Archive for bing local search
Bing for Mobile Adds Optimized Interface and Real-Time Data
Posted by: | CommentsBing continues to gain traction with new features and capabilities. The user interface for Mobile Bing is simple and very useful for the limited space on a mobile handset screen. Mashable has this great post on mobile Bing.
The Joy (and Frustration) of Updating a Bing Local Listing
Posted by: | CommentsIt seem that getting a listing verified is a pain in Bing too. I know I’ve had issues in getting my owen listing “verified” on Google more than once. Who knows what waiting to be verified or reviewed means. You sure as heck can’t talk with these guys!
Read about Matt McGee and his adventures with his wife’s real estate listing!
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Bing Local, you almost had me at “your listing has been verified.” But now I’m learning that “verified” does not necessarily mean “updated.” And, even though all is well now, a little communication goes a long way when dealing with local business owners … or when dealing with people like me, who help local business owners.
Here’s the deal: I needed to update my wife’s business listing in Bing Local. After going through the process — which was a complete joy and very impressive in every way — I thought her listing would be updated right away. There was nothing to indicate otherwise. As it turns out, the listing was updated after almost a week; not bad at all, but there was nothing telling me it would take that long.
How to Update a Bing Local Listing
Really, this is easy and almost fun — a far cry from the rigamarole Google Maps makes you go through just for minor changes.
Step One: Update and Review Your Listing
When you login to the Bing Local Listing Center, all the normal options appear: Add a new listing, edit your current listing, etc. I was editing an existing listing, so that’s the path I chose. I updated the database fields that needed updating and took advantage of Bing’s invite to add a couple “supplemental web sites.” When I was done entering the correct info and confirming categories, Bing asked me to review Cari’s listing.
This is similar to how the other local listing centers operate, too; no big deal. It got interesting after this.
Step Two: Verify Your Changes
Step two involves Bing making sure you’re authorized to change the business listing. They ask if you want to verify the changes by phone or snail mail, or, in Bing’s language, “Fastest way” and “Other way.”
I’m as impatient as the next guy, so I chose “Fastest way.” I figured a phone call would be best, even though Cari was on her way out of town as I was doing this and may not answer her phone anytime in the following week. Bing came back with another question for me: How soon did I want a call?
Whoa! Now? Five minutes? 30 minutes? I wasn’t expecting that. I chose the five minute option and then quickly called Cari (who was at an airport waiting to board a plane) to let her know what the next incoming call would be. Unfortunately, she didn’t have her ringer turned up so she missed both my call and the one from Bing. The page I was looking at shared the bad news in red:
No worries. Bing let me try again with the same time options. I texted her this time, asked her to call me, and finally explained what was going on. I told her the Bing call would come in right after we hung up the phone, then hit “Call Now” and crossed my fingers.
Saw the screen above for about 20 seconds, and then it instantly updated to this:
Hallelujah, that was fast and easy! I went out to look at her public listing and … what? The updates weren’t showing, even though we just verified everything.
Sure enough, back in the local listing center, Bing was telling me that the updates were “Pending Review.” Huh? Nowhere in the process does Bing indicate whether listings will be updated right away or not. It wouldn’t take much to fix that: Add a simple line on the screenshot above that says something like, “Your changes will be reviewed and may take a week to appear on Bing.”
Step Three: Wait
I checked back a few times in the following days and, after about a week, her listing was updated with the changes and new info that I added. That’s not too long to wait, but it was still a surprise because Bing never bothered to tell me how long it might take.
It’s been a while since I’ve updated a listing on Google or Yahoo, so their systems may be similar to this now. I don’t know. But overall, I found this process to be real simple — as it should be. But Bing can improve it even more with a quick sentence or two explaining that verifying a listing doesn’t mean it’ll be updated immediately, and indicating how long updates usually take before they appear on Bing Local.
Enhance Your Website for Local Search Success
Posted by: | CommentsWhile you don’t need a website to have a local search listing it sure helps. Nothing fancy mind you, a short WordPress blog or a couple page “brochure” site. Potential customers expect it now and the cost of entry and maintenance is so low it’s absurd to say no. Your web site will also help your local business listing ranking. Not by a lot, but as always when it comes to optimization on the web every little bit helps. According to David Mihm, an expert on local search in Portland OR about 15% of the success of a local search listing can be credited to your own website. So while you can get ranked well without a site that extra 15% will be very helpful. If your niche is fairly competitive then you’ll definitely want to consider the tweaks to your site (or having one).
Some areas to consider improving on your site listed below. You will notice right off the bat the nearly common sense nature of these suggestions. Use the product or service and city name you want to rank for frequently. As Homer Simpson might say, Doh!
As an added bonus the work you do on your website to help strengthen your local search listing will help your site rank well in organic search. In fact, in smaller niches it is quite possible to rank at the top of local search as well as in organic search. A double bonus to be sure.
- Full Address and Phone Number on a Contact Page- Every site should have a contact page. On the contact page be sure your contact information matches your local business listing.
- Inclusion of City and State in Title Tags- The meta title tags on a web page still remain an important element of on page optimization factors for the page. Having your city and state name match that of what you want to rank well for in local search can help. If you want to rank for “chicago CPA” then have Chicago in your title tags. I use these city and state contact tags on all of my pages, at the minimum have them on your contact page.
- Product Service Keywords in Titles- That same “Chicago CPA” ought to have the term CPA in his titles (and other meta tags such as description and keyword) to ensure strengthening his own site’s SEO value.
- Location Keywords in URL- If you are are creating a new domain name (URL) for a business then be sure to utilize your product or service and your location. A domain such as www.chicagocpa.com is very helpful in both site SEO and your local search listing. If you already have a domain name then add folder names with your information. As an example www.hastingsaccounting.com could have a contact page call www.hastingsaccounting.com/contactchicagocpa.html.
This is one of five articles covering the key factors in creating an effective local business listing for Google, Yahoo and Bing. Stay tuned for all of them.
Do’s and Don’ts of An Effective Local Search Listing
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s tempting to create a keyword laden local business listing stuffed with product names, locations and other juicy search terms. However, just like on your website the search engines frown on this sort of spamming and will penalize your listing.
Check out these suggestions and guidelines to ensure you both maximize your local business listing while keep in it nice and clean for the search engines.
- Represent your business exactly as it appears in the off-line world. The name on Google Maps (or the other search engines) should match the business name, as should the address, phone number and website URL.
- Use the description and custom attribute fields to provide more information about your company or business listing. This descriptive content should not appear in your business title, address or category fields.
- Provide information that best identifies your individual locations and provides users with the most direct path to your business. For example, you should provide individual location phone numbers in place of central phone lines and the precise address for the business in place of broad city names or cross-streets. Trying to game the system by dragging your map pin around will not work either.
- Only enter listings for businesses that you own or are explicitly authorized to represent. Hijacking is becoming more prevalent so please keep your hands off the competition’s listing!
- Create only a single for each physical location of your business. Do not create more than one listing for each business location, either in a single account or multiple accounts. Service area businesses, for example, should not create a listing for every town they service. Likewise, law firms or doctors should not create multiple listings to cover all of their specialties. However, if you do have multiple physical locations be sure to put the effort into customizing each location. Don’t just repeat each listing, make it unique for the location and speciality represented.
- Do not attempt to manipulate search results by adding extraneous keywords into the title field, and do not include phone numbers or URLs in the title along with your proper business name.
- When entering categories, use only those that directly describe your business. Do not submit related categories that do not define your business. For example, a limo company might properly categorize itself as “Airport Transportation”, but it would be not be appropriate to also use the category “Airport” by itself. Use each category field to enter a single category. Do not list multiple categories or keywords in one field. Categories are to place your business in the right bucket, not a keyword list field.
- Provide the one domain name that belongs to your business both in terms of the landing page and the displayed URL. Pages that redirect to another domain, or act as “click through” sites may lead to penalization. If you want to create more focused domain names for a specialty or location use a sub-domain or folder.
Spending time creating an effective local business listing that is accurate and appropriately reflects your business and products will not only please the search engines but create confidence in potential customers or clients.
Introduction to Local Search Engine Listings
Posted by: | CommentsRanking well within the search engines can mean the difference of having a extremely fast growing business and one that is struggling to stay a float. Just look at this following chart that I found on SEOSearcher.com.
If the first two links of the page get about 70% of the clicks what would having a first page listing at the top of page for your main GEO targeted keyword phrases mean to your business?
How to get to Page 1 Fast!
One of the fastest ways to get to Page 1 at the top of the page in the major search engines is by taking advantage of Local Search Listings. The search engines offer free local listings to any small business (regardless of whether you have a website or not). With very little SEO efforts your business can quickly rank for your major GEO keyword phrase on the 1st Page of the major search engines.
Now with blended search or sometimes referred to as ‘universal search’, where the local listings are appearing on the first search engine results page (SERP) for even broad term keywords this has become a standard SEO strategy.
However, do not be fooled by some companies who want to charge you a monthly on-gong fee to submit you to these FREE local listings. It’s totally not necessary to pay that kind of dough for that service when you can do it yourself in about 10 minutes.
Below are a series of videos that will teach you everything you need to know about submitting to these local directories.
Google Local Business Center
Be sure to check to see if your business is already listed with Google Local Business Center before registering a new one. This will prevent you from having a double listing. Now a ton of business’s will discover that there is a listing in Google’s LBC for them already (due to the fact that Google does pull data from some of the phone companies).
It is very important that you claim your listing because if you don’t it says “is this you..? claim your listing” and when it says that, it promotes an element of miss-trust. Once you claim your listing that goes away. Another reason to claim your listing is then you have control over the information being displayed which can be very powerful in gaining better rankings and instrumental in turning internet surfers into offline buyers.
8 Additional Google Local Listing Tips:
- Address: Make sure your address listed is closest to the core of the city you want your listing to show. If you are a contractor or work out of your home and your home address is not in that city then you may want to get a P.O. Box that has address and ZIP/Postal Code that correlates to the city core, otherwise you may find your listing not ranking as well as you’d like. NOTE: Make sure your contact address is consistent across all the web. Don’t have different sources showing different address for your business.
- Category: Make sure you choose the most relevant category for you business in the ‘choose category’ section. Getting this wrong can cause your local listing not show for the GEO keyword terms you would like.
- Title/Business Name: Make sure your major keyword product/service is in the title (which is the business name section) however, I heed a WARNING: Do Not go too far with this because you don’t want to look like a spammer. Make it look nature and make it make sense for humans who are ultimately your true audience.
- Business Description: Make sure you have your product and/or service keywords listed in your business description. Now this is not as important as the Title, but it too is important. It is the equivalent of a website’s “meta description”.
- Reviews: Get reviews! Right now it doesn’t seem to matter whether the reviews are positive or negative, just having more reviews can get your local listings to rank better. Encourage your clients/customers to writer reviews. Offer something in return for reviews.
- Content/Media: Add rich media to your local listings. Add photos & video, etc. I not sure if it improves rankings in the local listings, but it can only help turn online browsers to offline buyers.
- Coupons: Use them. This can be what differentiates your business from other competition found in the local listings. Not offering a Google coupon is risking losing business to those businesses that are. It also gives you a great way to track your sales generated from your local listing on Google. NOTE: If you have coupons listed on other local listings make sure you make them different so you can track properly.
- Double Listings: Don’t do it and make sure you only have one. Currently spammers have not be banned from this, but it will hopefully happen one day soon and when it does you don’t want to lose your listing over something so ridiculous.
Yahoo Local Listings
MSN Local Listing
SEO & Additional Local Listing Tips
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