Local Business Presence Step 1: Claim Your Listings

There’s been a lot of news lately about businesses noticing that their internet listings have been hijacked. The number one best thing you can do to prevent nefarious businesses from ruining your listings, reputation and traffic? Claim those listings– prevention is most definitely the best cure in this case.

Don't let shady characters hijack your website listings.

If you’re new to this arena (or just need a refresher course), here’s a list of tips that can get you started claiming your business’s identity online. It’s a bit tedious, but infinitely worth it. With reports of shady business owners hijacking unclaimed business listings and then essentially closing down the company, you want to make sure you own what’s yours.

• The first (and most obvious) place to start is with Google. Even if you don’t have a website (and if you don’t, there’s a whole ‘nother post coming soon for you) you can list your business’s vital attributes in Google’s Local Business Center. All you need to do is visit their Business Center and add all of the important information– name, town, phone number, description, URL, etc. Make sure to select the right category for your listing (the more relevant the category is to your business, the more likely you are to rank higher). Remember: Google wants to provide users with the most relevant results possible. Use the Titles and Descriptions to show them why you’re relevant to a city or region. They have just released a new user guide which can help you get started.
• Getting listed on Yahoo! is the next logical step. The process and information is very similar to Google’s– just arranged differently so it’s optimized for Yahoo!’s algorithms. Enter your important information in their local business center. Yahoo! does offer Enhanced Listings for $9.99 a month, but in my opinion, you can manage most of those features yourself without coughing up the cash.
• BOTW Local: This is a lesser known source for many new marketers. Their simplest (and free) option is called JumpStart- another place for you to list your business details. They do offer some fee-based services as well, and unlike Yahoo’s, I think they’re worth the money. Why? Because BOTW is really well optimized for search engines, and purchasing their listings earns you a link back to your site– an extremely valuable asset.
• To complete your listings (and fill in any gaps), grab a cup of coffee, have a stretch and visit some of the major third party data providers. There’s no doubt this is a tedious, obnoxious task (interns, anyone?) but it’s really important that you do it. It puts you in each site’s index AND both Google and Yahoo use these sources as citations (aka credibility) to build their own local results. Remember: the more places where accurate information is listed about your company, the better! Some places to start: Superpages, Citysearch, InfoUSA, Yellow Pages, Insider Pages, Localeze, Openlist and Yelp.

Happy listing!