Business Listings UK
Looking for top-quality business listings built for your online to help build your site’s trust and authority?
Contact us today by clicking the WhatsApp Icon, but read this awesome article first!
Investing in local search engine optimization (SEO) can be of the most effective ways for local businesses to increase their visibility online and get a boost up the Google ladder!
Prospective customers use local search to find businesses in their area when they are looking for products and services, so local SEO is a great way to get highly targeted traffic landing on your site and converting into leads or sales. But what exactly is a business listing?
What is a Business Listing?
A business listing basically [also known as a local citation] is a summary of all the essential information about your company. They can serve as a powerful tool for your business and serve an especially important function for boosting your site’s visibility and SEO.
Furthermore building links in this manner is a form of white-hat SEO, which offers unparalleled benefits to your site’s SEO unlike black hat or grey hat approaches.
We will be putting together an article soon which explains in a little more detail the difference between white hat, grey hat, and black hat SEO techniques.
But for now, What makes up a business listing?
What makes up a Business Listing?
An organization’s name, address, phone number, and website URL usually make up its business listing or local listing. The majority of listings will include at least this information, but may also provide other details, such as:
- Business description
- Business category
- Company photos
- Hours of operation
- Directions
- Videos
- Payment forms accepted
- Holiday hours
- Accessibility
- Customer reviews
- Links to social platforms
- Email address
Fill Out as Many of These Components As Possible
In order to provide valuable information to potential customers, we recommend you fill out as many of these components as possible. At the same time, this information helps Google learn more about your business, allowing the algorithm to determine how your site should rank.
And guess what, the more Google knows about your business, the more trust it will give your website and the higher up the Google ladder you shall climb! Cool right?
Here is a quick breakdown of a few types of the business listings you can build to boost your visibility and boost your site’s authority:
Industry-Specific Listings
In many cases, local businesses can build out their listings in directories tailored to their industry. These might be professional organizations, magazines, or review sites. In many ways, the more niche-specific the business directory is in relation to your niche, the more contextual that link will be and the more recognition you will get from Google for authority within that niche. For example, if you are a UK-based Lawyer, registering your business on Lawfirms.co.uk will boost your business’s credibility in the eyes of Google just that little bit more!
Geo-Specific Listings
A business can submit its information to geo-specific directories such as Chamber of Commerce websites to be listed alongside other local businesses in their area. Having your business listed on websites with already established high authority means in a certain way, that authority is passed on to your business and your website. Remember, the more authority you have in the eyes of Google, the higher you will rank, the more traffic you will get and the more leads or sales you will make!
Major Business Data Platforms/Aggregators
Businesses can build profiles and drive traffic on several top-tier business data aggregation websites and directories. Platforms like Google My Business, Bing Places, Yahoo! Business, Acxiom, Localeze, Yelp, and more are available. Business owners can also post their information on review-oriented sites like Facebook and the Yellow Pages. All are relatively easy to do, and all add value to your site’s authority.
Websites, Blogs, And Publications
Additionally, businesses can build up or earn supplementary citations through news sites, blogs, online magazines, apps, government websites, and more. These listings can be earned naturally based on visibility and reputation, or they can be submitted manually by creating profiles or conducting outreach.
Managing Your Local Business Listings
Citations or business listings are often earned by automatically aggregating data from major business data platforms and posting it in lower-tier directories. Yext and Moz Local are two aggregators that provide access to this data to smaller directories and websites.
Because of this, it’s crucial that businesses manage their local listings, so they can control the spread of information (or misinformation) to other websites. Businesses that publish incorrect business names, addresses, phone numbers, or websites can hurt their rankings, traffic, and revenue.
Contact the directory or website and ask them to correct the errors if you see incorrect information about your business online. Depending on the platform, it is sometimes easy to submit a change and sometimes quite challenging.
Why Business Listings Matter for SEO
Local business listings are important for SEO in that they generate high-authority backlinks and increase a company’s visibility in local search results.
Local listings do not always include a backlink to your website (or if they do, they may not necessarily offer that coveted “link juice”), but at the very least they will direct more users to your business and prove to Google that it’s a legitimate company. And guess what there are numerous benefits in business listings for SEO, and these are them!
Top Benefits for SEO
Educate prospective customers about your business
When a prospective customer finds us, it is important we tell them about who we are and what we do, otherwise, we may lose them before we have the chance to sell them anything!
Building business listings is a great opportunity to showcase your business and your brand and tell your target audience who you are and what you do! You can tell them about your awesome products or services and educate them on why working with your business, or buying from your business is the best decision they can ever make!
Make your business more visible in local searches
When Google decides which business to rank in local searches they will take a look at how many business listings your site has and the quality of these business listings. The more listings you have the higher quality these listings are, the more trust and authority you will have the more visible your business will become in local searches. Just like magic!
Ranking for local searches is majorly important for businesses that are looking for clients or customers in their local areas, such as plumbers, lawyers, and local shops.
Outrank your local competitors
Let’s face it, who doesn’t want to outrank their local competitors?! The more you outrank your competitors the more business you will generate through your website, and having a good solid business listing profile out there will help you rank high and drive high-quality organic traffic to your website.
There are various tools out there that you can use to analyze your competitor’s business listings, to see which ones you have and which ones you don’t have, so you don’t miss out on that link traffic!
Drive traffic and customers to your business
When your business listing is found then if someone clicks on it, they will be directed to your website, which will boost your site’s traffic and increase conversions. So whether you are looking for high-quality leads or more traffic to sell more of your awesome products, business listings can help get you there!
Obtain backlinks to your website
Usually, a business listing will host a link to your website and Google regards this as a ‘backlink’. The more backlinks you have pointing to your site, especially from websites with good authority and trust, the more trust and authority you will build with Google, and the higher you will rank! Business listings is just one way to build links to your site, but there is a whole range of other link bundling techniques you can utilise to build links to your website. Drop us an email and we will tell you a little more!
Check out our SEO Backlinks Page Here.
Provide your customers with a way to review your business
Business listing can serve as a great place for your customers to review your awesome products or services. The more reviews you have online, again the more trust you can build with Google, and the higher you will rank! This ain’t rocket science, this is ranking science!
Gain the trust of your audience and increase your brand’s authority
The more high-quality business listings you have for your website and business the more trust you will build with your audience and in turn, this will increase your brand’s authority.
Google loves Brands, never forget that!
A higher ranking in search results is likely to occur if there are more online indicators that your business exists, is established locally, and is open for business.
The more business listings you have the more ‘indicators’ there are out there telling Google and other search engines that you are out there, established locally and open for business. So go build your listings and shout out to the world about your brand, your business and why people should know about you!
Will my Listings Work?
Presence and accuracy are essential to the effectiveness of a business listing. There are a wide variety of sources for finding listings, including search engines, online directories and maps. The more listings there are, the better. Your business will be found by consumers on as many sources as possible if it is available on as many sources as possible. However, presence only pays off if the listings are accurate. If the information in a listing is correct and consistent across all potential sources, then it is accurate.
So make sure you do a good job at submitting your business listings, get all your business information correct, and you will be rewarded!
Contact Us!
If you are interested in learning more about building out your business listings in the UK or general SEO for your website, contact us today by clicking the WhatsApp link below, visiting our contact us page or emailing us [email protected]!
SEO isn’t rocket Science, It’s Rankings Science!
