What is listing management?
Listing management is the process of continuously updating, publishing, and maintaining a business' location data and contact information across online directories, websites, and other customer-facing platforms. Organizations need to have their information consistent and accurate on the internet, including social networks, Global Positioning System (GPS) services, and search engines.
Keeping listing information accurate is a must for businesses promoting their online presence. If this data isn’t valid, organizations risk potential customers, web crawlers, and search engines not finding their business. To avoid this, brick-and-mortar businesses use local listing management software as a central hub to manage and update their local data on various platforms.
Basic elements of listing management
When checking business information, there are basic elements that should be consistent across every listing. These elements are:
- Name: The business listing must have the correct name and spelling. If punctuation is in the name, this also needs to be consistent.
- Address: A correct address helps customers navigate to a business’ location.
- Phone number: An accurate phone number is crucial if a customer wants to call a business before visiting.
- Hours: Once a customer decides they want to visit a business, hours of operation help them decide when they’d like to stop by and potentially make a purchase.
- Website: Including the website address of a business is a must in listing management locations, especially on social network platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
In addition, there are basic elements every listing should include, but can differ depending on the platform. These are:
- Description: The business description can vary slightly with listing management but should always tell consumers more about what is offered or sold.
- Photos: As part of listing management, businesses are encouraged to include photos, including pictures of the exterior and interior of the location, a food and drink menu, items being sold, and more.
- Reviews: Businesses should display both positive and negative reviews in their listings for transparency and to build customer trust.
Benefits of listing management
There are many benefits to an organization carrying out accurate listing management. Some of these benefits are:
- Improved brand visibility: Improving brand awareness is the most obvious reason to claim and manage local listings. The more websites and directories listing a business, the more likely a customer will find it. This can increase traffic to a brand’s website or social media profile, while also increasing foot traffic to its brick-and-mortar store.
- Boost search rankings: Accurate listings improve a company's ranking in search results, but inaccurate listings can damage an organization's search engine optimization (SEO). Search engines like Google rely on listing management data to provide accurate results to searchers. If there are discrepancies in listing data and the information cannot be trusted, it will be less likely to show in search results.
- Better voice search presence: Local business voice search is extremely popular. When a customer asks their device, “what is the address for [Business Name]”, having the accurate address in a business listing helps give customers this information quickly.
- Improved customer experience: Managing and maintaining accurate listings is important for a business so its customers can find the information they need, when they need it. Whether it’s hours of operation or a phone number, accurate listing management gives customers a positive experience.
Listing management best practices
Businesses that want accurate listing information across all possible platforms should follow specific best practices. These include the following:
- Use the right software. Managing listing information can be time-consuming, depending on an organization's size and what it has to offer. Finding the right tool to automate these tasks means companies can focus on other business areas.
- Keep information up to date. Since so many customers discover businesses online, maintaining consistent and up-to-date information with listing management is a must. These listings are often the first point of contact for a consumer, and a good first impression can go a long way in earning trust.
- Remove duplicate listings. On platforms like Google My Business and Facebook, removing duplicate listings can help limit customer confusion surrounding business details and ensure search engines direct traffic to the correct website.
- Add high-quality photos. As part of business listing management, consider adding high-quality pictures of the store location, products, and services. This can be especially helpful to businesses like restaurants and bars because uploading menu photos helps customers know what to expect.
Mara Calvello
Mara Calvello is a Content and Communications Manager at G2. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Elmhurst College (now Elmhurst University). Mara writes content highlighting G2 newsroom events and customer marketing case studies, while also focusing on social media and communications for G2. She previously wrote content to support our G2 Tea newsletter, as well as categories on artificial intelligence, natural language understanding (NLU), AI code generation, synthetic data, and more. In her spare time, she's out exploring with her rescue dog Zeke or enjoying a good book.
