Build an Online Presence with Search Engine Listings

1/14/2021

You’ve probably seen it before. You go to search for your favorite business on Google, and a big information box comes up on the side of the search results! Fortunately, that box is just the beginning of what’s possible when it comes to advertising your business. Welcome to search engine listings.

Key Takeaways

What the differences are between search engines and listings,
How to rank higher than your competitors, and
Where you can create listings for your business.

🔎 Search Engines and Listings: The Basics

Before leveraging the power of search engine listing management, it’s important to understand how they work. In a nutshell, search engines were built and designed to show people what they want. Read that again, “what they want”. So, because listings live within search engines, they follow the same rule. Understanding that this is the basis of how search engines work is key to understanding why optimization is so important (check out this SEO article for more). It is also for this reason that your competitors could be beating you!

🥇Beat Your Competitors

If someone searches for, “Hardware store near me” and a big name brand listing shows up instead of a small business, it’s because users are more likely to be looking for the big name brand. The same applies to your business. If you aren't the most popular in town, don’t worry.

There are a lot of options that could help you rank higher, but we are going to focus on listings. The easiest place to start is with Google. Do you have Google My Business set up? Do you have a location on Google Maps within Google My Business? Having a profile set up and validated will help Google rank you higher than competitors, especially if they haven’t done it yet. The same goes for all search engines.

🔋 The Options are Endless

The first step to creating search engine listings is to get active in search engines in the first place. This typically means building a website or profile, and if you don’t have either one of those in the 21st century, you may have bigger issues. As mentioned above, Google is a great place to start, but there are plenty of other options. Check out this comprehensive list below! Most of these platforms have a similar process during the setup phase!

Google My Business
Google Maps (The same as Google Business)
Bing Places
Yahoo
Foursquare
Yelp
Yellow Pages
Trust Pilot

📄 In Conclusion

Search engine listing management is a powerful concept when used to its full extent. It allows your customers to have a higher level of access to your business, and the information they need to interact with it. Search engines help place your listings, and there is a wide range of engines available including Google, Yelp, Bing, and more.

📽️ Watch the Full Video on Youtube

Quotes

“A search engine is things like Bing, Google, Yahoo, really anything that you can search online.”
Dick Polipnick

“Listings are businesses, pages, blog posts, and items listed within a search engine.”
Dick Polipnick

About the Host

Dick Polipnick
Serial Entrepreneur, Founder, and CEO of Online Growth Systems

Guest Profile: Dick Polipnick is the Founder of Online Growth Systems, a media company that helps big-name brands turn their e-commerce businesses to profit and advises high-growth, venture-backed startups.

The National Federation of Independent Business named him a top "Young Entrepreneur of the Year", AdFed listed him on "32 Under 32", and he's been featured on and collaborated with Business.com, Nickelodeon Studios, World Wide Fund for Nature, Clean Energy Resource, and more.

Links Mentioned

Online Growth Systems
Organic Reach vs Paid Reach

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