Garbage in, garbage out. It’s the Golden Rule of databases and the subsequent result of any query searching amidst the ruins of inaccurate material. As today’s purveyor of everything there is to know, Google needs to run a ship that’s tight. She rewards good behavior, accuracy, and garden-fresh information.
Question:
What’s the foundation of key information you can feed the search engines?
Answer:
Local listings.
Question:
What’s the catch?
Answer:
There can’t be missing locations, duplicate listings, or unclaimed profiles. They are adversely impact effective SEO.
Question:
What other benefits do accurate local listings provide?
Answer:
They allow you to monitor your company’s reputation.
Digital marketing roads lead to optimization. Your online presence. Best advice is to avoid being your own worst enemy. You may not have an in-house marketing team to stay on top of everything, (we are always happy to provide a proposal to be your contracted one!), but control the things you can. Having accurate local listings is the low hanging fruit of optimization and reputation management.
According to Connectivity.com, local listings do more than you know:
“Listings are the secret marketing weapon that many businesses don’t even use…or understand. Some businesses claim listings incorrectly. Some make mistakes by trying something “creative” such as renaming their business a few times on a few sites (don’t do this!) Other businesses ignore listings all together because they are busy planning next year’s product rollout.
Here are a few things listings do: clean, precise listings improve SEO; they can lead to stellar ROI; and correct listings improve the customer experience.”
Still, considering the fact it appears a fairly straightforward task to maintain local listings, there is an insane percent (as in well over 80%) of online listings that detail incorrect/missing addresses, phone numbers, URLs.
So it is a wide net that must be cast over the World Wide Web to rope in and resolve those discrepancies. It may sound daunting with all the platforms and directory listings out there, but it can be done.
Reputation Management Technology to the Rescue
Remember Apple’s classic 2009 iPhone campaign: “There’s An App for That”? It was obviously zillions of apps ago, but was there any phrase more reassuring? More capable of making you feel like a Roman emperor? Master of all you surveyed? No.
As thriving members of our at-a-glance-society, we love a dashboard. This is why we leverage slick tools to provide our reputation management services. With these types of software we can analyze the integrity of clients’ local listings and get real time updates about their customer reviews so they can either be celebrated or addressed!
The Golden Rule we just made up for reputation management:
Never let negativity languish. The only chance at resolution is to know when it happens.
But Wait There’s More…from Google
Search engines (with their penchant for algorithm updates) are currently placing a premium on accurate business listings. The rampant use of mobile devices accessing cellular data (as opposed to Wi-Fi) while users are out and about demonstrates the demand for people seeking local goods and services. As Google’s job is to supply this demand, the need for local accuracy is heightened.
The limelight at the end of the tunnel? Even if your office is physically disorganized and you are not exactly functioning in a paperless environment, get your online act together. Control the things you can with stellar reputation management and accurate local listings.
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