You may have heard a strange sound being whispered in the depths of the SEO world. That funny whisper that you never really quite hear but that you think sounds something like “vocal shizznizz hissing”.

In fact, what those all-knowing whisperers are saying is “Local Business Listing”.

Why would you want to know about that, you ask? Because this is a fantastic way to get healthy, relevant local traffic to your site. 

Local business listings can help boost traffic to your site. Image Credit: Gayle Laakmann McDowell 

How to Set One Up:

• First of all you must have a Google account in order to use Google’s local business listings. So if you don’t, create one. It’s simple and easy.
• After you have signed into the local business center, click on “Add a new business.”
• The next step is incredibly important to get right. Enter all of the company details that you can and be as accurate as possible.
• In the description it would be good to try and include some top keywords that you use for your website. As always - DON’T SPAM IT WITH KEYWORDS! Be reasonable and relevant. Remember, these listings are going to be shown to potential new clients so you need to make a good impression – this means no gobbledygook! Clear and concise is the way.
• Submit (To Google’s will).
• On the next page there may be a list of businesses with similar details to yours. If any of them are your business, you may claim them and add your listing as well. If there aren’t any other listings to claim, click on “Add listing”.
• There is a wealth of information you can enter on this next additional information page. The most important thing is “Categories”. Be precise, you can only add 5 categories here. This is one of the main factors Google uses to determine the relevancy of your listing, so you need to make it as relevant as possible. There should be at least 2 highly relevant categories e.g. Italian restaurant, Italian restaurant London. You don’t have to use all 5 categories either, but the more you list the more chance your listing has of showing up in the SERPS.
• Adding photos and videos is another good way to stand more of a chance of showing up in the Universal Search results.
• Note the “Additional details” section – this is a good place to include keywords (within reason of course and only if it makes sense).
• Submit.
• After all of this has been completed you need to validate your listing. This can either be done with a phone call to the business number that you provided or via snail mail sent to the business address you provided.
• Google will contact you with a PIN number you need in order for that to happen. All you do then is login to your listing, and enter the PIN. Tally ho and you’re activated!

*Note: if you are doing this for clients, make sure they are expecting the call or postcard from Google. They will need to give you the PIN number to enter and activate the listing.

Considerations:

• One word guaranteed to make your skin tingle with pleasure – it's FREE.
• There are 2 ways to get listed on Google Local Business listings if you are not on Google Maps: submitting a listing or claiming a listing.
• If you are on Google maps and have verified your business listing you can edit it, but anyone in the community can edit or add a listing for your business. You can claim the listings if you find one that has incorrect info – you will need to verify it.
• The listing is only in the local business index AFTER it has been verified.
• There is a slight delay between being included in the index and when you validate your listing. This is because Google is comparing your data to other data it finds online for your business. The more times your data matches other data, the more confidence Google has in your listing and the more weight it will receive – this means better positions on the SERPS!
• You don’t have to add only one listing; it is possible to verify bulk local listings on Google.

Top Tips:

• It is better to verify your listing via the phone. If you choose to verify your listing via mail, you will receive a postcard that could be mistaken for junk already mail – plus it just takes a lot longer.
• You are able to see how many times your listing has been viewed when it has been indexed.
• According to Local Business Listing guru David Mihm, not many people know about local listings, despite it being around for a good few years. This is a great opportunity to get highly relevant traffic to your site before everyone else starts doing it.
• It is necessary to track your local business listing in order to determine how it is performing and if there are any changes that you could make. For example, if you have a lot of impressions but few clicks, you might want to try and change the description or category in your listing to be more relevant.
• Try and find all of the listings that already exist for your business. Make sure that the data there is accurate as well, claim them! If it is not accurate or does not match, your listing will be given less weight for the SERPS.

There are, of course, local business listings for Yahoo! as well. They have a basic option and advanced – you pay for the advanced. Unfortunately, because Google has the biggest market share, I am going to neglect Yahoo! on this subject. Although it is better to be listed whereever you can – obviously. Bing.com has local business listings although only the US can take advantage of this at the moment.

On that note there are a few companies that will add you to multiple search engine local business listings, like Add Me. They generally charge you monthly for it, but if you are not sure how to add your own listings and feel that it is worth getting someone else to do it, then by all means go for it. Just remember that adding a local business listing is free.

I would recommend that you go to David Mihm’s blog if you are interested in using local search – he has a wealth of information on there. Be careful – it’s easy to get stuck there for a good 5 hours in a sort of Alice in Wonderland tunnel of …stuff! I should know.

Because we love you and knowledge in equal amounts, we are going to share a list of some resources you can read to enlarge the section of your brain that you are now saving for Local Business Listings:

• http://www.marketingvox.com/how-to-optimizing-business-listings-in-local-search-043333/
• http://www.temi.co.uk/seo-for-google-local-business-listing-google-maps/
• http://www.ineedhits.com/local-search/local-search-listing.aspx
• http://www.hostsearch.com/articles/2008/OCT/local_search_and_local_busines_291_0.asp

Again, this is a 2 part post. The next one will include a bit more depth into how these listings work with Google.

*Update: You can see part 2 here.