What exactly is a Local Business Listing or the LBL

The LBL is a listing that contains the basic information about a business. Information includes name, address, telephone number, business category and other information. All of the sites we just mentioned are really just big online directories, databases full of business information. The LBL is simply your businesses page or listing within these big directories. You may or may not realize that your business is probably already listed in a few of these directories, if your business was formed more than a year ago. These sites collect information from a variety of sources and your information can find its way into these sites.

All of these sites operate in a similar way. A user types in a few keyword for a particular location or city and clicks search. The site will display a page listing their results of the businesses that match the search. We call this the “Search Results Page”. Then a user will look at the results and may decide to click on one of them. This will take the user to a page dedicated to the specific business. This is the "LBL Business Page".  Each of the sites we cover in this course will look different, but the general concept is the same.

The  Four Basic Principles For A Successful LBL

• LBL Must Be Listed

Your LBL must Be listed on as many sites as possible and certainly the important sites such as Google, Citysearch and others. It may sound simple, but until you check this out thoroughly, you may be surprised at where your business is and is NOT listed. If your LBL is not on a site, there is no chance for you to benefit!

• LBL Is Accurate

Your LBL needs to contain accurate information so potential customers can find your lisiting and be able to easily contact your business. Directories could be showing old information about your business, especially if you have moved. You also need to have as complete of a listing as possible to make your LBL stand out and display as often as possible.

• LBL Looks Professional

Thirdly, your LBL needs to look professional. Updated information, logos, pictures, videos, specials, reviews and other items can make your LBL stand out from the competition and can even help establish some credibility with potential customers. All of this can give your business a better chance of attracting phone calls and contact from web searchers.

• LBL is Optimized

Finally, your LBL needs to be set up properly so that it gets as much exposure as possible to web searchers. The more times your LBL displays for a particular search, the more chances a customer makes contact with you. Internet marketing is a numbers game and very small changes can make VERY big differences in your overall results!

How to maximize value from your LBL’s

As we discussed, when web searchers go to these sites, they type in some search information and click search. The words they type in are called KEYWORDS. An example could be pool contractors or pizza or any good or service you can think of.

• Keywords

The first way to maximize your LBL exposure is to get your listing to show up, to display as a result for as many keywords that are relevant to your business as possible. Again more exposure or views equals more chances of connecting with potential customers. We are going to discuss in detail how to optimize your LBL to contain the right keywords for your business.

• LBL Ranking

The second factor we need to maximize is your LBL ranking on the search results page. As we showed in some of the previous slides, when a user submits a search, they will see a list of businesses that match their search keywords. This list is ordered, meaning one business is displayed first and another business is displayed last. Where (the position) your LBL ranks on this list will directly affect the number of views your LBL receives. Again, more clicks and views of your LBL equals more potential customers. You will need to optimize your listing to get ranked as high as possible!

More About Keywords

Keywords are the words and phrases that the web searcher will submit to find a local business. They can be a single word or even a phrase. They may be words that describe a business service, such as air conditioning repair or a product such as “botox”. Keywords are something that may sound easy and you might be saying to yourself right now that you are certain you know the best keywords for your business. In reality, you probably have a very good idea, but you will need to do some research to get it just right. For example, if you are a restaurant owner would you choose Italian restaurant or would you choose pizza or how about if you are a med spa, do you choose med spa or medical spa…and does it make a difference? It absolutely makes a difference and we are going to show you how to research this in the next video.

Keep in mind, the websites that contain your listing also have millions of other business listings in their databases. When a user submits a search, their website system will decide which businesses to display. To do this their system uses an algorithm to determine the best results. Algorithm is just a fancy, nerdy term for a formula that these websites use to determine which LBL results to show, but if you know how they work, you have a better chance of getting your LBL displayed more often!

The algorithms will search for LBL Listings that contain matching keywords or similar keywords within various sections of the LBL Business Profile. Keyword matching is one of the most important criteria many websites will use to determine which LBL’s to display on the search results page. Your job is to write your LBL Listing in a way that makes you eligible for as many keywords as possible.Once again, the more times your LBL displays on a Search Result Page, the more exposure and opportunites you will have to conenct with new cutomers.