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Think about a time when you were searching the web for contact info for a specific business. You’re looking for the phone number for Joe’s Fitness Center, but when you dial the number listed online, you get “Thank you for calling Pizza King, what can I get for you today?” How frustrating! Besides the fact that now you’re craving pizza, now you have to either dig deeper to try to find the RIGHT contact info for the gym or maybe just call the next one on the list.
This could be happening to your business — to your customers — if you don’t properly monitor your business listings, and you could be losing the trust of your customers as a result. Or worse yet, losing potential customers who give up and just move on. It is unfortunate to say, but 80% of customers or patients will lose trust in a local business if they find incorrect or inconsistent details online.
When you verify that your listings have accurate NAP data (name, address, phone), website, and hours – across all major listing directories – you are more likely to rank well in local searches. This will help your online audience find you quickly and easily, and won’t be faced with having to curb their pizza craving as a result of incorrect data.
Directories are more than a place to link to your site
Using a directory for your listings is the easiest way to track and update your information. Your business information can appear on hundreds of sites and search providers including Google, Yahoo, Bing, AOL, BBB, and many others.
Directories help you build links and direct traffic to your site, generating leads and getting people in the door. Take the phone book as another example: seldom used now but during its prime, the yellow pages – at the back of the book – were a common source of information when searching for local services. By searching for a product or service on Google to gain insight into a relevant business’s location or phone number, you are essentially doing the same thing… only much faster.
Without monitoring your online listings, you could be missing out on potential customers and patients that simply go with another business due to inaccurate information. Taking advantage of a business directory could lead to:
- Increased exposure resulting in more viewers finding your website or other social sites and creating raving fans that result in consumers of your services
- More site traffic that goes hand-in-hand with increasing the exposure of your business and results in solid leads
- Better local visibility from using local business directories and geotargeting to specifically target your local community and boost your appearance in “near me” searches
- Boosting your SEO by working with your existing web content in order to gain the validation of major search engines to rank higher in relevant searches
Risking your valuable customers could cost you valuable profits. When something as simple as accurate information could affect your online performance, it’s almost a no brainer to monitor your listings. We can help with all of the tricky set-up and get you started with our business listing services! Our marketing experts will be able to correct any errors and get you on track so your business information is even more accessible and accurate.
