Online Business Listings

Call 281-343-3284 to optimize your local online business listings!

Local SEO Starts with Local Online Business Listings

What is the easiest and quickest thing you can do to improve your local business search engine rankings on Google, Yahoo, and Bing?  It’s claiming and updating your online business listings on Google, Yahoo, Yelp and many other local-focused websites.

You probably already have these listings and may not be aware of them.  They may refer to the wrong phone number, address, or website and they may be sending potential customers to your competitors.  You may also have customer reviews on these listings and those reviews might be positive or negative.   Don’t ignore these online business listings — they can help or hurt your business in a big way.

IX Brand SEO Services Company builds your online business listings in two ways.  First we partner with Yext to create 45+ claimed and updated business listings on sites like Yelp, Bing, Citysearch, Yahoo, Facebook and others.  Yext allows us to manage all of these business listings and Facebook from one dashboard and it saves us time and you money in keeping all of these listings updated.  Second, we manually claim and update the few important listings like Google+ which are not covered by Yext.  This approach means that your business gets consistent, reliable local citations and that will mean more customers visiting your website and your business.

If you have a local business, call IX Brand SEO Services Company at 281-343-3284 in Sugar Land or Houston or 979-531-8300 in Wharton or Matagorda County.  If your business is in another state, it doesn’t matter  — IX Brand SEO Services Company is the solution to your local business Google ranking issues.

Why are these online business listings so important?  First off, it’s because Google and the other search engine websites place a small number of these business listing at the top of the first search results page.  As an example, here’s a search for “turfgrass sod denver co.”

These two listings — which were called Google Places listings and are now called Google+ Local listings — have essential information from each business website including a link to each site, plus the business address and phone numbers.  There are also links to business reviews.  These Google+ Local listings are usually above most or all of the organic search results (website links) on the first page of results, and prospective customers searching for turf grass sod in the Denver area will most likely click on these two business listings first.

That’s why these listings are so important for your business.  They will often outperform your website no matter how good your website is, just because the optimized business listings will often appear higher in search results than your SEO-optimized website!  Google, Yahoo, and Bing all provide business listings you can use to improve your business visibility online.

 These business listings even get better!  Here’s the Yahoo listing for IX Brand SEO Services client, Dr. J. Michael Bennett.

We can add a complete text description of your business with photos and even videos to some online listings.  These business listings can be updated 24/7 and some can even display coupons for your business.  Here’s a Google+ Local listing for client, Bay City Abstract & Title Company.  The new Google+ Local listings have a large local map display, a much larger profile picture and a much better system for collecting reviews from your customers.

A note of warning! If you work in a competitive business market, for example you’re a lawyer in Richmond or Sugar Land or a restaurant owner in Houston, you’ll need to plan on working to optimize your online business listing and your website.  If your website is poorly optimized for search engines or if you don’t have a website, then working only on your business listings won’t be effective in bringing your business to the top of search results for your best keywords.  So when potential clients in competitive marketplaces tell me that someone else is working on the website, I have to tell them that optimizing the business listings will be a waste of their money without applying search engine optimization techniques to their websites.  If you’re in a small town or a niche market, it’s not so critical to have a website supporting your local business listing.

If your business doesn’t take advantage of these business listings, you’re missing a great, low-cost opportunity to promote your business online.  Call IX Brand SEO Services Company at 979-531-8300 in Wharton or Matagorda County or 281-343-3284 in Fort Bend County or Houston to get started.