October 8, 2018
Before business owners start to spend on online advertising, it is key to ensure your local visibility is updated or claimed. What does that mean? Have all your business contact information and physical address correctly placed in a uniform way. Meaning, if your Address is 53 Main Street, Suite 206 in Google, then be sure to use the same format (not 53 Main St., #206) on Yelp, Social Media and all the other business citation sites. Proper citation listing is part of your search engine optimization (SEO) effort to effectively boost your business rankings in search engines.
Here are some tips to ensure your local visibility is optimized:
- Use the same logo for all your business listings to keep things uniform. If your photo is part of your branding (like a realtor), then use the same photo everywhere from website, social media, business cards and brochures.
- Make sure the information on your citation sites is consistent across the board. Even the way you display the company name with commas, "St." vs "Street" and "&" vs “and” can have an impact.
- Check your local business listings often, especially if you move or change phone numbers.
- Claim your free citation listings like Yelp, Manta, Citysearch, Yext and any authoritative business-specific sites (like for attorneys, doctors, construction, certified IT professionals, etc.)
- Clean-up duplicate listings and ones that have old references or bad information. Some pages can be merged and others just deleted. Call customer service if you need their assistance.
- If your business has multiple locations, then build location-specific pages about the services you offer in that area. Be sure those pages have local contact information too.
- Build these location-specific page links into other pages of your site and share them on your social media platforms to improve local search engine ranking.
- Encourage social media check-ins and request reviews from your customers. Stand out from your competitors by responding positively to reviews whether they are good or bad.
- Ask customers to upload photos of your products or business establishment. This way users can see your products, store or menu and be persuaded to contact or visit your business.
- Be consistent with your social media engagement, whether you interact daily, weekly or twice a month. Social search is a priority for users and frequency helps improve online visibility.
A lot of these tips take days or weeks to claim or create and then brand them accordingly – time you may not have as a business owner. If you need a local pro and marketing partner to manage this citation exercise, call BiggerFish Marketing at 732-596-7824.
