Take Control of Your Online Business listings

You have an incredible website, totally maximized to serve your customers’ every need, and it looks amazing too! Not surprising for all the work that went into it. But even as your website shines like a beacon of truth, dozens of other websites and apps may be offering out-of-date or just plain wrong information about your business.

You know it’s true because you’ve seen it on business listing sites like Yelp, Yahoo, and YP, to mention just a few of the more than 100. You’ve even tried to correct some of it, often with little success. So, you’ve promised yourself you will get to the job of manually correcting all the wrongs you can find, just as soon as you have some free time. Still working on that free time, aren’t you?

Meanwhile, your company is losing business. Potential customers are being misdirected by a bad address or contact information, they lose interest thanks to an incomplete or old listing of your products and services, or there’s nothing provided at all, so they move along to the next listing.

Is It Doable? Taking Control of Your Online Business LISTINGS

Now you’re about to launch a whole new product or service line and want to make sure your brand gets all the coverage it deserves and that your information is updated everywhere. No one will blame you for dragging your cyber feet because everyone can imagine what an overwhelming and tedious job it will be. But with the passing of time, those updates and corrections become more and more important. In this world of instant gratification, potential customers want information now, so making them dig for it won’t do your brand any good. In fact, it might do real harm.

One of the greatest challenges is finding all the websites listing your company. Another is figuring out how each works so that you can make the changes necessary. What starts out simple may turn out to be more difficult than first thought, requiring repeated sign-in procedures and verifications and other steps that take more time than you can afford. Worse yet, your competitors can access your listings and change the information you just corrected.

Online Business LISTINGS: Fill Out ALL the Info!

In addition to ensuring your information is correct and current, it’s also essential that customers get all the information they need. How many times have you searched for a company only to find they haven’t listed their store hours or driving directions? Or maybe you want to know what credit cards a restaurant accepts while you’re on the way via Uber and need to know before you give up your car.

Depth of information is as important as correctness so that’s one more thing to remember about the task at hand. It might surprise you that the No. 1 way to increase your listing views is by simply including your website URL. Seems like a no brainer but it’s actually fairly common to see a listing with no URL. Other viewer incentives (in addition to hours, directions, payment options and URLs) are your logo, Twitter handle and Facebook URL, images, videos, email, product lists, special offers, and more.

Oh, one more thing before you get started: don’t forget to update all the information for each of your company’s branches or franchises. Every one of your business or corporate entities deserves to show their best face to the world, so making changes across the board will allow them to do just that.

Now, take a deep cleansing breath … let it out slowly … and click below to find out how InVerve Marketing & Web can help you get everything updated quickly and keep it up to date and protected going forward. Trust us, you won’t believe how easy it is!