Listings are an online entries for your business. Their role is to help customers find you online and in real life. They contain 4 simple pieces of information that provide the basic information potential customers need to have: NAP+W
NAP+W is the acronym that explains it all.
- Name
- Address
- Phone number
- Website
If you want to score some bonus points, don’t forget to include information like hours of operation — it’s what consumers are most interested in!
Making sure your listings pay off
Having an up-to-date and accurate listing is important for your SEO performance. They are available through many sources, including search engines, online directories and maps, or social sites, and the more you are present on these sources, the better. This will create multiple avenues for consumers to find your business.
And remember, presence only pays off if the listings are accurate! Listings are accurate if the information is correct and consistent across all potential sources.
The importance of listings
With good presence and accuracy, they will undoubtedly pay off for your business. Here’s how:
No more hiding
Correct, consistent and readily available listings will help guide consumers right to your business’s door steps. If a business’s listing is incorrect or missing, the majority of consumers will feel less confident about the brand, leading them to choose a competitor’s product or service.
Here’s the sad reality: 75 percent of searchers will not go past page one if they don’t see what they’re looking for.
The availability of accurate listings ensures customers are actually able to find your business’ locations while it’s still open for business.
This means money in the business’ pocket and, just as importantly, it means the business can be reviewed.
The importance of online reviews
Reviews, whether positive or negative, are an essential tool for developing a business’ online reputation and promoting brand loyalty and they should be managed correctly. They allow customers to communicate their experience with a business to potential buyers, but if consumers can’t find a business listed online, their opinion of it won’t be well-informed.
In fact, 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations and almost 95% of shoppers read reviews before making a purchase decision!
Accurate listings create the opportunity for transparency between businesses and consumers in the form of reviews, and the availability of these accurate listings will help increase a business’s visibility.
Boosting a business’ SEO
Consistent, accurate and readily available listings, as well as customer reviews, will directly benefit a business’s visibility by boosting its ranking in local search engine results. Optimising your website for SEO should go hand-in-hand with building an effective website. But Search Engine Optimisation is quite a complex tool, so why not take advantage of it by simply ensuring your business’ listings are done accurately!
Get started today!
This listings low-down provides basic definitions and descriptions of the benefits of business listings. Creating listings on sites worth lots of points improves your listings score and we have ranked all of them for you by importance using a lot of key factors—how many sites reference them, traffic, demographics and more. Implementing the tactics mentioned above will give you a head start on your competition!
To find out more about listings and how they can help grow your business, book a consultation now.