Is your local business listing up to date? Which one? Customers rely on your business listings to direct them to your restaurant, tell them when you’re open, and show them what’s on the menu.
Whether it’s curbside-ready Asian fusion, dine-in comfort food, or takeout southern-style chicken—your local directory listings give your customers vital information about your restaurant. Often, restaurant owners underestimate the impact listing management has on their food sales.
Business listings are good for attracting real-time customers. Even though 97% of customers search online for local businesses, 56% of local companies haven’t claimed their Google My Business listing, and 82% haven’t grabbed their Bing listing!
Here’s why you should make sure that your local online listings are current and correctly managed and how you can do this using a central dashboard that makes your life easier.
5 Reasons Why Your Restaurant Needs Local Listings
How many times is your restaurant listed in online directories?
Are your listings current?
Can people find your restaurant online?
These questions are necessary for smaller restaurants that have already suffered under COVID-19 lockdowns and closures. With skittish customers and a strong need to drive traffic through your doors and into your seats—you must realize just how much yahoo local business listing management means to your restaurant.
#1: Visibility Leads to Real-Time Sales
Your local directory listings make your restaurant highly visible when someone searches for a spot like yours that serves your kind of cuisine. The more directories you’re on, the higher your chance of being discovered, recommended, and ranked on search engines.
Being listed on Google, Yelp, Tripadvisor, Bing, Facebook, and dozens of other platforms will direct people to your local restaurant in real-time. Claim your listings now!
#2: Improve Local SEO With “Near Me” Searches
A local business listing, like one from Google My Business, can do incredible things for local SEO and traffic attraction. There has been a boom in organic “restaurants near me” searches over the past few years, with 60% coming from mobile phones.
Search combined with GPS has resulted in customers being able to find the type of restaurant food or experience they feel like, wherever they are. The primary source of these search results? Directories.
#3: Keep Relevant Information Current
When you have multiple online business listings, the challenge is keeping all the directories updated with your latest contact information, hours of operation, menu items, and service offerings (delivery, curbside pickup). You will also want to keep track of your online reviews.
Listing accuracy is necessary, so make sure that your online directories are telling customers relevant information. Inaccurate information loses your restaurant business, traffic, and attracts bad reviews.
#4: Manage Your Online Reputation (Good Reviews and Bad!)
Your restaurant is always in competition with hundreds of others in your local area. That’s why it’s vital to enhance your online reputation by attracting customer reviews through your business directory list. Positive reviews (even negative ones) are a significant source of customer attraction.
When you manage your directory reviews, you manage your online reputation. You can correct negative experiences and amplify positive ones to gain more business.
5: Understand Your Customers Better
When you actively manage your local small business directory listings from a central dashboard, you gain valuable analytics that can give you clues and insights about your customers. The data will show you where your customers find you, how often, and why they leave reviews.
If you want to succeed as a modern restaurateur, you have to understand your customer behavior online—how they find you, where they engage, and what their experiences are will help you grow your restaurant clientele.
The Easiest Way to Manage Multiple Directory Listings
Your directory and search engine listings are closely tied to how fast you can grow online as a restaurant. Many restaurant owners already know these things but aren’t sure how to connect them to be easily managed.
Running a restaurant in today’s economic climate is time-consuming—so listings aren’t always considered a priority—but they should be! Well-managed listings are the reason people find you on the internet!
The good news is that there are simple solutions for restaurants like yours to manage your listings using a local listing tool from Business Maker. It takes the time and effort out of manually having to maintain and update hundreds of online listings—thank goodness.
We call it Localworks, and it puts you in control of over 70 of the most critical listings that attract customers to your restaurant every day. You have access to a central command center for making changes, so all of your listings are automatically updated across every local business listing site. You can respond to messages and post to social media right inside your dashboard.
The analytics are also an excellent way to gather customer insights that will give you a competitive edge later on. It’s a simple way to guarantee that your online listings work for you—even when you’re too busy to check on them.
If you’re not sure what your online business listing presence looks like—use this free tool. It quickly scans the net and finds out where you are and what you look like to customers.
There are no strings attached—it’s just a great way to check on your local business listing profiles. You can also decide to solve the problem right now and ensure that your business is found everywhere by signing up for YSB Localworks.
Make sure that your local business listings are getting you customers, reviews, and online growth with a smart business listings tool that takes the effort out of maintenance.
