What are Local Business Listings?
Every small business can use free local business listings to improve your chance of showing up better in search results. Popular online listing sites include Google+, Yahoo, Yelp, HomeAdvisor and AngiesList. The most important listing is “Google My Business” and then Yelp if Yelp is relevant to your business. One way to get an idea of the available local listings is to do a Google search of your competitor’s business name and see where they are listed.
Local business listings are basically a free promotion of your company on the internet. Your company details, photos, hours and website link will be shown in online listing directories so more potential customers can find you.
Local Listing Example
A real example of the importance of local listings is shown below. This business is listed on Google+ and because of that, the information on the right displays. They are also listed on Yelp.com and TripAdvisor.com
Let’s use an example of a potential customer searching (let’s say they are searching with Google) for a hair salon in a particular town or city, let’s call it, Springfield NJ.
The potential customer enters this search in Google: hair salon springfield nj
Because the company has a local business listing on Google, the search results would look something like this:
The listings show are the top three according to Google’s ranking. There is a link at the bottom that says “More Places” that can be clicked to show a longer list of businesses in that category.
The listing for each business includes the location, contact information and a website link if the business has a website.
When your business is listed in the proper category, potential customers will find your business when they are searching.