Your Business Listings Checkup

Having your business consistently listed on major listing/directory sites and social properties is key to Google recognizing your brand online and making sure visitors can find you when they search for you.

Interestingly, the amount of traffic you’ll receive from these listing sites is getting lower and lower for most industries.

That said, having your business on these sites is a very important “confirmation” for Google that you are who you say you are and can improve your prominence in Search.

As well, because these sites themselves are indexed by Google, your listings will often show up when folks search for you (below your own results) which helps push other companies off the first page of results when someone searches for you specifically.

Read on as we look at a quick and easy way to check your listings.

The BrightLocal Listings Health Scanner

BrightLocal offers tools and services to help you rank for local SEO and you may want to consider their services down the road. If you’re a What Works Marketing client, we may actually be using their services on their behalf.

They offer a great, free tool for scanning your local listings. You can find it at:
https://www.brightlocal.com/free-local-seo-tools/local-listings-health-scanner/

It’s very easy to use although you need your Google Business Profile set up for them to be able to find you, so if you skipped that step you’ll want to go back and do that, then wait a few days before using this scanner.

Here’s a screenshot of the interface. You simply start typing in your business name and then select it when it appears. With it selected you then just need to “Scan My Listings:”

BrightLocal will then show you your Health Score:

Don’t worry about the Health Score too much, but you’ll want to pay close attention to the individual sites it reviews:

There are a few important notes about these results:

• Take them with a grain of salt – sometimes there are errors, particularly if you have only recently added listings.
• Not all of the sites will be relevant to your business – don’t worry about those ones!

Using the results proactively, you’ll want to:

• Get yourself listed on all the relevant sites.
• Make sure your address, phone and business info are consistent across.

There are paid services (including those offered by Brightlocal) that will do these listings on your behalf or you can do it on your own by going to each respective property, signing up, and adding your information.

Note that some of these sites use this as an opportunity to pitch you on paid promotion on their websites. These paid offerings generally do not offer great value and will not affect your SEO.

In either case, it’s great to use the same email that you used for your Google Business Profile to do this – ideally one created specifically for listings.