{"id":988,"date":"2015-03-20T01:02:13","date_gmt":"2015-03-20T01:02:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/?p=988"},"modified":"2021-07-02T09:54:51","modified_gmt":"2021-07-02T09:54:51","slug":"seo-for-beginners-part-six-local-seo-directory-listings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/seo-for-beginners-part-six-local-seo-directory-listings\/","title":{"rendered":"SEO for Beginners \u2013 Part Six \u2013 Local SEO & Directory Listings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome back! We are moving onto another important area of Search Engine Optimization. So far we\u2019ve covered website optimization<\/a>,\u00a0keyword research<\/a>,\u00a0social media marketing<\/a> , link building<\/a> and reviews<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ready to dive in? Okay, let\u2019s go! It probably goes without saying, but I\u2019ll say it anyway\u2026 optimizing for local search is important if you\u2019re targeting a local audience. Even if you aren\u2019t targeting a local audience, however, you\u2019ll want to follow these steps to help your SEO campaign.<\/p>\n

First and foremost, consistency and accuracy are KEY! HOW you are listed is JUST as important as WHERE you are listed.<\/p>\n

To start, you\u2019ll want to make sure the online listings that you DO HAVE are accurate. Some SEO professionals refer to the trinity known as \u201cNAP\u201d, standing for Name, Address, and Phone Number.\u00a0 Sometimes you\u2019ll see NAP + W and the \u201cW\u201d stands for website. If you\u2019ve ever moved your business, changed your business name, phone number or website, I hope you\u2019re paying attention. Maintaining accurate listings is essential to SEO. If Google finds conflicting information, it is likely to rank your website lower.<\/p>\n

Every year leading SEO firm MOZ performs a study on ranking factors. Here are the results from its 2014 study…<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As you can see “External Location Signals” account for approximately 15% of online ranking factors. You notice “NAP consistency” listed specifically.<\/p>\n

Looking for any easy way to check the status of your online listings? Check out Yext.com<\/a> and fill out your business name and phone number. Yext will perform a quick search of the top online directories and provide you with a report of how your business is listed. Yext will offer to fix your inaccurate listings, however, this can be very costly. I would recommend that you just use this as a guide to fix inaccurate listings. This could take some time and you\u2019ll need to go to each website one by one, but it will benefit your rankings in the long term to get all inaccuracies fixed.<\/p>\n

Not sure where to start in terms of signing up for new directories? Check out this list of the top 55 local US search directories:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Google Places (aka Google+ Local)<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. Facebook<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. LinkedIn<\/a><\/li>\n
  4. Yellowpages.com<\/a><\/li>\n
  5. Yelp<\/a><\/li>\n
  6. Local.com<\/a><\/li>\n
  7. WhitePages.com<\/a><\/li>\n
  8. Manta<\/a><\/li>\n
  9. SuperPages<\/a><\/li>\n
  10. CitySearch<\/a><\/li>\n
  11. Patch<\/a><\/li>\n
  12. City-Data<\/a><\/li>\n
  13. MerchantCircle<\/a><\/li>\n
  14. Yellowbook.com<\/a><\/li>\n
  15. Yahoo Local<\/a><\/li>\n
  16. Mapquest<\/a><\/li>\n
  17. DexKnows<\/a><\/li>\n
  18. Yellow.com<\/a><\/li>\n
  19. BBB.org<\/a><\/li>\n
  20. ServiceMagic<\/a><\/li>\n
  21. Angieslist<\/a><\/li>\n
  22. AreaConnect<\/a><\/li>\n
  23. AmericanTowns<\/a><\/li>\n
  24. BizJournals<\/a><\/li>\n
  25. LocalGuides<\/a><\/li>\n
  26. 411.com<\/a><\/li>\n
  27. Insider Pages<\/a><\/li>\n
  28. MagicYellow<\/a><\/li>\n
  29. Hotfrog.com<\/a><\/li>\n
  30. Mojopages<\/a><\/li>\n
  31. Switchboard<\/a><\/li>\n
  32. Demandforce<\/a><\/li>\n
  33. MojoPages<\/a><\/li>\n
  34. Bundle<\/a><\/li>\n
  35. Metromix<\/a><\/li>\n
  36. Yellowbot<\/a><\/li>\n
  37. Kudzu<\/a><\/li>\n
  38. ShowMeLocal<\/a><\/li>\n
  39. ChamberofCommerce<\/a><\/li>\n
  40. LocalPages<\/a><\/li>\n
  41. HopStop<\/a><\/li>\n
  42. YellowMoxie<\/a><\/li>\n
  43. Phonenumber.com<\/a><\/li>\n
  44. Yellowise<\/a><\/li>\n
  45. GetFave<\/a><\/li>\n
  46. Tupalo<\/a><\/li>\n
  47. ZipLocal<\/a><\/li>\n
  48. EZLocal<\/a><\/li>\n
  49. CitySquares<\/a><\/li>\n
  50. USCIty.net<\/a><\/li>\n
  51. LocalDatabase<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    When filling out new directory listings (or updating old listings) make sure to add as much information as possible and fill out ALL possible fields. \u00a0In addition to this list, seek out directories relevant to your industry.<\/p>\n

    I hope this month’s blog post provides you with a good starting point for your local SEO campaign.\u00a0 As usual, please email me, Amy Grishman, with any SEO questions you might have.\u00a0 www.socialfocus.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Welcome back! We are moving onto another important area of Search Engine Optimization. So far we\u2019ve covered website optimization,\u00a0keyword research,\u00a0social<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=988"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1659,"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988\/revisions\/1659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}