What’s the most important thing that matters most in SEO world?

Absolutely, it’s none other than the Google ranking for being number one Google page.

Number one position on the Google help to bring more traffic for the specific keyword but what you are looking nowadays appearing as number one?

Local directories appear first. You can do a quick Google search for anything local related to your business like “restaurant near me”.

While doing this, you will not only find one result related from a local business website but you will find all of the first 10 results considering to local review sites like TripAdvisor, Yelp, and OpenTable.

First, three local results, appeared just as the Google Snack Pack, so before the result of the website, Google shows you the three locations from Google, which is also significantly needed for your business. However, for the website, it was all like the local directories.

What can be the reason behind this?

Yelp and Tripadvisor have more resources as compare to any local business that needs to compete in search rankings. That’s really tough as you need to go through their coat tails for ranking.

It’s not enough about the listing of your website domain as the number one result because your company name is already listed. Anyway, there is still away for website ranking and if it’s for local direction, it’s related to directories.

The process to get ranked on local directories

The local directories ranking is same as the ranking on Google. The more active you seem, the more that network will promote your business. You may see an example like Yelp favor a business with 100 reviews and various photos with engaged comments as compared to a business with one review, no photo, and incomplete listing.

Most of the reviews need to be positive, but the directories don’t care about it whether the reviews are positive or negative. Directories only care about engagement, no matter whether it’s a customer complaint or anything else.

Listing management of local business

Under the local listing management, you need to claim and update the business profile across the local directories. You can claim your business listing with the top 50 directories. So, take out the 50 directories that have most users, the absolute top ones like Google, Bing, Yelp, Yellow pages etc.

After this, you need to optimize your business listing along with the mini-business bio and the complete business bio. All directories do not take the mini or the full, so you need to push at least one of them or sometimes you may publish the both of them.

This listing information is refreshed on monthly basis, so Google only finds the refreshed content. So, you should have complete access to an online that could keep track on an online dashboard which further keeps track on your keyword ranking in various searches. It also keeps track on reviews counts and Google My Business (GMB) activity.

Online reputation management

Reputation monitoring matters a lot in any business, so you need to keep your eye on every review. While listing with directories or with any other review sites, you need to monitor review left for your company. You should have a weekly report for the review you registered for your business so that you could quickly give your response to the review.

No matter whether reviews are positive or negative, you should be responding to all reviews. We recommend to response negative review fast to turn in to the positive one. And for positive, you may respond within five days.

Always be professional and response in the positive direction because a negative response to a negative review can badly destroy your business. This just gives you an opportunity to show other clients that how you handle the critical situation and be towards the customer side.

You can look for the ways to deal with Google fake and bad reviews to maintain the online reputation of your business. This can help you to maintain the online reputation from all aspects.

So, instead of worrying about your website ranking, you should be focused towards your keyword ranking across all of directories and pages. You may use significant content related to your business and could post on some of the directories.