Registering your website on local or niche industry-specific business listings is a vital part of maximizing your website’s presence online. If you manage a business with multiple locations, however, it can be challenging to keep track of all your online listings. There are several types of multi-location businesses, each with its own unique challenges. Here are the most common types and some tips on how to manage them effectively.
Types of Multi-Location Businesses
Franchises
Franchise businesses, with their central location or headquarters, often face the challenge of managing individual Google My Business (GMB) listings for each franchise. The key to effective management lies in the creation of a centralized system and consistency across all local listings. Tools like Yext can be instrumental in maintaining consistent, updated information across multiple listings from a single, centralized dashboard.
Individual Practitioners
For individual practitioners, such as doctors, lawyers, and accountants who are partners at a larger practice, maintaining accurate and up-to-date local business listings for each location is crucial. There are also several niche industry-specific listings where it makes sense to list individual practitioners, rather than entire practices. For attorneys, these might be sites like Avvo, Justia, or SuperLawyers. For physicians, sites like HealthGrades or WebMD’s doctor directories might be the best place to get listed. Typically, it’s best to ensure one responsible party per practice — whether it’s an office manager or an outsourced marketing agency — is responsible for keeping all of that practice’s business listing information accurate and up-to-date.
Sub-Brands/Departments
Large corporations often have sub-brands or departments that operate independently. Each sub-brand or department may have its own GMB listing as long as each has a unique physical address and phone number. It’s crucial to ensure that each listing accurately reflects the sub-brand or department’s unique identity while maintaining consistency across all the listings.
Retail and Wholesale
Retail and wholesale businesses often have multiple locations, each with its own GMB listing. In this case, it’s essential to manage each listing individually, since information like store hours or promotions may vary by store location.
Tips for Managing Multi-Location Business Listings on Google Business, Bing Places, BrightLocal, and Yext
Managing multi-location business listings on places like Google Business, Bing Places, and Yelp requires a strategic approach to ensure accuracy and consistency. Start by centralizing your listings, utilizing tools like Yext, BrightLocal, or Moz Local to manage them effectively, and monitoring each listing to ensure accuracy. Other tips include optimizing your listings with keywords, selecting appropriate listing categories, soliciting quality reviews, responding to reviews promptly, and using photos and videos to enhance your business’s online presence. By implementing these tips and tricks, you can take your multi-location business listings to the next level.
How to Properly Represent Your Business on Google Business, Bing Places, BrightLocal, and Yext
It’s important to follow certain guidelines to ensure that your business information is accurately displayed to potential customers on places like Google Business and Bing Places.
Google Business uses different methods to verify locations, such as phone, email, video, or postcard. So, it’s crucial to ensure that all your business information, like name, address, phone number, website, and hours of operation, are accurate and up-to-date. You should also select the right categories and provide good-quality images representing your business correctly. If you manage less than ten locations, you need to complete a verification process for each location individually. But, if you have ten or more locations, you can request bulk verification.
Similarly, Bing Places, Yelp, Apple Maps, and data aggregators (sites like Data Axle and FourSquare that collect, distribute and sometimes even sell business listing data) also have business representation guidelines. Following these guidelines is essential to ensure your business is accurately represented to potential customers.
Why is Local Business Listing Maintenance Important?
Widely and accurately representing your business information online is an important component not only for search engine optimization (SEO) efforts, but also to ensure your customers can quickly and easily access important information they need to contact your business. Sharing incorrect or outdated information may turn off or confuse customers, resulting in a poor experience with your business or brand. Whether you choose to use a paid tool or a more manual in-house maintenance option, make local business listing maintenance a routine part of your marketing strategy to ensure you’re not missing out on any prospective customers trying to find you online!
