Online business listings are important tools for growing your business' visibility on the Internet. A strong business listing profile can help you attract customers and it can help your website to rank highly on search engine result pages.

1. Why Business Listings Matter
Masters of Marketing Webinar
June 26, 2014
#MastersMktg
Dylan Brooks
SEO Coordinator

2. What Are Business Listings?

3. What are Business Listings?
• A profile of your agency on a directory site
• Directory sites come in many sizes and shapes:
• Search engine directories (Google My Business, Bing Places for
Business, Yahoo Small Business)
• Review-based sites (Yelp)
• Electronic phonebooks (YellowPages, SuperMedia)
• Location-based social media sites (Foursquare, Facebook)

4. Some Directory Sites
• Google MyBusiness (aka Google+ Local)
• Bing for Business (aka Bing Local)
• Yelp
• Foursquare
• Facebook
• YellowPages
• SuperMedia
• Merchant Circle
• Angie’s List

5. Google MyBusiness (or Google+
Local)

6. YellowPages

7. Yelp

8. Foursquare

9. Are Business Listings Really
That Important?
Yes, they are.

10. Benefits of Business Listings
• Give potential customers access to key business
information
• “Storefront sign” effect
• Good for SEO/search engine visibility
• Search engines like websites with consistent business listings on
directory sites
• Help attract customers through the Internet
• Business listings include links to your website
Let’s take a closer look at each of these benefits.

11. Customer Access
What information are customers looking for when they’re
researching agencies on the Internet?

12. Customer Access
What information are customers looking for when they’re
researching agencies on the Internet?
• Location
• Contact information
• Business hours
• Payment options
• REVIEWS

13. It’s All About Legitimacy
• People want to do business with companies they can trust.
• They want to avoid sites like these:

14. Building Legitimacy
• Verified listings with key business information shows that
your agency has an actual presence in the local
community.
• Business descriptions can humanize your agency and
emphasize its ties to the region.
• Reviews can help reassure potential customers of what
their shopping experience will be like.
• “Social Proof”

15. Search Visibility
A strong business listing profile can help improve your
agency’s placement in search rankings.
• But WAIT. How does building listings on other sites help my
website show up in the rankings?

16. The “New York Times Effect”

17. Business Listings & Search Engines
• Search engines evaluate as much information as they can
find about indexed websites before adding them to the
results.
• If your business information is featured consistently across
several directory sites, it reinforces to search engines that
your site is relevant and should be featured highly in search
engine result pages.

18. Reviews & Search
• Search engines view reviews as customer votes for or
against a business.
• Reviews on directory sites such as Yelp, Google
MyBusiness and YellowPages are considered “unbiased,”
since they’re on third-party sites.
• If your agency has consistently strong reviews across
several directory sites, it can help improve the search
rankings for your website.

19. Local. Local. Local.
• A strong business listing profile can help your website
appear in results for searches placed near your address,
even for competitive search terms.
• Local search results are based off of your location and
business listing data.
• Local search is particularly useful and relevant for
smartphone users.

20. Local Searches Matter

21. Attracting New Customers
• Business listings provide more ways for Internet users to
get to your site.

22. Why Does This Matter?
• Some Internet users might land on your site through the
links from a directory profile
• Even if your agency site doesn’t show up in particular sets
of search results, one of your business profiles might
appear.
• Ultimately, your agency’s Internet visibility will improve.

23. Building Business Listings

24. Best Practices
• Build lots of business listings
• Also claim and optimize existing listings
• Make sure the NAP is consistent
• NAP = Name, Address and Phone Number
• This will help you appear in local and map-based searches as well
• Keep business information as consistent as possible
• Descriptions, hours, payment options, contact info should be
consistent across all business listings

25. What Not To Do
• Create a listing with a fake address
• If discovered, phony listings can hurt your website’s ability to rank
in search results.
• Leave inconsistent business information across your
various business listings
• If you change your hours or other key information, make sure all
business listings are updated.
• Write fake reviews on your directory listings.
• Reviews are carefully regulated on many directory sites, such as
Google MyBusiness and Yelp.

26. Optimization Tactics
• Encourage visits to business profiles
• Add website buttons to link to Yelp, Google+, etc.
• Encourage reviews on business profiles
• Email marketing works wonders here.
• Add photos, content and special offers to your business
profile sites.
• These can help your business listing stand out.
• Think like a potential customer
• What would they want you to add to your listings?

27. A Few Final Words
• Today’s Webinar will be posted to the ITC Marketing blog:
http://www.getitc.com/blog/marketing/
• Join us for our next Masters of Marketing Webinar:
• Benefits of a Mobile-Friendly Website Design
• Presented by Amanda Oldham (Website Coordinator)
• Thursday, July 24th at 12 PM CDT
• To register:
http://www.getitc.com/solutions/agency_marketing/webinar/

28. Thank You!