Being Visible in Local Search: Education from Find8 Digital

If you've navigated to this blog, chances are you've used an internet search engine at some time in your life. In fact, chances are, you've used a search engine to find a local business the same way you would have used the Yellow Pages a few years ago. However, the convenience and availability of the internet, both mobile and stationary, has made online search the preferred method of finding businesses.

When people search for your business, what do they see? Are you easy to find? What if someone searches for your type of business, or your industry in general? Are you at the top of the list? There are four things that can quickly help your business be visible online when local consumers search for your type of business.

Citations

Citations, which nearly go hand in hand with business listings as discussed previously, are easy indicators of business visibility. And they are often incorrect. Citations are business listings on sites such as Yelp and Manta. Many of these sites use those pin points that show up on maps when you search for businesses in your area. The citation you are probably most familiar with, though, is Google Places.

Google Places

Google Places searches the web for information on businesses and slaps a location onto their map. Sometimes this location is correct, sometimes it needs to be corrected. Depending on where your business is, this map marker may give a potential client or customer a 'Street View' of your business before they visit. We've discussed before and probably will again that Google is the most commonly used search engine, so accuracy with your Google Places citation is of the utmost importance. A Google Places citation also carries reviews.

Online Reviews

Online reviews of your business work in a fairly simple way: Good reviews help your business appear higher in search results, bad reviews make your business appear farther down in search results. The newer a review is the more weight it's given, so you can overcome a streak of bad reviews given time, and you can also lose the influence of good reviews over time. It's important for your online visibility to encourage friends, family, and clients to review your business. It also helps internet users know you're real!

Social Media

Finally, having a company page on as many of the social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, etc.) as possible helps because these listings can show up in Google, and your customers are likely using some of these websites. This means that they may stumble across your business on a friend's page or while looking for business using these social media websites.

If you’d like professional help to make sure that your business can be easily seen online, call or email us today and see how Find8’s Findability service can help you get found.