Accurate, comprehensive local listings turn searches into enquiries.
You just need to look at the trends for searches that end with ‘near me’ to understand how critically important your online local listings are to any bricks and mortar or service business these days.
Google has data that suggests 50% of people who perform these searches for shops visit relevant premises within 1 day of performing the search, which is a figure we struggled to believe at first, but when you look at the rise of location aware mobile vs. desktop it starts to make more sense.
And it’s not just traditional shop-type destinations. If you provide a service to a specific area, you need your listing optimised to ensure Google and Bing understand that so you’ll appear for those queries.
There are two primary aspects – the first being the technical setup and continuity of the “NAP” – that’s Name, Address and Phone Number, through local listing and your website, social pages etc.
The second is the fluffier reviews side of things – this is worth building into your customer after-care if possible, and there are a number of automated tools that request reviews once an appropriate amount of time has passed. If you’ve bought anything online in the last 5 years you’ll have had plenty of these.
The best place to start is to review the available, appropriate local listings you should have and check their consistency and alignment with other data such as your website. We then move on to populating the listings comprehensively and a management strategy ongoing.
Local Listing best practise ensures you’re in the running for relevant searches.
Considerations:
Locations
One or many? How many branches? What areas can you service?
Resource
Location photos, internal photos, finished services, testimonials? The more the merrier.
Old Listings
Have you moved premises? Do you still have control over old, inaccurate listings?
Technical
Does your site reflect the address in local listings? Does it use structured data to reinforce this?
Directories
What directories are you listed on online? How accurate is the data?
Social
Can you leverage goodwill from social channels & happy customers online?
How about an audit?
This stuff is easy enough to do yourself, you just need the time to do it properly. We can help you ensure that everything is consistent, and we can look at link profiles to ensure any directories linking to your site are up to date too. Typically we’ll run through all the major listings and check if they’re live, implemented correctly and comprehensive, then put together a plan to get them there.
We’ll help you maximise visibility for local searches.
Read more about some of the specific services we offer below, or just get in touch for a chat now.
