In order to grow and succeed as a business, local entrepreneurs are encouraged to utilize the power of local search engines as one of their marketing tools. Major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing gather business information from a multitude of sources. Yellow pages, social review sites, and aggregation houses are third party databases that give search engines the information that they need to construct a comprehensive and useful business listing for consumers to utilize.

Creating an online business listing should be one of the very first tasks local entrepreneurs should consider if their goal is to reach out and sell products and services to their target audience. Traditional listing methods such as enlisting your business in yellow pages are now obsolete as people within local communities automatically go online and check out for businesses through local search engines.

Creating and claiming your business listing is an effective way to receive a large number of clients and increase revenues at the same time. Aside from these primary objectives, other benefits that a business may potentially derive from a local online listing are as follows:

• Accurate information will enable you to predominate within your local community
• Establish helpful information about your business to help customers make the right purchasing decisions
• Significantly increase the visibility of your company during local search queries
• Prevent the incidence of hijacking of business information, reviews, and positive feedbacks

Although search engines such as Google assist in providing local businesses an online space to facilitate growth, it is the responsibility of their respective owners to update and verify crucial information. It is not uncommon that search engines may place inaccurate information under your business name. Taking full control over your business listing online will prove to be very helpful on the long haul. However for those who have limited know-how on local search optimization, handing the business listing and claiming tasks to experts like us will not only save you time, but increase your authority in the local search space as well!

Prior to verifying your data online, you need to assess the current standing and information that your business may have on local search pages. By determining the amount of information from major search engines, you will have the ability to assess the amount of work and optimization that need to be done right away.

Identifying your local online ranking and listing score will further motivate you to have your listing verified as soon as possible. As a business owner, your immediate goal is to have search engines index your business accordingly. In this way, customers with intentions of buying your products and hiring your services will be more than what you expected.

Step by Step Process of Claiming your Business Listing

A quick local search will readily tell you if your business is verified or not. In order to have the power to manage and control your business information online, all you need to do is follow these steps:

• Create your business listing at all major search engines that feature local search queries.
• Local Business Centers of search engines will enable you to create, modify, and update the information online. If you already have an existing account, all you need to do is fill out the blank spaces with accurate information.
• A comprehensive business profile enables search engines to associate your business accurately with information from third party data sources as well. Here are the information that you need to provide when filling out the online form:
  • Business name
  • Physical address of your shop or commercial establishment
  • Phone number
  • An optimized, keyword-rich description about the nature of your business
  • Other information that all consumers find useful and important are as follows:
  • Hours of operation
  • Payment options accepted
  • Types of products and service that are offered
  • Recognitions such as certifications, awards, etc.
  • Image of storefront and amenities that can found at your business establishment.

Once these important data is fed into search engine local business centers, you will then need to verify your identity through sms or through snail mail. Once the verification is complete, you will now have the ability to manage and control your business listing online.

Editing and Updating your Local Business Listing

As business owners, you are responsible to periodically check your local business listing. If the information generated by a search engine’s map listing is inaccurate or inadequate, you have the ability of claiming it and optimizing it further. In addition, you may also want to check third party sources and assess the information that they have about your business or company. Once all the information is accurate, you may now update your business listing if there were changes or you would like to add new information on top of what you already have in various search engine databases.

One important note that business owners need to remember is to never create a duplicate business listings during the verification period. If you have duplicate or multiple listings, the best thing to do is update all of them with your basic business information. The search engines will automatically update your listing and merge the information for your business into one relevant business listing instead.

The process of claiming your business listing is well worth doing as it will undeniably improve the visibility of your business when potential clients perform their local search query!