Local Listings - Imperative for SEO and Accounting Website Traffic

What is a Local Listing?

Local listings (local SEO) are essentially an electronic database of businesses that hundreds of websites, directories and apps use to distribute and share information.

Local listings help users (humans and robots) find local businesses. These listings include name of business, type of business, address, phone number, website address, hours of operation, and more so we can quickly make decisions. Essentially, local listings have replaced yellow page books and become a modern version.

Local listings are critical to getting found by prospects looking to hire your firm, drive to your office, investigate your reputation, visit your website and read your social media profiles/posts.

The main components of your local listing are:

• Business name and description
• Address, phone, email address and website address
• Business category (bookkeeping, tax, forensic, incorporation, tax attorney, payroll, etc.)
• Hours of operation (holiday hours, tax season hours, etc.) and appointment availability
• Customer reviews and rating
• Company photos
• Social media platforms (blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.)
• Method of payment accepted

These listings are critical to website traffic from search engines (Google, Apple, Bing), data aggregators, and major directories (Yelp, Facebook, Waze, YP, Superpages, TomTom, Uber, etc.).

What is Local Listings SEO Management?

Local Listings SEO is the process of optimizing your business within the local listings ecosystem and ensuring that all of your information provided is accurate and complete.

The foundation of Local Listings SEO is your NAP, which is an acronym for business name, address and phone number. Over time, the components of NAP have expanded well beyond Yellow Page listings to include online reviews, pictures, social media, methods of payment accepted, hours of operation, etc.

Accuracy and completeness of your local listing are essential to maximize your visibility. However, small inconsistencies like a change to your firm name, phone number, website address and office address have negative consequences. For example, Google sees inconsistencies as troublesome and will lower your placement. Even small changes like your hours of operation create fear, uncertainty and doubt for search engines. Google fears that if they send a prospect to the wrong location or phone number is wrong, the negative impression is on Google's reputation, not your accounting business. To avoid damaging Google's reputation, they see inconsistency as problematic and will lower your visibility.

Over 75% of consumers here in the US use Google when looking for business information. And with the growth of mobile search (think Apple and Android), your local listings SEO needs to be accurate and consistent everywhere, especially for consumers that use keywords like "accountant near me."

How Local Listings SEO Works

Local Search algorithm's use these factors to determine the best match:

• Relevance - how close do the keywords match (e.g., NYC CPA, LA EA, tax attorney near me, etc.)
• Distance - how close are they (distance matters to Google)
• Prominence - how confident are they (number of reviews, years in existance, website traffic, etc.)
• Accuracy - consistency and completeness (even Suite vs # vs 3rd Floor)
• Updating information - regular updates over older NAP info (recency matters)

Supporting your local listings with visually appealing photos matter too. Lately, Google My Business is now requiring exterior and interior photos, high resolution pics, validation and videos.

Another component of prominence is how many online reviews does your accounting practice have (Google, Yelp, Facebook, etc.), your responses, what awards have you won (Clutch, Expertise, etc.), your average star rating and how many local search websites recommend your firm. Online reviews matter to prominence.

Local Listings Matter More Than You Realize

Local Listings Management are no longer a "nice to have" feature. Because most searches online are local in nature (accountant near me, EA near Times Square, etc.) and local listings accuracy is imperative, Local Listings Management is far more important than they used to be, and more complicated.

If you are a do-it-yourselfer and willing to make continuous updates, we recommend using BrightLocal or Moz Local. If you would rather outsource this task, then consider Build Your Firm's Content Marketing in a Box and we'll do it for you.