Is this what you were looking for??
This week we’re going to take a look at how search works in the local business directory, how you can make sure your business comes up in the results and even how optimising your Hills Local business directory listing with keywords as tags can help with your Google SEO.
To begin with, let’s look at how the search function works on the directory, as there are a few different ways you can search and be found. This is also handy even if you don’t have a business directory listing, as it will help you to get the most accurate search results.
If you do have a local business directory listing, be sure to read to the end as I also have a special bonus for you to access!
Seach by Category
When you click into the ‘what’ field, a dropdown box will populate, showing up the 5 categories that listings have been sorted into. Now, unlike a lot of directories, I’ve purposely kept these categories broad and focused on keywords in search to make sure that each business is seen by as wide an audience as possible (more on keywords in a minute).
So now you’ve selected a category if that’s the way you’re searching. Because there are only 5 categories, this is going to bring up a lot of results, which is great for browsing, but you’ll need to scroll or refine your results to find what you’re looking for if it’s something specific.
You can refine results by
- sorting by distance (requires location sharing and may display results in a different location if you are using a VPN to mask your IP address)
- sorting by price – results will depend on whether businesses have selected to display pricing as part of their listing and honestly, I think that pricing can be very subjective (one person’s $ is another’s $$$), so while this feature has been enabled, it’s not really what I would recommend to search by.
- sorting by what’s open at the time of searching – a handy feature, so business owners, make sure your hours are updated.
- sorting by most reviewed/viewed/rated – this will be a better feature once we get a few more reviews on the site, but for the moment I’m sorry to say it’s also a little buggy and will sometimes display results in reverse (working on a fix for this)
- selecting features (displayed in checkboxes). This is probably the most useful way to narrow down results to get what you’re after if you are doing a broad category search. Business owners, make sure you’ve selected all the features that are relevant for your listing in order to increase your appearance in search results.
Search by Suburb
There are two ways to do a search by suburb. Click into the ‘Where’ field and either
- scroll/select from the dropdown box, or
- begin typing the suburb name to narrow the results
Search by Keywords
This is by far the best way to search for a listing on the directory. Typing in a keyword will bring up the following results in order
- suggested tags/keywords
- suggested tags/keywords by category
- Business name
Keyword search will also bring up results based on the text in the description field of the listing, so it pays to make full use of your listing description by optimising it for keyword search.
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Using Tags on your Hills Local Listing to improve SEO
Your business SEO can also benefit from keyword tags being active on your Hills Local listing. I use these tags to create .XML Sitemaps, which I then submit to Google for searching (read more about .XML Sitemaps here)
To optimise your listing for search, you need to think about the context of how people search and what results they will be looking for.
- What would people be looking for to find you?
- Which search terms are relevant for your business?
- Are you appearing in these search results?
- Which keywords are your competitors using?
- What other tags can you add to your listing?
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