You get only 2 seconds to convince your visitors about your relevance. If you fail, the visitor clicks the back button and leave your site for good. Here’s how you can stop it.
Directory Listing is one of the most fundamental requirements to help major search engines crawl, index and list your website in their database. This is the reason why Directory Submission is still considered to be one of the effective ways to increase your rankings on Google Search. However, you ought to be super picky about which directory is worth the listing as Google doesn’t take most of the so-called business directories seriously at all. In fact, Google consistently penalizes and bans hundreds of such low quality directories from its database. If you don’t trust me, read this post.
Therefore, it makes sense that you must ensure that you are listed on the directories that are highly quality and matter to major search engines. During my research, I found that Moz allows all US local businesses to list their business on their directory named as GetListed.org.
- When you log on GetListed.org, you can check if you website has been already listed on Google, Bing and other local search engines. This is pretty simple – you just need to enter your business name and the zip code. Please, bear in mind that this tool is only meant for local businesses in the United States. So, if your business is located outside the US, you won’t see any results for your entry.
- The tool may show you multiple results with names that are pretty close to yours. But, don’t worry- you need to choose the one that is only the most accurate in terms of citation data i.e, business name, business address, zip code, and phone number.
- Once the data is entered, you will need to sign up with the tool to go further and save the listing with GetListed.org.
- Once you are listed, you can see your listing has been assigned with a certain score. The score is essentially an indicated of how consistent your citation data is across the local search ecosystem. Moreover, the score is also based on the number of local directories your business has been listed on.
If you’re a brand-new local business or not listed on the major local directories in the US, this is a great way to start your SEO campaign.
Updated: 22nd March, 2015
Moz acquired Getlisted.org in March, 2014. So Getlisted.org now redirects to moz.com/local.
However, you can still check your their tool and see your score.
Please, be informed that currently, the service is only meant for the US-based businesses only. Hence, if your business is located outside the USA, you won’t find any results for search in their tool.
How to Improve Your Local SEO Score
To begin with create a profile by signing up with the following servies. All of them are free for sign up.
Manta.com
Nsphere.net
Wanderful.com
Thumbtack.com
Angieslist.com
dnb.com
Insiderpages.com
Tupalo.com
Groupon.com
Foursquare.com
Citysearch.com
supermedia.com
Dexknows.com
tomtom.com
Yellowpages.com
Local.yahoo.com
Acxiom.com
Aol.com
Mapquest.com
Yext.com
Yellowbook.com
Hotfrog.com
Comcast.com
Mojopages.com
Yellowbot.com
Whitepages.com
Botw.org
Tripadvisor.com
Getfave.com
Kudzu.com
elocal.com
Next step is to ensure your business citations are exactly the same across all of these profiles. In other words, the name of your business (as you want it to be found online), the representative, address with PIN code, and the phone number should appear exactly the same way as it appears on your website’s contact page. This is VERY IMPORTANT to gain high score in local SEO search.
Likewise, make sure you don’t have a duplicate entry in any of these websites. Duplicate entries are usually possible when two different teams in your company have created a profile for your business. In some cases, you have mistakenly created a second profile when you have moved to a new address and forgotten to delete the old profile with old citations.
Luckily, the Moz Local tool will detect any duplicate entry and show it to you so you can simply contact the website owner and get it removed or fixed as the case may be. This way your business citations will remain current and local SEO-compliant for good.
If you want to help with the above service, please feel free to contact us and we can help you get a high score within a week.