Tidying Up Your Online Business Listings

Just like the shed in the backyard, your online business listings could use a bit of tidying up. But when facing down multiple listings with errors or old information, where does a business owner start? Fortunately there are few key areas you can target to tidy up your listings: Google My Business, your website and online business directories.

Before getting started, you should create a consistent and uniform business profile to use when registering with online directories – this means having the same name, address, phone number, business category and company description to use across all your listings.

After completing your profile, it’s a good idea to get registered with Google My Business (GMB) if you haven’t already. Claiming your business on GMB not only provides Google with important data about your business (name, address, phone number and more) it also gives people an opportunity to interact with your business via images of the outside and inside of your store and engage with your business via customer reviews.

Next comes tidying up your website. The main things to focus on are the basics like name, address and phone number on your home page. Your contact information should be text on the page, and not text in an image, because search engines can’t read text in images. Your website should also be using keyword phrases that line up with how people search for your product or services and incorporating them throughout the website to include the written content, page titles, page descriptions and URLs. Also, most people use their smartphones to do their internet searching, so having a mobile-friendly website is important to capture the attention of those folks. There are other factors associated with your website that help with your online visibility, but too many to cover here. If you want to learn more about how to improve your website, consult with your local Wyoming Small Business Development Center Network advisor.

Once you’ve tidied up your business listings, you can tackle online directories. There are several directories you can register with, including industry-specific ones that we don’t have time to cover. However, we will focus on a few to get you started. In addition to starting your GMB page, creating (or claiming) a Facebook page, creating a profile on Yelp and registering with marketing and data company Acxiom are good first steps.

These steps aren’t exactly a full “spring clean,” but they are important steps to getting your business listings tidied up. If you’re interested in learning more on how to clean up your business listings, tidy up your website, and other ideas on improving your online presence then contact your local Wyoming SBDC business advisor.

ABOUT THE WYOMING SBDC NETWORK:

The Wyoming Small Business Development Center Network (SBDC) is a partnership between the University of Wyoming, the Wyoming Business Council and the U.S. Small Business Administration. The SBDC offers an enormous amount of business expertise to help Wyoming residents think about, launch, grow, reinvent or exit their business.