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We continue our series of training materials about local SEO. In previous articles, we looked at what local SEO is and how to determine if your business is a good fit for local SEO.
Today we’ll look at the process of filling out a company profile:
In the English-speaking environment, the term “local business listing” is used, which can be translated as “business profile” or “company profile”. This is a set of information about your business that you fill out in geoservices. This is precisely the reason for the name of this concept.
The main attributes for identifying a profile in search engines are NAP:
Let's look at these parameters using a specific profile as an example. For example, a company card on a geoservice. We see the name, address and telephone number - this is enough for accurate identification.
These three attributes - name, address and telephone number - are sufficient for the system to distinguish one company from another, since at least one of these parameters will always differ between companies.
However, this is not enough for successful promotion in local search. An important aspect is not only the availability of correct data, but also its completeness:
A profile can be created not only in Google Maps and other similar services, but also on other platforms, such as:
If you have created a profile for your company in Google Maps, Yandex.Maps, 2GIS, this does not mean that links to your profile will be limited only to these services. There are also various aggregators and directories that can collect data from different sources. They can aggregate information by topic or by geographic location, sometimes even automatically adding a company.
Bottom line: the number of links to your profile grows, and the search engine collects them all.
This would seem to be a positive point, but it is important that the data matches everywhere. If, for example, one of the directories contains incorrect information, this will result in a discrepancy and the search engine may not display your profile in search results.
Keeping data up to date across all sources is one of the biggest challenges in local SEO. Checking and correcting data can take a lot of time and effort.
There may be a lot of duplicate profiles of yours online, and it's important to understand how they might appear. All situations can be divided into three categories:
Many geoservices allow users to add businesses to maps. For example, if someone remembers being in your store but doesn't find it on the map, they can add it manually. There may be errors in the data, for example, the correct phone number is missing or the wrong type of business is indicated.
Thus, a duplicate profile appears with incorrect information, and the search engine may not recognize it as part of your business.
This is a common problem for a business that changes data, such as moving to a new address or changing phone number. If the data is not updated in all profiles, the search engine will see two profile options with different data and may exclude them from search results.
Errors can also occur when combining profiles of different companies, especially if they have similar data. For example, if two companies with the same name work in the same office, this may result in their profiles being merged into one.
For small companies, a good way is to do a search audit. A simple search by name, address or phone number in a search engine can help identify old or incorrect profiles.
For a business with a large number of branches, such verification methods are too labor-intensive. In this case, you can use specialized tools such as Repometr, which will collect all the data about your branches in one place and show where the problems are occurring.
When checking your profile, it is important to consider the requirements of each geoservice. Compliance with these requirements affects your search position and ranking. It is important to ensure that all data is filled out correctly:
In the next article we will talk in more detail about the local promotion audit process.
If you have questions about local SEO, you can contact the SEO studio "SEO COMPUTER" by email info@seo.computer.
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