Every business wants to connect with potential local customers but figuring out how to do that effectively can be a bit overwhelming. Generally speaking online advertising efforts have been great at providing an excellent return on investment but there are numerous avenues in which to market your business with some of them working better than others.
Enter - online business listings or citations as they are sometimes called. These are listings of your business on other websites that contain your name, address, phone number (NAP) and many times your website address. Some of the types of websites where these listings can be found are map sites, local review directories, social media pages, membership sites, etc.
How do online business listings help me connect with potential customers?
(1) Your listings will be seen by people as they visit the sites you are listed on. Many of those visitors arrive at those sites after searching for your local services. Then they can click directly to your site or call you.
(2) These listings help to improve your trust score with the search engines like Google and that results in higher rankings for your site and makes it more likely that you’ll get found when people search for your keywords.
Which are the best websites to have my business listed on?
Hands down, the best site to get listed on is Google Maps (submit at Google My Business). This map listing can appear in Google search results and can drive traffic directly to you from relevant searches.
Some of the other more valuable listings would include Bing maps, Facebook, Yelp, Manta, Merchant Circle, Superpages, your local chamber of commerce, and many industry specific memberships or directories.
How much does it cost to get these online business listings?
The good news is that you can get a free listing on most of the sites listed above and many others that aren’t listed. The ones that usually cost money to get a listing on would be your local chamber of commerce or industry membership organizations when you pay for membership.
The bad news is that it takes quite a bit of time to figure out where to get listed, go through the submission process for each listing, and start building up your business listings.
Alternatively, you can hire an internet marketing agency to create these listings for you, hopefully at a reasonable rate.
Wrapping it up.
Online business listings will help you connect with your local customers directly with links to your website from other trusted sites and indirectly by building your trust with the search engines and in turn helping to improve your search rankings. These listings can provide a great return on your investment especially if you submit them yourself or find an internet marketing agency to do that at a reasonable rate.
Daryl Schmucker, owner at Noble Webworks, Inc.
Get online business listings for as little as $15 per submission.
