Claiming your own online local business listings is at the core of any successful digital insurance marketing presence. If you follow the best practices, you’ll see increased referral traffic to your website – and even phone calls – from your listings at these sites.
What Are Local Business Listing Pages?
Local business directories contain your business name, address, phone number, and other details. Many of the most popular will also have a place for customer reviews. The most popular listings include Google+ Local, Bing Places, Internet Yellow Pages, and Yahoo! Local. All of these are free.
You can claim and setup your Google page here: http://www.google.com/business/
Why Claim Yours?
Your insurance business’s presence is increasingly dependent on local listings. Your “findability” goes up with the amount and quality of your listings. You will receive more traffic and potential customers.
Business listing directories share data with each other, so the more listings you’ve claimed, the more Google and other search engines trust you. This can increase your online rankings and traffic as well.
Do You Qualify?
To qualify for a local listing, you must have all of the following:
- A business name.
- A local phone number that matches your city of location.
- A dedicated physical street address. PO boxes do not qualify.
Best Practices For Optimizing Your Business Listings
- Be Consistent: It is very important to be consistent with your essential information, including business name, address, and phone number. These should be exactly the same across all of your listings.
- Choose The Right Categories: You are usually allowed between two and ten business categories. It’s essential to select as many as you can that are truly relevant to your insurance agency or business.
- Claim The Most Important Listings: Beyond your essential listings at Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Facebook, you should claim listings from a handful of other sources. The following are named by local ranking authority Moz.com as the top listings for the insurance vertical: yellowpages.com, superpages.com, dexknows.com, calculateme.com, manta.com, indeed.com, and local.yahoo.com.
- Beware Of Duplicate Listings: Make sure you haven’t mistakenly listed yourself twice in the same directory. It can cause confusion in the local listing “ecosystem”, actually hurting your rankings overall.
