Google Business Profiles hold utmost importance for the local SEO of your clients. You need to conduct a regular Google Business Profile (GBP) audit to improve your client's rankings.

Why is conducting this audit on a regular basis so important?

As you may already know, Google constantly makes changes to its platform. Hence, any best practices you may have put in place for your client's GBP listing may have already become irrelevant. Or, maybe, your client's contact details or hours of operation may have altered. If you notice that there is a significant amount of drop in traffic, it means it is time to perform a Google Business Profile audit.

In this post, we'll discuss in detail how to perform this audit for your clients. But before that, let's get some common questions out of the way. Let's begin:

What is Google Business Profile?

Google Business Profile, previously known as Google My Business, is a free service that allows a business to establish a profile with its contact information, location, and customer reviews.

As per the latest statistics, 64% of consumers use Google Business Profile to find contact information. For customers to find your client's business, they need a thoroughly filled-out Google Business Profile.

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Note: If your client's GBP is optimized, it will help your client outrank their competitors in local searches.

Why Should You Conduct a Google Business Profile Audit?

You should conduct a Google Business Profile audit for your client because some common errors can affect businesses of all sizes. Let's take a look at some of these errors:

A. Inaccurate Information: Your client's GBP should have the latest information of phone numbers, business hours, etc.

B. Incorrect Business Name: Ensure your client's business name is the same as their real-world business title.

C. Misleading or Fake Reviews: Fake negative reviews tarnish your client's brand reputation. Even fake positive reviews can result in the loss of trust in your client's business. Inform your clients not to review their competitors and their own business. They should also not use any review management software that doesn't follow review platform guidelines.

D. Outdated or Poor Quality Photos: Your client's profile should have accurate and high-quality photos.

E. Not Replying to Questions: Your agency needs to keep a check on Google's Q&A feature and reply to any questions. Or else, someone from the public can answer those questions and provide incorrect information.

Google Business Profile Optimization Checklist

The first step you need to take to optimize your client's GBP listing is to ensure your client's business is claimed and that their business information is accurate.

Audit your client’s GBP listing and see if your client’s business information is accurate by checking:

• Official Business Name
• City, State, Zip
• Phone Number
• Street Address
• Website Address
• Suite or Unit
• Short Business Description
• Email Address
• Business Logo
• Long Business Description
• Primary Category
• Secondary Category
• Business Hours

Tip: Another good practice you must follow is to make sure your client's address, business name, and phone number are consistent in every online mention.

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Next, follow this guide to fully audit the GBP listing of your client:

GBP Address Audit:

• Check if this is a physical location or a service area
• Check if the business is situated in the city center
• See if the address looks legitimate
• The GBP address must match the one from the citations
• Check if the city of the business location is added
• Check the zip code of the business

GBP Business Hours Audit:

• Your client’s business hours must match the ones from the citations
• The listing must display popular times (including time/day)
• The business should have up-to-date business hours (including holidays)

GBP Business Title & Website Link Audit:

• Don’t intentionally add keywords to the business name
• The business URL must match the one from the citations
• The GBP must link to a site (link to city page/root domain)
• The GBP link that links to a site should contain UTM tracking

GBP Category Audit:

• Make sure the business is using the ideal primary category
• Check which additional categories are currently in use and their order
• The GBP categories should mirror the service categories from the site
• The main site should have a page for each of the service categories

GBP Review Audit:

• The listing should display third-party reviews (such as Yelp and Facebook)
• You should reply to reviews by incorporating relevant keywords
• You’ll want customer reviews to come from Google’s Local Guides and include pictures

GBP Photos Section & FAQ Audit:

• Check the number of photos and their quality
• Photos should correctly show the business location
• There should be a good balance between photos posted by users and the business
• Make sure the content of the Q&A section has location/service keywords
• The listing should have questions and answers
• Upvote good answers that aren’t from your client

GBP Post Audit:

• Check the date of the last GBP post that shows on the listing (Ideally, one should publish once a week)
• Check the total post count
• Posts should contain content, links, and photos
• Include geo mentions in GBP posts
• Posts should link back to website pages (service pages, city pages, root domain, product pages)

GBP Sitelink Audit:

• Check if the listing has the options of booking/appointment
• Link additional profiles (Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.)
• See if you can complete a 360-degree tour for the GBP listing
• See if you can include on-site services and online appointments
• Show services/products with their prices

Local Optimization Audit

According to Google, local results are based chiefly on prominence, distance, and relevance. Audit the local listings of your client by making sure these three primary factors are up-to-date. Here’s how you can do it:

1. Relevance

Add detailed and full business information to help Google gain a better understanding of the business of your client. This will help match your client’s profile to relevant searches.

2. Distance

A good practice to follow is to have an up-to-date address and location keywords in every local listing.

3. Prominence

This refers to how famous a business is. It is also based on the data that Google possesses about a business from around the internet (taken from directories, articles, and links). So, keep this information in mind because it can also impact local results.

Note: You also need to apply SEO best practices and conduct an overall technical SEO site audit to see better results for your clients.

Competitor Comparison

Who doesn't want to move ahead of their competitors? You can help your client beat their competition by understanding the depth of their competitor listings.

When you analyze your client’s competitor listings, you get to know the changes or additions you need to make to your client’s listing to make it relevant. For instance, you may see that your client needs to increase the quality and number of reviews.

Listen Up: Check for these in your client’s competitor listings and then accordingly make changes to your client’s listing:

• Check if they have their target location in their listing title
• Check if they have a keyword in their listing title
• Check their review count
• See where their links go to

Tip: You can also check the Google Business Profile Guidelines to make any optimizations for your clients that you will think will work in their favor.

Keep Citations Consistent

You need to keep citations consistent as it’s crucial for local SEO.

Citations refer to a mention of your client’s business name across the internet. Citations include review sites, local listings, and GBP listing.

Ensure you take these final steps as a part of your audit:

• Your client’s NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) may be correct on GBP but wrong on other directories, leading to problems with profile ranking. Ensure your client’s NAP is consistent across the web (this includes Bing, Facebook, Apple Maps, etc.).
• Open Google Maps and search for your client’s business. Check for any duplicate listings.

GBP Insights & Optimization

If you use DashClicks’ Analytics app, you will be able to integrate the Google Business Profile listing. All you have to do is go to the “Listing Manager” and click on “scan for optimizations.” After you integrate GBP, you will be able to view GBP insights such as “Google Phone Calls by the Hour” and “Google Views on Search and Maps.”

Lastly, we would also recommend that you opt for white label local listing management services from DashClicks for GBP optimization.

Wrapping It Up

If you carefully follow all these steps, you will be able to conduct a successful audit and carry out Google Business Profile optimization for your client. The audit will offer all the insights you need to get your client's ranking where it should be! So, what are you waiting for? Conduct the audit to boost your client's rankings today!

Traditional web directories are a relic of the past.

No longer do you need to browse clunky, archaic lists of internet websites. We have an infinitely more sophisticated tool in Google.

Google, and other search engines, effectively replace the need for a directory. Users can and will find exactly what they need with the mere use of a keyword.

Yet, many marketers still plug web directories into a helpful SEO strategy.

This raises the question: Are web directories harmful or are they still considered an effective SEO technique?

We're going to help you get to the bottom of this conundrum.

What is a Web Directory?

A web directory is a virtual catalog of websites that are categorized by industry or location.

The traditional web directory is a product of an early internet age. If you're reading this, it's likely that you were not an active user of the world wide web during this period. If you're only accustomed to searching for a business through Google or Bing, then the time of directories is almost irrelevant to you.

Listing a business online was not a given as it is now. Only a select hundred or thousand essential brands could be found with a computer. The search engine did not exist, and users would comb through the listings to find a company.

Think of this as thumbing through the Yellow Pages, another relic of a time long past.

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Why These Web Directories No Longer Exist?

As the internet slowly became more accessible, these directories began to fill up.

Eventually, each category's number of entries would expand far beyond any usable threshold. Users do not have time to click on a broad industry and spend hours browsing anything that might be related to their query.

This outdated process would demand new solutions. The public needed a way to simply enter a query relevant to their needs. The internet could then provide only the results that best match that initial input.

What we are describing is known as a search engine.

One of the first search engines to ever exist is known as Archie. You can still find a usable form of this here. Though other tools like JumpStation and Excite would exist, it wouldn't be until 1994 that Yahoo would appear - the first engine you likely recognize.

Many more players entered the scene including WebCrawler, Lycos, AskJeeves, and several others. The history of the search engine is hefty, but everything would change in 1998 when Google launched.

All of these companies would contribute to the search algorithms we rely on now.

The Case Against Web Directories

Based on what we know now in the future, phasing out web directories seems like an inevitable event. There would seemingly be no reason to utilize these archaic tools when you could get better results with less work almost instantly.

This is where the art of search engine optimization enters the scene.

These web directories still held value to businesses. It would still host and advertise your business along with your NAP details (name, address, and phone number).

As we know now, third-party mentions of your business on other domains can have positive impacts on your brand's domain authority. This is particularly true if the third-party domain links back to your site, otherwise known as a backlink.

Initially, this worked well for online brands. Unfortunately, it worked too well. It would invite black-hat SEOs to flood as many directories as possible with backlinks.

Many directories would attempt to negate this by charging for a listing. However, the cost of entry was so low that brands would still be happy to pay the fee in exchange for the benefits of improved search rankings.

This resulted in a massive influx of spam within these directories. The sites that were once useful, albeit a bit archaic, now were completely unreliable.

Because Google actively penalizes untrustworthy, unreliable links, these types of directories can now actively harm your SEO.

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How Web Directories Can Still Help SEO?

Before we get too carried away, we need to keep in mind why Google dislikes those outdated directories.

While Google constantly updates its search ranking algorithm, it will always rely on these core principles:

• The meaning of the content
• How relevant the content is regarding the search query
• Quality (trustworthiness, authority, reliability)
• Usability (how accessible the content is for all device types)
• Context factors (how content differs based on user location)

You can dive deeper into the specific guidelines here.

The problem with the older web directory model is that they no longer satisfy these conditions.

The content is no longer relevant, of quality, or usable due to the flood of unreliable data caused by black hatters. Just as with any low-quality domain, having a backlink on that site will likely earn you an SEO penalty.

Some marketers will make a sweeping statement telling you to avoid directories altogether for this reason. Even Gary Illyes of Google stated years ago that “directories are very often not the right way to build links.”

Very often does not mean always. He essentially goes on to tell us to be a bit more mindful in our approach. This is a good rule when it comes to SEO, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

We do still have modern directory sites that meet Google’s quality rating guidelines. Let’s take a look at the few platforms you may still want to consider depending on your business goals.

1. Google My Business

This one should be a no-brainer as it is the property of Google.

Google My Business allows you to create a free business profile complete with a map listing. Rather than listing all businesses in an old-school category format, Google generates relevant results based on your current location.

For example, if you search “brewery,” you’ll find a list of local businesses as your results. Specifically, the top of the page highlights the top 3 businesses based on a combination of quality, customer ratings, and profile optimization.

Achieving a spot in this local 3-pack is the dream for any SEO. It’s the ultimate form of free, organic exposure. Customers can find everything they need to know about a company. They can even call, email, or visit your site with just one click.

To make the most of this listing, you want to keep your GMB profile up to date as part of your regular SEO strategy.

In addition to completing the available profile fields, be sure to update your listing regularly. If there is a permanent or temporary change to business hours, let customers know. If you receive a negative review or complaint, take advantage of the opportunity to respond to your audience and let them know you're active.

You can start the process of building your GMB profile here.

2. Yelp, Bing Places, and Other Modern Business Listings

Many directories still see a variable amount of use that still may prove worthwhile.

Yelp, for example, saw 33 million unique views from users last year. This resulted in roughly 244 million cumulative reviews.

This speaks to the power that these types of web directories still have for brands and users. There are two major factors influencing this:

• The ease of finding relevant results based on location and interest
• Access to trustworthy user reviews

Point two is particularly relevant, as 90% of people look for customer reviews and testimonials before choosing to do business with someone. By listing your business where people search, you allow users to leave and read reviews as necessary. This can help drive additional business to your store provided that your ratings satisfy the user.

While these web directories may not be a core source of engagement or even boost your rankings by much, they still play an important factor. It's a low-cost way of gaining additional visibility through a trusted third-party source.

3. Social Media Listings

Some social media platforms allow for business profile creation and listings. Particularly, both Facebook and Instagram offer this feature.

Using the search bar at the top of the page, users can not only look for friends but can search for businesses in specific locations. Your company can be one of the results that appear provided you are in the proximity of their search location.

Social media listings provide the dual benefit of not just listing your brand, but allowing you to participate in the conversation. Facebook business pages are far more robust than a typical listing, allowing you to post, create groups, and communicate privately.

4. Industry-Specific Listings

Finally, specific company industries have their set listings to help users.

These are not dissimilar from traditional listings, but naturally, segment the audience by showing only the businesses relevant to their interests.

Thanks to the past couple of years, sites like UberEats and DoorDash have particularly benefited the restaurant industry. Not only can consumers instantly find companies nearby, but they can also make a purchase instantly without ever leaving the directory.

Other industry-specific directories include:

• Lawyers – https://lawyers.findlaw.com/
• Doctors – https://doctor.webmd.com/
• Veterinarians – http://www.findalocalvet.com/

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It's worth researching to determine if there is a trustworthy, active directory available for your industry. If the site appears outdated or unreliable, we recommend that you do not list your site there to avoid the risk of an SEO penalty.

Conclusion - Directories Can Help, but Context is Important

Directory listings alone will likely not move the needle much when it comes to your overall search rankings.

Googlebot is savvy, and we can always trust it to determine what is a worthwhile link and which is worthy of a penalty. Simply spamming your business profile on as many websites as possible is not only outdated but is harmful to your SEO and the user experience.

Instead, we now have modern takes on directories that better satisfy user needs. We can now list a business, optimize the profile, and trust the search engines to deliver results to the most relevant users.

While a web directory is not a replacement for a quality backlink, it still helps local businesses in numerous ways. To get the most out of these directory sites, be sure to:

• Keep your listing optimized and up-to-date
• Make sure information is consistent across your website and all listings
• Ask customers to leave reviews (and publicly respond to negative ones)
• Post updated photos when relevant

Finally, be mindful of which listings you choose to use. If you're ever in doubt, think like Googlebot. Make your listing accessible to the most relevant audience, and avoid listing your brand in places that are untrustworthy or unrelated to your offerings.

Starting a business is a dream come true for many entrepreneurs, but making it successful is no small feat. In the wake of a global job crisis in a world struggling to contain a pandemic, visibility on search engines and Google Maps has become more critical than ever; it can make or break your business.

Until 2014, competing with national brands and finding a place on top of search engine result pages was almost impossible for small businesses. However, Google provided them a golden window when it rolled out the first Pigeon algorithm update in July 2014.

The update allowed Google to suggest local businesses and stores when users search location-specific keywords such as “Spa near me” and “Dentist in Downtown Miami.” As Google opened its gates for local businesses, proactive entrepreneurs leveraged the opportunity, making local SEO and directory listings a key determiner in ensuring a business’s online visibility.

What makes local SEO so crucial for brick-and-mortar stores is that 72% of users who perform a local search end up visiting a physical storefront within a 5-mile radius of their existing location. According to another report published in Search Engine Land, 78% of location-based mobile searches end up in successful offline sales.

An Introduction to Local SEO and Directory Listings

Local SEO is a pack of SEO tactics that marketers perform in a sequence to improve your business's visibility on search engines for people nearby. It's ideal for businesses, stores, and service providers that operate in the physical space, such as flower shops, grocery stores, hospitals, physicians, roofers, and plumbers.

It includes everything from creating a business listing to ensuring that the company's regional office appears on Google local search and voice search. It's also known as citation management. Google combines it with reviews and ratings, making it easier for potential customers to trust your business.

SEO professionals create a powerful local-centric social media presence to boost your business’s engagement with regional audiences. Adding local keywords is an integral part of local SEO. Therefore, marketers deploy the keywords people use to find businesses in their location. For example, “Spa in Marina Bay area Singapore” is an intent-based local keyword mainly used by tourists.

Marketers can perform local SEO by adding the location, city name, or zip code. You can also build links from local directories and popular sites and add reviews to the listing. If done right, local SEO can:

A. Improve your business’s sales and awareness through online visibility
B. Boost footfall to your store or local office
C. Promote your business within a service area

Advantages of Using Local Directory Listings

Here are five significant benefits of using local directory listings:

1. Builds Online Visibility

You'll often encounter the term online business citation' when researching about local SEO or talking to an SEO consultant. It includes your contact information, business name, and address, known as NAP (Name, Address, and Phone number). It increases your business's online visibility.

Though popular with directory listings, online citations are widely used elsewhere too. A good example is the details you fill in when creating your social media or Google My Business profiles. You can also use them in online directories such as Yelp, MapQuest, HubSpot, TripAdvisor, Super Pages, Yellow Book, Foursquare, and Yahoo Local.

Citations are a powerful way to help the right people find your business. They act in the same way posters and banner ads do in the brick-and-mortar world. Most online directories categorize businesses according to their services and location. For instance, if you own a homestay, an AirBnB NAP will help you attract tourists visiting your city or town.

Citations are a vital part of your local SEO. According to the Moz Local Ranking Factors study, citations are the fourth most powerful way to influence a business's regional rankings. The top five factors are:

A. Google My Business

B. Inbound links to your website

C. On-page SEO

D. Citations

E. Reviews and ratings

2. Improves Traffic for Most Relevant Searches

SEO involves a series of well-planned actions over time, including on-page and off-page SEO. Much like regular SEO, local SEO also requires a list of on-page optimization tactics, but not all of them are equal in terms of their overall impact on visibility. For example, submitting pages to social bookmarking sites, directories, craigslist, or creating blogger dot com subdomains aren't as effective as including local keywords, using Google My Business, generating Q&A schema, and doing SERP analysis. Therefore, you need to prioritize the strategies that have more weight than others.

Tip: The on-page optimization you do towards your business's local SEO is not a one-time activity. To continue to attract local traffic, you will have to consistently devote time to your on-site optimization and tweak it when needed.

As a business, you must keep your content the same across all devices. The game of local SEO changed when Google rolled out the Google mobile-first index in July As a business, you must keep your content the same across all devices. The game of local SEO changed when Google rolled out the Google mobile-first index in July 2019. Marketers should also change their tactics to stay on top. You can start by doing the following:

1. Optimize your site for mobile devices
2. Improve the page load speed for your site’s both mobile and desktop versions
3. Provide complete SEO metadata for each page
4. Include search terms in your content that are relevant to consumer search habits. You can use tools such as Google Keyword Planner or Ubersuggest to conduct keyword research.
5. Don’t stuff keywords unnecessarily or use keyword clouds to trick search engines. Instead, use keywords organically across all your website content, including blog posts, product pages, whitepapers, and landing pages.

These practices will boost your local search rankings and help you create relevant content that will improve your overall SEO and site traffic. Actions such as increasing your page load speed will enhance your site’s user experience and build trust and brand loyalty, positively impacting sales and revenues.

3. Boosts Google Rankings

Though Google ranking algorithms are mysterious, they depend heavily on your address's proximity to the search user's location. You can't control your ranking on Google, but you can tweak your Google My Business (GMB) profile to influence it positively.

GMB is Google's local business tool that helps you manage your online presence on organic search and Maps. It is among the most exhaustive online directories supported by Google Search and Google Maps. It is also a ranking factor that Google never hides from its users. Therefore, improving and verifying your GMB information is a surefire way to fix poor visibility and rankings and ensure better engagement and click-through rate.

GMB has many powerful features such as images, reviews, contact information, opening and closing hours, posts, and Q&A, which you can leverage for maximum advantage. A rich GMB profile makes your business stand out in front of search users, enhancing visibility and conversions. According to Google, with verified GMB information, you are twice as likely to be considered a reputable business.

4. Improves Relevance to Search User's Requirements

Your business’s local ranking depends on the following two variable factors:

A. Its prominence—awareness about your business or store

B. Whether your business listing is optimized to match search user’s requirements

Search engines need web content that talks about your business and relevant websites that point to your website to control and influence these two factors. So, you need to leverage content marketing and try link building.

Link building will boost your brand awareness and prominence. Through local content marketing, you can target regional audiences and discuss the things and issues relevant to them. Apart from building a reputation, these measures will boost customer engagement and brand loyalty. You may also get some relevant backlinks in the process.

When you invest in local content marketing to create valuable content for regional audiences, you build an ecosystem prompting other local businesses to link back to you. Both types of inbound links the ones from local sources in your area or town and the ones coming from newspapers, periodicals, or high-authority industry-specific sites are made this way. It will boost your authority and trustworthiness among search engines.

According to the Moz Ranking Factors study, the two most important local ranking factors are your GMB listing and the inbound links you receive from regional and industry-specific sources. Apart from boosting your search rankings, these links will also act as a sustainable source of relevant traffic, generating revenue for your website.

5. Builds Trust

With reviews after each local listing, online reputation management (ORM) has become an integral part of local SEO listings on Google.

It is a critical deciding factor because even a single negative review can send a potential customer to another listing and ruin your chances of making a sale. According to the annual BrightLocal Consumer Survey 2020, the number of consumers looking for positive reviews before making a buying decision is increasing exponentially every year.

The survey also claims that 50% of online shoppers say they expect to see at least a 4-star rating before deciding to make a purchase. A whopping 85% of consumers say they trust online reviews and consider them equal to personal recommendations. They also expect sellers to respond to negative reviews as early as possible for effective damage control.

Recent and diversified reviews can help you gain prominence on local search results and win customer trust. The most crucial review factors, according to this survey, are:

1. Star rating: Consumers expect at least four stars
2. Legitimacy: Reviews by actual people are considered legitimate. It’s better if they are from the same region as the potential buyer.
3. Recency: 73% of consumers paid attention to the reviews published within one month
4. Sentiment: Reviews from enthusiastic, happy, or excited customers reflect a positive sentiment that often has a powerful impact on potential buyers. Such reviews prompt them to make a purchase decision.
5. Quantity: The quantity of reviews also makes a difference as it indicates a business’s popularity.

Conclusion

According to the BrightLocal Consumer Survey 2020, more than 90% of consumers used the internet to find a local business last year. More than 34% of people search online almost every day. It shows how important local SEO and directory listings are. If you want to establish your business in your region and make consistent sales, you need to get your local directory listings right.