I think we can all agree that getting your business to rank in the local map listings is vital if you want to get potential targeted traffic for your business or service.
Ranking in the top 3 of the map pack is imperative if you want to be in with a chance to capture your share of the local market.
One of the most important things to use if you want to have any success with this is called Citations.
These are mentions of your business on directories or sites where you can add your Name, Address, and Phone number details (NAP) along with other info like email, map, website url, photos, and also provide the option for users to leave reviews of your business which can only make the listing even stronger in the eyes of search engines.
Some of these directories are niche specific so if you're in the real estate sector, it's a good idea to get listed on some of those directories which are specific to real estate for your location.
I've seen many people add listings to these directories without taking the time to try and add as much information as they can.
For one of my clients, I had to go through all their previous listings to make sure the NAP stayed consistent to avoid any ranking volatility, and also try to completely fill them out with all the necessary information.
Some were business directories and some were property portals which needed updating and cleaning up.
Below is a sample of some of the listings:
Property Portals
Zoopla
A Place in the Sun
Spain Houses
Prime Location
Directories
Yelp
Europages
FourSquare
Lacartes
11870
Social Media
Review Sites
Trustpilot
The above is only a sample of some of the listings but there are also social media sites and regular sites where citations can be added.
Some people tend to dwell on quantity but I tend to focus on picking out quality platforms to add citations for clients and making sure that all fields are completed where the information is available.
There are several other techniques I employ when creating listings for clients, one of them is geo-targeting images but I will try to make another post soon with the advanced techniques used to rank in local map listings.
How do you rank your listing locally and what successes have you had?
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