1. Importance of Online Listings
February 11th 2019
Importance of Online Listings
for: Customer Presentation
Baystate Websites and Marketing LLC
Bob Gyles, Pres.

2. Google’s Dilemma
The history of local search really starts in the early 2000's, and it starts with Google actually facing a big dilemma...

3. How can we return local business data in search?
Google’s Dilemma
Print Directories go online
Google gathers data
Google presents data
EARLY 2000’S
Google Has a problem...
How can we return local business data in search?
Google in the early 2000's realized that they wanted to return local businesses in their local search queries. The problem that Google has is that not a lot of local businesses had websites in the early 2000's because web development was so expensive, as it was fairly new. So, Google was sitting and their scratching their heads saying, "Okay, how do we get local businesses into our search engine results?"

4. Print directories begin to upload their data online
Google’s Dilemma
Google gathers data
Google presents data
Print Directories go online
Print directories begin to upload their data online
Fortunately for Google around this time, old-school print directories, so the original Yellow Pages, had started taking their business data offline, and started uploading this online onto these new online business directories.

5. Google builds their own database of local businesses
Google’s Dilemma
Print Directories go online
Google presents data
Google gathers data
Google builds their own database of local businesses
Google looks at this data and says, "Brilliant, now I've got access to all of these local businesses in a structured data format that I can go out and crawl." All Google basically does is go out, crawl these online directories, and then store it in their own database...

6. Google launches Google Maps + Google My Business
Google’s Dilemma
Print Directories go online
Google gathers data
Google presents data
2005
Google launches Google Maps + Google My Business
This then leads to the launch of, what we now know as, Google Maps and Google My Business in So, Google does all this work and then launches Google Local in 2005.

7. Google’s new problem: How accurate is this data?
TODAY
So, after Google launches Google Maps they've got a new challenge, and the new challenge is look, how accurate is this data? How much trust can I put in this data? And, ultimately, how do I rank these local search results? If Google's got a website and lots of different data around a business it's fairly easy for them to rank that in their search results. When Google doesn't really have a website for all these businesses and all it has is the address information they've got to come up with an entirely new algorithm. The only real data that Google has to go off is the business name, address, and phone number.

8. Google has this data about your business:
Name: Joe’s Plumbing
Address: 123 Fake St, Brooklyn, NY
Zip Code: 10001
Phone Number:
Opening Hours: 9am-5pm
Google then goes on to say, "Okay, I've got this data about your business." So, we have a look at this example of, Joe's Plumbing, what Google says is, "Okay, this is all of the data that I have in my database about Joe's Plumbing, but I'm not sure how much trust I should put in this data. I'm not sure how trustworthy and valid this business is."

9. Google crawls other
directories to confirm your data is accurate and your business is trusted
Name: Joe’s Plumbing
Address: 123 Fake St, Brooklyn, NY
Zip Code: 10001
Phone Number:
Opening Hours: 9am-5pm
So what Google then does is it goes out to other top directories to reconfirm the data that it has about your business. Google's going out and saying, "Okay, YP, yeah that looks good..."

10. The more complete and accurate your data is the more Google trusts your business and the greater visibility you’ll have on Google
Name: Joe’s Plumbing
Address: 123 Fake St, Brooklyn, NY
Zip Code: 10001
Phone Number:
Opening Hours: 9am-5pm
The more accurate and complete that data is on those directories, the more consistent it is with what's on Google My Business. This means you will have better visibility and Google will trust your local business listing. So, the more accurate and complete that data is, the better your visibility will be.

11. If your data is missing or incorrect from a key directory then Google loses trust in your business and this damages your local visibility in search results
Name: Joe’s Plumbing
Address: 6 Fake St, Manhattan, NY
Zip Code: 10005
Phone Number:
Opening Hours: Not Found
If your data is incorrect on these sites, then what it actually does is it damages your local search visibility. The reason for that is because Google isn't sure how much trust they should put in it, and if there's conflicting data sources it's saying, "Okay, this business might not be as valid and as trustworthy as I thought." This really damages your performance in local visibility in search.

12. Sites Google uses as trust signals
The truth is, is that there's not just three or four sites, there's dozens of sites that Google is using to, basically, reconfirm your location data. So, as a foundational step, it's very, very important to manage your listing data.

13. Why we should manage your listing data?
To summarize the main reasons you should manage your local listing data...

14. Improve your visibility in Google
Experts believe that listings make up 10.82% of the overall ranking factors for Google’s local pack results
They also have an impact on Google’s localized organic results making up 8.41% of overall signals
The first one is really to improve your visibility in Google. Nobody knows Google's local algorithm exactly, but what a company called Moz do is they take the top 40 local SEO experts on the planet, and they ask them a series of questions to try and ascertain movements, and ranking factors for each year. Every year they go out and say, "Right, what do you reckon the most important factors are for Google's local search algorithm?" And the most recent survey revealed that, actually, the experts believe that listings make up nearly 11% of the overall ranking factors for Google's local pack results, which is a huge amount of influence that it has in your rankings. They also have an impact on the localized organic results. These are the traditional blue links that we see below the local pack in this search engine result page. To summarize, it's going to dramatically improve your own visibility in Google.

15. Improve Referral Traffic From Directories
Google will return directories like Yelp towards the top of their results for local queries. Being listed here is crucial.
The second reason is that if you run a search for a local search query like "plumbers near me," or "lawyers near me," you'll notice is that sites like Yelp and niche directories rank very, very high on the first page. The reason for that is because they have a lot of domain authority and Google puts a lot of trust into them. By being listed here what happens is you have people searching for your services that will go into one of these directories, and if you are not listed there you're going to be losing out on lots of potential traffic that can be given to you almost for free by these sites.

16. Voice Search Optimization
Control the data sources that power voice search on Alexa, Google Home and Siri.
58% of consumers have used voice search to find local business information in the last year alone.
Optimizing your business for visibility in voice search is more important than ever, with 58% of consumers having used voice search to find local business information in the last year alone. Voice search devices like Google Home, Alexa and Siri are all connected to directories in order to return business data when you speak to them. Let’s take Google’s Home assistant for example, if I start a voice search command to say, “Okay Google, what pizza takeaways are near me?” Google is using it’s database to query your voice search through Google Maps, which will take data from a Google My Business listing. This process is similar across other platforms, with Alexa utilizing Bing and Siri using Apple Maps. Managing your business presence across voice systems is important, but relatively straightforward to implement once you are aware of what to do.

17. Improve Customer Experience Local Citations Trust Report 2018
80 % of consumers lose trust in local businesses if they see incorrect or inconsistent contact details or business names
93% of consumers say they are frustrated by incorrect information in online directories
40% of consumers would give up looking for a local business that they couldn’t find because the address was wrong online
Local Citations Trust Report 2018
The third piece is all about consumer trust. So, if one of your customers or a potential customer goes online and sees your business information incorrect they will lose trust with your business. It's all about staying consistent, and having an accurate reflection of your brands not only offline, but online as well.

18. Listing Management Service
So, this is what we do with the listing management..

19. Step 1: We audit your existing listing footprint Audit Report
Data is gathered by business directories from many different sources from utility bills to business bureaus.
So even if you’ve never submitted your business online - your data may have been gathered from an offline source.
It’s important that damaging incorrect data is highlighted and addressed quickly.
Audit Report
The first thing we do is audit your existing listing footprint. We will go out and say, "Right, what data is out there about you at the moment?" Once we know this we can understand exactly what needs to be cleaned up. We'll go out and say, "Google looks accurate, but actually Facebook, Yelp etc is incorrect." What’s surprising about this is a lot of people will say, "How do these sites have data about my business? I've never actually submitted any data to them before in my life." And the reason for that is all around how data gets shared around the local search ecosystem.
As an example, directory sites and data aggregators will take in information from energy companies from utility bills, and all of this offline data that gets sold and transferred, and scraped. What happens is even if you've got an old address on a utility bill, this will get picked up by a data aggregator that will then sell that data to these directories. So, if you leave it unmanaged it will become a mess whether or not you have actually gone and done this yourself, or whether it's just data being shared.

20. Step 2: We clean up and build listings on powerful directories
We’ll then go out to the most powerful directories to ensure your business data is listed and 100% correct
This ensures optimal visibility in Google for your business
Build & Correct Listings
So, after we've got the audit report we know exactly what we need to work on, what we then do is we go out and we clean up and build your listings in the most powerful directories. Where the listings are incorrect we'll, obviously, look to update those listings and then build out new listings where they don't exist.

21. Step 3: We build your campaign Report Campaign Report Creation
We’ll build you a unique campaign report showcasing the listings we’ve built and updated.
Campaign Report Creation
The third thing we do is we build the campaign report. So at the end of this we will hand over a finished campaign report, which lists out all of the listings that we've built and updated for you, so you can have a record of that.