If you want your business to get found online, you need this service.
Accurate business listings help search engines and potential customers find local businesses online. The problem is that you don’t have the time to create and maintain hundreds of business listings, (Aka “citations). Think Yellow Pages, which is basically just a directory of all types of businesses. A lot of people don’t realize it but now there are literally hundreds of these old “Yellow Page” type directories or business listings websites. Imagine if you had to contact every Yellow Page and make sure they had the correct and updated information for your business!
The 3 big business listing aggregators are Data Axle, Neustar/Localeze and Foursquare, which recently merged with Factual.
The way most business listing services work is to search all the directories in their database and add your correct business information. Not having the correct information and all these directories would be like handing a potential customer a business card with the wrong information on it.
But it is important to have them because sooner or later a lot of these directories will get your information and just add it automatically. If they have the incorrect information that incorrect information can be spread across different directories and confuse the robots. Miss matched listings take away from your credibility online and the search engine rankings can be negatively affected.
Most listing services continually search online to find your business information and make sure it all matches the correct information that you provide. These listing services can also update your business listings across the web when you have a change or even your hours, or if you’re closed on a holiday.
So, in short, a business listing is an online profile that contains information about your business where customers, and more importantly, indexing robots, can discover these profiles on sites and then use them to learn more about your business.
By Dave Coleman
President, Piinch Company
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