or special offers for your business. You can do this across 80+ online directory listing platforms, right from a single utility.
There are also other essential features, like:
- Content marketing. Surefire Local provides you with the tools you need to create locally targeted and relevant content for not just your blog and Google Business profile, but also across business directories, social media profiles, and more.
- Analytics and reporting. Get an unparalleled level of transparency into your campaign performance and see definitively how much revenue your marketing dollars are generating. You can even get AI-powered recommendations that tell you exactly which actions you need to take to see the improvements that you’re after.
- Educational resources. You’ll always have a steady stream of webinars, blogs, and other helpful content that is designed to help small business leaders like yourself become the local online marketing master you were destined to be.
If you’d like to find out more information about local directory listings tips for optometrists, or if you’d just like to see what an all-in-one marketing platform like Surefire Local can do for your business in more detail, please don’t hesitate to contact us today. You can also click here to attend a Surefire Local demo and see the power of this type of modern day tool for yourself.