Each platform has its own guidelines as to image size and what types of content are allowed in images. Here are Google’s. Be sure to follow guidelines, both for best display and resolution and to avoid images being taken down for non-compliance.
Finally, as many platforms allow users to upload their own photos of your business, it’s important to monitor your profiles on a regular basis to be sure that inappropriate imagery hasn’t been uploaded by pranksters or competitors.
Certain platforms allow you to upload videos, menus, and links to other forms of media. This creates a richer user experience and can influence conversions.
Most platforms offer fields for toll-free, cell phone, or vanity phone numbers, which can be of assistance to different groups of users.
This common field is particularly important to any business that uses fax as a regular means of communication (such as medical centers that request new patient forms to be faxed in), but it’s not a required field.
If trust in your business relies on licenses or professional certifications, be sure you’re including this information whenever a platform makes this field available.
Being alerted to major brands you carry is a huge convenience for consumers, particularly when those brands enjoy a loyal following. This is an especially good field for retail businesses to fill out.
Many platforms allow you to specify which payment methods you accept, from cash only to digital wallets. If your business supports the most modern payment technologies, make good use of this field to influence consumers’ decisions to choose you.
Attributes are relatively new to the Google Business Profile dashboard, expected to grow in importance. When creating your Google Business Profile listing, you may have the ability to choose from a set of descriptions (like “24-hour service,” “late night food,” or “wheelchair accessible”) that further define your business. It makes sense to let Google (and consumers) know as much as possible about your business whenever attribute fields are available. Be aware that some attributes (like “cozy” or “hip”) can only be added by the public, as they represent subjective impressions of your business.
Platforms are always adding new fields and functionalities for your consideration. Google, in particular, is quickly developing functionality around communications and transactions. All competitive local businesses should consider use of newer amenities like the bookings button, messaging capabilities, and integration of merchandise and product listings into the profile.
Local business listings and citations play a vital role in reputation, rankings, and revenue. That’s why it’s critical to see the big picture of their purpose.
Not so long ago, local business owners had a set of offline publicity options, such as paying for Yellow Pages inclusion, advertising in the local newspaper, print marketing in the form of brochures and coupons, postal mail marketing, telemarketing, and local radio/television buys. All of these are still viable options in many industries. But while some offline avenues have become optional, Internet marketing is now a necessity for every single local business. If a business can’t be found on the web today, it’s akin to being “nowhere.”
Before considering your business listing landscape, it's helpful to see how your business listings already appear across the internet, and how accurate they are. Fortunately, we've built a free tool that can check all the important business listings and citations. If you find any that are missing or inaccurate, you can start with these.
Yellow Pages - Fingers may still be “doing the walking” on smartphone screens, but searchers no longer need to thumb through a heavy print directory or even to be at home. A consumer located anywhere is connected with any business in town instantly via local listings on major platforms like Google Business Profile, Facebook, or Yelp. While some business models still see good ROI from print Yellow Pages directories, it is costly, whereas inclusion in most of the online local business data indexes is free. Plus, the online audience is vast, with two-thirds of the world being online and about 70% percent of US residents owning smartphones. The basic data within your local business listing is a dominant driver of traffic and revenue.
Print Marketing - The taglines, descriptions, attributes, driving directions, coupons, menus, reviews, and owner responses included on many top-tier local business listings do all of the heavy lifting of traditional print marketing. From a single complete listing, a consumer can discover a business, learn where it is, what it does, what special offers it runs, who likes it, and how well the company takes care of its customers. It’s everything you could fit into a brochure but in an accessible, digital format.
Radio/TV Advertising - On local listings that support images, video, virtual tours, call buttons, and links to social media profiles, a consumer can both see and hear a business from the comfort of their cell phone. What’s more, they can click to call, chat, or follow social media links to interact with the business directly — something a radio ad can’t really provide, and for which TV still needs to catch up. A robust local listing provides a thorough experience in the blink of an eye.
Make sure customers find you with the power of Moz Local, our local SEO & reputation management tool. See how accurate your local listings are online with your free listing score:
No competitive local business would give up the powerful — and largely free — advertising potential of online listings, but it’s important to maximize your ROI by allocating staff hours efficiently. There are two considerations here:
You should determine which platforms it makes sense to be listed on. It’s not a best practice to devote hundreds of hours to getting listed on every possible search engine, index, or app, just because they exist. Instead, hit the majors (Google Business Profile, Facebook, Yelp, Apple Maps, etc.) and then hand-select other platforms that are highly relevant to your company’s industry or geography. By getting listed only in quality places, you won’t squander sweat equity.
Yellow Pages Karachi Phone DirectoryCreating local business listings can be toilsome and boring. It’s exciting to get your best data together in a spreadsheet, but it isn’t all that fun to enter that data over and over again into the forms of the various platforms. This has led to the rise of automated solutions for active location data management like Moz Local. These solutions allow you to fill out a single form, distributing your data to high-quality platforms and continuously monitoring it for progress and any changes. You can always supplement your automated push to the majors with a small investment of time in building listings on geo/industry-specific platforms, but the fact is that automation lightens the load, reduces human error, and leaves your team free to focus on more creative projects.
Whether you decide to take a fully manual approach or a semi- or fully automated one, the most important thing to remember is that local business listings are extremely powerful.
You’ve heard the horror stories of residential numbers getting accidentally published on print Yellow Pages ads, resulting in a whole year of unwanted phone calls for the homeowner and none for the business. Online business listings are no different, and inconsistent or bad data can misdirect consumers and negatively impact transactions in just the same way.
Because of this, no local business owner can afford to neglect the data published about his company on the Internet. The most sensible thing is to take control of that data and manage it on an ongoing basis to ensure both its consistency and its spread across the web.
In Real Life: Local SEO Tactics - In this course, local business owners learn how to get the most out of their SEO strategy using skills and knowledge they already have.
“Supersize your business profits with Local SEO”. That’s the buzz words these days, and you will struggle to find a business, irrespective of its size, not using local SEO to drive visitors to its physical location/s, as well as, increase online traffic. The reason why your neighborhood mom and pop store comes up in your SERPs while searching for grocery stores in your neighborhood is local SEO.
With local SEO, your business has better chances of being found by 85% of consumers who use the internet to search for local goods and services. Nobody, in their right minds, will want to miss out on these customers and you will find most businesses set aside a substantial budget for local SEO.
With local SEO, your business has better chances of being found by 85% of consumers who use the internet to search for local goods and services. Nobody, in their right minds, will want to miss out on these customers and you will find most businesses set aside a substantial budget for local SEO.
Your local SEO campaign cannot survive without local business listings. One can even go so far as to say that it can’t exist without business listings.
This is important for businesses who cannot hope to compete against the marketing muscle of big players in their niche. These ‘big boys’ have the resources to leverage any and all tactics to come up trumps on SERPs, while small businesses usually walk a tightrope between their SEO budget and SEO strategy. Many times, it is the budget that wins hands down.
For these businesses, a local business listing is like a gift that keeps giving. Unfortunately, people (read internet marketers) see these listings as just another SEO tactic that needs to be implemented; but it’s time we change the way we look at local business listings. They are not an important part of local SEO; they by and large are THE lifeline of a solid SEO strategy.
Before we get deep into the workings of local business listings, it is important to see them through the prism of local SEO.
If you want local customers to find your business, huge helpings of local SEO are a must. Local SEO is for everybody. You could be a local restaurant, dentist, plumber, electrician, mom and pop store, web design firm, law firm, home based business or something else. If you have a physical address at a particular location and you want people to go there, local SEO acts like a “transport” that gets people to this location.
So you are a tattoo store owner in the SF Bay Area….lots of competition….don’t fret…with local SEO you can own your geographical niche.
A mom and pop store in Anaheim, CA….. Can’t attract enough customers… Local SEO will help you attract more customers than Disneyland… just kidding…. but it will work.
A rock band in New York….. the locals will queue up to hire you for “gigs”… courtesy local SEO (provided you are actually good)
Local SEO takes customers closer to your brand. Remember the six degrees of separation? Well those degrees all but disappear with local SEO.