Visibility

A local search takes place when a consumer uses a major search engine, an online Yellow Pages or specialized Internet directory to find local products or services by entering keywords alongside a geo-modifier. Local results are presented in three ways; traditional Web site links, sponsored links and in the local business listings (aka: “The One Box’s”) of the major search engines.  
Local search engine business listings often get top-of-page priority presentation in the organic rankings of the major search engines (think Google Maps, Yahoo! Local or MSN Local), and if you’re a national or regional business with local presence there’s a chance you already have content there. However, because most online local business content comes from outdated offline sources, there is a higher likelihood that your business information is being represented inaccurately, incompletely or missing altogether, and left unmanaged this problem will not correct itself.

If you’re not familiar with the ins and outs of local search engine business content management, it’s time to get up-to-speed. The concept may seem simplistic, but if your business, products and/or services offered aren’t accurately, consistently and compellingly represented with deep, descriptive keyword content across a wide spread of local search engines, that means your competition may be winning. In order for traditional retailers and local service companies to remain viable in an environment where the selection of locally offered goods and services is increasingly driven by online research, marketers must turn some of their resources towards local search engine content visibility.

ComScore research shows that nearly 90 percent of local shoppers are researching online and buying offline. In fact, the numbers around this consumer dynamic have grown so quickly that it was given its own acronym, “ROBO,” (Research Online Buy Offline) at SMX event this past summer. What this trend suggests is that marketers must infiltrate the local search ecosystem with the accurate, enhanced and comprehensive business listing content consumers need to be able to make informed decisions when searching for local products and services online. Driven by consumer demand, this is also the content that local search engines find valuable and rank highly.

While business listing information starts with the basics (physical location, name of business, phone number and address), for maximum online local search engine visibility, these listings must be enhanced and complimented with essential content that can differentiate a business from its competition. Distinction in local search comes from including the detailed information that consumers are specifically searching for i.e.; brands carried, products offered, hours of operation, payment methods accepted, special accreditations, and any special services, such as valet parking or delivery. Additionally, by adding your Web site URL to each local business listing, you can create a highly relevant source of inbound links to support your corporate-site’s SEO efforts.

This still seems pretty simple, right? Wait. That’s only half the battle.

Before you submit your enhanced business listings into the local search engines of the three majors, bare in mind that while most consumers begin local searches there, they may end up on hundreds of other local search engines such as Interactive Yellow Pages, or sites focused on a single vertical (think “cars” for example) or a single neighborhood (say, Brooklyn’s Park Slope). Interactive marketers owe it to themselves and their brands to check out how their business listing information is being consumed across a wide variety of local search engine properties.

There’s a chance that once you recognize the myriad of local search engines displaying your information, you may feel the task of managing your business listing content across that landscape is daunting. It is. If you don't want to take on the labor-intensive process of in-house local search engine content management, there are cost-effective single-source providers that can collect, enrich, optimize, distribute and manage your listings for you. For maximum reach, any provider you select should have distribution partnerships with specialized local search engines, a long list of Internet Yellow Pages as well as the local properties of the three major search engines.

Now that you have a deeper understanding of the importance of local search engine business content management, don’t abandon any local SEO or paid-search efforts. Local business listings management is part of a larger picture and can be used to round out your search engine marketing campaign. The bottom line is that local search engine visibility should be an essential part of any integrated online marketing campaign, and given that consumers will soon conduct nearly two billion online local searches every month, organizing an online campaign without taking local into account, hands potential business to your competitors.