What’s usually the first thing you do when you’re looking for, say, a restaurant? Unless you’re north of 90 years old, chances are you don’t carry around a giant Yellow Pages book with you everywhere you go. 

Most adults, 91% to be exact, typically use search engines to find information. In the digital age we currently live in, one of the most important things you can do for your business is make sure your business’s online presence is strong so that it appears first when someone Googles, “XYZ near me.”

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What is Google Business Profile (aka Google My Business)?

Google Business Profile, formerly known as Google My Business, is a free tool offered by Google that gives your business a digital profile featuring photos, reviews, posts, and more. Previously, when you created a Google My Business account, it gave your business more visibility through Google Search and Maps. Today, the core functionality has changed, but there have been tons of improvements and new additions to the possibilities of Google My Business Profiles. Having a Google Business Profile and optimizing that profile for online search is considered almost necessary for driving organic traffic to your website.

And yes, we know that Google isn’t the only search engine out there. But, did you know that Google currently has around 92% of search engine market share? That’s like… a lot. And, if that didn’t catch your attention enough, studies have shown that 50% of consumers who conduct a local search on their phone, most likely on Google, visited a store within that same day. 

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More Important Facts about Local Listing Management:

• 63% of all shopping begins online. 
• 86% of consumers search a business’s location on Google Maps.
• Around 95% of customers read reviews about a business before making a purchase.

So, yeah, you definitely want your business listed on Google, and you also want to make sure that local listing is managed regularly by some sort of Google My Business management service or another local listing management service to stay relevant and up-to-date. 

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What is local listing management?

Local listing management is how you ensure that your business’s location data remains constant across online directories, websites, and other customer-facing platforms. It’s a continuous process that’s necessary for maintaining accurate information about your business across digital platforms.  It helps increase your local search visibility and create a positive reputation online, which could make or break your business. 

There are several ways to execute local listing management. You can do it yourself if you have the time and resources. To learn more about optimizing your local presence through a Google Business Profile and SEO, check out our Getting Right with Your Local Presence blog. You can also manage your local listing through a digital marketing agency. 

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How Momentum helps your business

Momentum is a local listing management service powered by Marketwake. This service keeps tabs on your local listings, reviews, performance, and more so that your business can gain visibility, grow revenue, and attract more customers. Small changes like updating regular and holiday hours and noting holiday closures usually have to take place manually across multiple channels like Google Business Profile, Yelp, Facebook, and more. Momentum can do this for you, and it also includes location-specific landing pages. It supports listings on Google Business Profile, but it also supports listings on over 50 other impactful sites (Amazon Alexa, Apple Maps, Microsoft Bing, Facebook, Waze, Yelp, and more) which covers over 96% of all local listings searches and traffic. But, why is this important for your business?

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Rank higher

By making sure all of your business’s information is accurate and up to date through local listings management, Momentum helps your business website rank higher in Google search results. If Google finds discrepancies in your listing data (i.e. incorrect hours or address, for example), it will not be able to trust that your information is accurate. This will ultimately make the chances of your website showing in search results less likely. 

By utilizing Momentum as a local listing management tool, you can both avoid that problem altogether and also optimize your website for more organic traffic. Accurate information in combination with strategic SEO efforts will ultimately increase your reputation online and drive more traffic to your website. In the age of online shopping, more web traffic means more potential customers, both online and in person. Making sure your website is optimized for SEO so you can rank higher is pretty much considered vital for your business, especially around the holiday season.

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Maintain local listings for accuracy

Did you know that 82% of consumers conduct “near me” searches when they’re looking for a specific product or service, and 90% are likely to click on the first set of those results? With those kinds of metrics, you’ll definitely want to make sure that your business appears first on a Google search. As we mentioned earlier, accuracy is one of the most important ways to accomplish this, and Momentum can help you with this.

Momentum identifies and updates any inconsistencies in your digital listings and reports back any updates and engagement on a monthly basis. With that kind of oversight, you can ensure that your business’s website will gain visibility, grow revenue, and attract more customers.

Does Momentum sound like something that could benefit your business? Let’s chat.