Why You Don’t Want to Rely on Luck with Local Listings (Part 1)

Have you Googled yourself lately? What did you find? Was the information up-to-date, or old? Was your information even accurate in the first place? Unfortunately, for many companies out there, local listing sites sometimes have company information so muddled that it may seem nearly impossible to clean them all up. However, with a little bit of perseverance, a whole lot of patience, and time, your listings can be corrected, and your search engine rankings will undoubtedly benefit as a result.

For starters, Google isn’t the only listing site that businesses need to concern themselves with. In fact, if a company devotes all of its efforts solely to ranking well on Google, it may be inadvertently neglecting many of the local listing directories that Google obtains information from. Unless companies adopt well-rounded local listing site practices, their organic rankings will never flourish the way they should, which will directly affect the number of clients retained and ultimately affect the company’s bottom line.

So what does it take to rank well on Google and other local listing sites? First of all, you need to familiarize yourself with the submission process, particularly what type of information is allowed in the listing. Different sites have different terms of use, and making sure you don’t violate terms of use is essential in creating a strong local listing foundation and moving towards page one placement.

Second of all, pay attention to which sites other sites obtain information from. For example, if you’re an attorney and you have inaccurate information on your Google Places listing, and that incorrect information was originally gathered from your Avvo profile, then you have to not only correct the information within Google Places, but you also have to update your Avvo profile. Otherwise, Google will continue to assume that Avvo is a trusted citation source and the inaccurate information will continue to pop up on your local listing profile.

In Part 2 of our two-part series, we’ll talk more about local listing site strategies and how to get the most out of your local listings.