Increase your local traffic by updating your local search listings

• SEO
• Website Maintenance

We’ve touched on the importance of local search listings in a previous post. This week we’re going to provide a practical tool to help you keep your local search listings consistent and make it easier to do the updates.

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We’ve touched on the importance of local search listings in a previous post. As a quick summary, you need to:

1. Complete your listing fully
2. Be sure to include photos and video if you have them
3. Be consistent in your formatting of the data
4. Use your main phone number. Don’t be tempted to use tracking numbers.

This week we’re going to provide a practical tool to help you keep your local search listings consistent and make it easier to do the updates.

Complete the Search Form to store the data for future reference

For our local search clients, we create a spreadsheet to store the data. Click the link to download a version of the spreadsheet that you can use. It has 2 tabs. One to store your listing information and one to track which websites you've submitted to.

Store this information and copy and paste the information when you add your listing to a local directory. This not only helps you do the work faster, but it also helps you to keep the data consistent.

I would also recommend keeping a copy of the photos and or video that you upload in single folder on your local computer. That way you have them handy when you get ready to update your listing or add a new one and don’t have to spend the extra time searching your hard drive for each one.

Some local directories to consider

Here are some standard local directories and local business review sites to get you started:

• Google+ Local
• Bing Places for Business
• Yellow Pages Online
• InsiderPages
• Brownbook.net
• Yelp
• Citysquares
• Merchant Circle
• Hotfrog

You would also want to search for industry specific directories for your particular industry. Here are a few ideas on how to find them. You can:

• Look for industry associations
• Search for your competitors to find where they are listed
• Do a search like “[your industry name] directory” (of course you would replace the [your industry name] with the industry name you are searching for).

Conclusion

Growing your local search presence isn’t difficult. It just takes time and effort. Do a little bit each month and you’ll start to see your local traffic grow.

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