What’s the big deal about business listings?
Business listings hold the secret to potentially doubling or tripling your marketing results overnight—especially if you run a local business. Really. Getting this right is one of the fastest, easiest things you can do to improve your online presence immediately.
Everything you need to know about online listings.
Step-by-step instructions for fixing your listings.
Products & services that can help with your listings.
LEARN ABOUT LISTINGS
What is an online business listing?
I could explain online business listings, but it’s 100x easier to show them.
Here are two examples you’re probably familiar with: Yelp’s and Google’s.
In a nutshell, business listings are online profiles about businesses. They’re similar to old print directories in that they display key information that customers want to know, such as address, phone number, website, and hours of operation.
There are thousands of listings sites out there, including some that you’ve heard of and a lot that you haven’t. CitySearch, DexKnows, Merchant Circle, TomTom, Manta, Angie’s List, TripAdvisor, Bing, Judy’s Book, Houzz, WebMD, 411.com, Edmunds, ZipLocal. The list goes on.
While the average US business has 68 online listings, The Big Four listing sites that account for roughly 85% of all search traffic are Bing, Yelp, YellowPages, and Google.
Why are business listings important?
Listings are important for two reasons: customer experience and search visibility.
A) Customer Experience
When it comes to customer experience, you probably don’t know the importance of accurate listings until you’ve had a bad experience.
For example, have you ever followed Google Maps or a GPS all the way to the other end of town and… dun dun dun… the business you’re looking for isn’t there? Or maybe its hours are different than what it said on Google? That’s because their listing information was wrong.
Plain and simple: If your listings are wrong, people are getting false information about you. And when that happens, customers blame YOU, not Google.
B) Search visibility
The more listings you have—and the more consistent those listings are, which we’ll talk about in a second—the higher up on Google your business will likely appear.
This is a BIG DEAL, since the top three results of a Google search account for over 50% of all clicks, and the top 10 results account for more than 90% of clicks (Chitika). If people don’t find what they’re looking for in the first few results, they move on. Your business has got to be in those top spots if you want anyone to see you, and listings are the key to getting there.
If you’re still not convinced about the importance of listings, consider these stats:
– 85% of people use online listings to find businesses (Yelp)
– 63% of consumers under 40 never use phone books to find local businesses anymore (RingCentral)
– 73% of consumers stated that they lose trust in a brand when the online listing shows incorrect information (Placeable, 2014)
The most compelling stat, however, is that 50% of business owners say they’ve noticed wrong information in one of their listings before—but over HAL