The Need for Ongoing Online Business Listing Management Services

If a company moves locations or has changed their name or phone number over the years, they are most likely in need of online business listing management services. The Orion Group can update the name, address and phone number (NAP) data found on internet yellow page (IYP) type websites. However, the service is not just a ‘one and done’ type of job. There is a need for the ongoing management of a company’s online business listing presence. Continue reading

The Importance of Online Business Listings & Reviews as Ranking Factors

Having correct and consistent online business listings and gaining positive reviews in those listing venues are an absolute must for obtaining higher rankings in the search engines these days, especially for companies who provide ‘local’ services such as practitioners, contractors, attorneys, repair companies, etc, or who sell products locally, for example restaurants, auto dealers, etc. Continue reading

When is a Duplicate IYP Listing Not a Duplicate?

In the world of online business listings there exists different definitions of what is a ‘duplicate listing’. Internet marketing professionals may view listings in a different light than an internet yellow pages (IYP) venue or a data aggregator might. That is understandable, since we each have different reasons for working with the data contained in said listings.

Some people understand the importance of not having incorrect/duplicate business listings in existence, however it appears that some venues or business owners seem to think it is OK for a business to be listed more than once in a particular business directory. Continue reading

How Can Online Business Listings Help My Website Rankings (vs Backlinks)

Online Business Listings (NAP)The interesting thing about citations in general is that they can help raise the trust of a company in the search engines, even without a link pointing to your website. Google sees mentions (aka ‘citations’) of your business name, address, and/or phone number (NAP) online as reinforcing the existence of the business. The web pages containing these mentions help to expand search engines’ knowledge of your business; thus adding trust.

Search engines can more confidently gather and interpret information about your business when there are more listings in existence that contain data about the business, and these listings contain proper data. For example IYP listings may contain your business’ hours of operation, description, category keywords, etc. Continue reading

Which IYP Listings are Most Important for my Business?

In the online business listing industry there is no exact standard for determining which internet yellow page (IYP) directories are the most important for citation building purposes. I’ve seen many ‘top 100’ IYP venue lists and even a ‘top 1000’ list out there somewhere. So how can we know where we should list a business online? Continue reading

How To Encourage Customers To Leave Feedback For Your Business

image of positive feedbackBusiness want more engagement with their customers. Good feedback on websites increases visitor engagement, web traffic and increases time visiting the site. This helps search engine rankings and the ability to be found on Google. It helps to foster sales, creates new opportunities, and attract loyal customers that will support businesses for years to come.

Customer engagement like feedback has already helped companies like Netflix or Amazon grow rapidly.

The most important part about engagement, however, is that it can show you where you should take your business next. Feedback, which is one of the most valuable types of engagement you can have with your visitors, can do just that.

The problem is giving your customers the means to leave feedback. You don’t want to require it from them, but you do need a way to encourage and retrieve it. Continue reading

Adding a Puerto Rico Business to Online Business Directories & Major Aggregators

What do Localeze, InfoGroup, Factual, Acxiom …. and Yahoo Local have in common? They don’t seem to support Puerto Rico based businesses. For a typical United States ‘mainland’ client, we would use our standard tool set to publish and/or correct online business listings, however, for companies doing business in Puerto Rico, this IYP correction task gets more complicated. Continue reading

Best Practices for IYP Venues to Deal with Duplicate Listing URLs

In a white paper published by Yext called ‘The Definitive Guide to Duplicate Listings‘, Andrew Shotland suggests 3 ways that IYP websites can handle duplicate listing URLs. In the section called ‘Best SEO Practices for Publishers Dealing With Duplicates’ he recommends that publishers:

1. 301 Redirect Dupes To The Canonical Listing
2. Or Use Canonical Tags
3. Or 404 Them Continue reading

Why is it important for your company’s online directory listings to be correct & consistent?

Remember back in the day, for $500 a month, you’d get a name, address and phone number in the Yellow Pages . . . just one little sentence . . . $500 bucks a month! But you paid that because everyone used the phone book back then, right?

Well, nowadays, nobody is using the phone book. Everyone is searching online and there are hundreds of different online phone books out there. Yellow Pages is still one of them, but the big ones now are Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yelp, Merchant Circle, and then everybody else. Continue reading

How to Add a Business to Google Local when the Street does not Exist on the Map

From time to time we have clients for which we need to create a Google+ Local listing for a business at a newly constructed location. Sometimes the new construction is located on a new street that does not yet exist on Google Maps.

In order to have a verified local business location on Google Maps, it is necessary to input the correct street address in the Google Local Business dashboard. One may also need a verification postcard sent to the location when phone verification method is not available. Continue reading