GEO-LISTING – LOCAL LISTING

For years businesses have used phone books to put themselves on the map so they’re visible when a consumer needs to look them up. With times changing and online becoming our go-to source for virtually all our modern needs from food and travel to health, fitness and even pet products, it’s not too often you use that big fat phone book of local business listings.

With the nature of Google’s business being search and the fact that more than 90% of online journeys start with the use of a search engine, it should come as no surprise that the various search engines provide their own local business listings.

Local Listing offers everything you need for a potential customer to find and use your services, buy your products or visit your business. Local listings are intrinsically tied to local SEO. If you haven’t yet considered this as part of your SEO strategy, now is the time to start.

In today’s digital world, the yellow-pages and classifieds of the past have become obsolete. Today, consumers by and large turn to the internet, particularly search engines, to find everything from nearby restaurants to local attorneys.

With Local Search features like Google Maps and Yahoo! Local, the trend toward local search is growing every day. Our clients have seen significant growth as our Local Internet Marketing initiatives have helped exponentially increase their business. If your business isn’t optimized for local search, you’re missing out on thousands of potential leads, clients and sales.

Some Facts to support what we are saying.

61% of local searches result in purchase
82% of local searchers follow-up offline via an in-store visit, phone call or
76% of Internet users first look at Local Search or map area of the 1st page, then Organic and last Paid
54% of Americans have substituted yellow page phone books with the Internet and local search
57% of Internet users shop online, purchase offline
It gives you a huge potential for your local business.
It can drive your business to a new height.

For example, say your firm is based in New York City and a client reviews your firm on your Google business page. If someone who is connected to your client on Google+ searches for “financial advisor in New York,” your firm has a greater likelihood of being at the top of the personalized results. It will also list your client, as having reviewed your firm. That’s huge as it’s essentially a Google-assisted referral to that new prospect. Even if the searcher has no connection to those who have reviewed your firm, profiles with many positive reviews usually rank better in search results.