categories

Yelp Business Categories List

July 19, 2013 by Phil 20 Comments

It’s not too hard to find categories on Yelp to list your business under. But it’s much easier to miss some and lose out on easy visibility – both in and out of Yelp – simply because you didn’t find the best categories to describe your business.

Yes, it does take time to identify all the categories that might be relevant to your business. There are 698 categories. You can pick up to 3 for your listing.

Yelp doesn’t let you see all of them at a glance. You have to pick a primary category (there are 22) and then a secondary one (of 498), and perhaps a tertiary one (of 178).

The categories are scattered all over the place, and there isn’t even a “search” function on the site. You get sick of rifling around and having to assume that you’ve picked the most-relevant categories.

Yet, your categories are crucial to your Yelp rankings, . Yelp’s results also consistently rank well in Google for local search terms.

You must get your categories right.

I’ve put together a complete list of all the Yelp business categories. Why? So that you can see all of them at a glance (and how to navigate to them), and so you can search the list or edit/process it. The list helps you make sure you’ve got the 3 best categories.

You can download it here:

Google Drive

Excel

PDF

Update, 5:54 pm, 7/19/13: Thanks to Luther Lowe, director of public policy at Yelp, who just sent me the the links to two category lists that are buried under the “Yelp for Developers” section:

The first is a long honkin’ page with all the categories you’ll find in my list.

The second is another long honkin’ page, but this one (meant for developers) tells you the categories available in each country Yelp serves. You only need this if your business is located outside the US.

What should you do now?

Go to biz.yelp.com and log into your business listing.

Click on “Business Information” and then click to edit your “Basic Business Information.”

See which categories you’re listed under. If you’ve got fewer than 3 or think you’re missing the best ones, search through my category list and see if you can find better categories. Even if you’re confident you’ve already got the most-relevant categories, spend 5 minutes flipping through the list anyway, just to make sure.

In general, Yelp is a pain to deal with – especially when it comes to reviews. But getting your categories right is an easy win.

4 Local SEO Tools from Uncle Sam

June 13, 2013 by Phil 3 Comments

The US Government is dysfunctional. Congress is corrupt. It’s so bad that, even in these times of spiraling deficits, lawmakers are still earmarking precious funds so that Uncle Sam can help you with…your local SEO.

Well, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration.

I don’t know that The Man has appropriated precious resources specifically to help your business grow its local rankings. But he does have some resources that you might be able to use to your advantage.

Of course, they’re free. (Actually, you’re paying for them…but let’s not go there 🙂 )

Here are 4 government-issued tools that can come in handy for your local-search-visibility campaign:

Tool 1: USPS ZIP Lookup Tool

Is your business in a small town, near a city line, or in a big city with a bunch of tightly-packed ZIP codes? Better double-check what ZIP the Post Office thinks you’re in (or, for that matter, which city they think you’re in) – before you do any citation-building for your business.

If you don’t “measure twice, cut once,” you’ll probably be in for a nasty surprise if the Post Office lists you at an address other than the one you use for your listings. Why? Because ExpressUpdate.com (AKA InfoGroup) feeds off of Post Office address data, and in turn feeds business data to a ton of directory sites where your address needs to be listed consistently across the board. There will be conflicting info on your business, hurting your Google rankings. You’ll feel like going postal.

(By the way, I’d known about the USPS checkup for quite some time, but I must tip my hat to Mary Bowling for reminding me by way of her great SMX Advanced presentation / slide deck.)

Tool 2: Census.gov

Want to know more about the people (AKA potential customers) in the city you’re targeting? The Census is the great-granddaddy of big data.

If you rummage around the site for long enough you’ll probably find out whatever you want to know, but I’d say following two areas are the best starting points:

https://www.census.gov/econ/cbp/

https://www.census.gov/econ/susb/

3. OSHA’s Standard Industrial Category (SIC) Tool

If you’re listing your business on ExpressUpdate.com for the first time, OSHA’s category-search tool can help you pick out the best category to list your business under. (More detail on this in my recent post on the new ExpressUpdate.)

4. Your city’s local-business directory.

If you suspect some of your competitors are using fake business info – like a keyword-stuffed Google+Local business name or a phony address – you might want to look up their official business info. From there, you’ll probably be in a better position to draw a conclusion as to what to do about it – like possibly reporting them to Google through the “Report a problem” button on their Google listing, or reporting them to the MapMaker fuzz.

You should be able to find your local-business register by searching Google for the name of your city/town + “local business directory,” “business register,” or “chamber of commerce.” (Here’s an example of what I’m talking about.)

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Do you know of any government-issued resources that might be handy for local SEO? Anything local-business-related that you wish our tax dollars would go toward? Leave a comment!

Studied for Your Google+Local SATs?

February 27, 2013 by Phil 15 Comments

Have YOU done your homework? It’s my pleasure to publish the first guest post that’s made its way onto this blog.

Colan Nielsen of Powered by Search has impressed me over the last few months with the knowledge he shares over at Linda Buquet’s forum, and I really liked an idea he had for a post (below).

At the very bottom is a link to the PDF that contains Colan’s answers to the quiz questions.

Enjoy!

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Last year Phil did a post with a quiz on “How Well Do You Know the Google Places Quality Guidelines?” After taking Phil’s quiz (and acing it…cough cough), I realized that this was the first time that some of the Google Places Quality Guidelines were actually sticking to my brain. After all those years of writing, and not particularly enjoying all those tests in high school, I’ve finally come full circle and have a new appreciation for the mighty “quiz”.

That motivated me to create a training resource for our local marketing team at Imprezzio. Once I had created the quiz, I sent it out to the team, and then on the following week’s team meeting we went over all the questions, dissected the answers, and in turn, created some great discussion. It was one of the best meetings we had in a while, and it dawned on me that this was only the beginning of a great way to stay on top of the constantly changing rules and guidelines of Google+ Local.

It’s important for local SEOs to know the rules. It’s even more important if you’re a business owner trying to get your own business visible in Google+Local.

Whether you ace the quiz or fail it gloriously, you‘ve got to know Google’s rules. It’s the difference between sinking and swimming.

Business Address/Location

4. Which of the following businesses would most likely need to hide their address?(multiple answers accepted)

a. Insurance Agency
b. Electrician
c. Plumber
d. Sporting Goods Store

5. A Service Area Business (SAB) can have a Google+ Local page for every city/area that it services?

a. TRUE
b. FALSE

6. Only businesses that make in-person contact with customers qualify for a Google listing.

a. TRUE
b. FALSE

Business Name

7. The business name must represent your business exactly as it appears in the offline world. Name 3 things that you should never put in your business name.

1:
2:
3:

General

8. What is the best-practice for when a business moves to a new location/address?

a. Edit the existing listing in the Google Places dashboard
b. Edit the existing listing with the EBD (“Edit business details”)
c. Mark the listing as closed and create a new listing

9. When is it acceptable to claim a single listing into more than 1 account?

a. Only for a Service Area Business (“SAB”)
b. Only for a business with a storefront
c. When you want to have multiple managers for the listing
d. Never

10. Which method of reporting a problem to Google Places support gets you an open line of communication with Google, which allows you to correspond back and forth?

a. “Report a Problem”
b. Google Places Troubleshooter

11. Videos uploaded to the Google Places dashboard currently take how long to go live?

a. 4 to 6 weeks
b. 1 to 2 weeks
c. Instantly
d. The video feature is currently disabled and doesn’t ever show live

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Done? Check out the answers.

You can also get the quiz as a PDF.

Oh, and here are the rules straight from Google.

About the Author

Colan Nielsen is the Agency Operations Manager at Powered by Search in Toronto, Canada. By night, he is Linda Buquet’s right-hand man and moderator at the Catalyst Local eMarketing Local Search Community.

IYP Ranking Factors: Getting Visible in Local-Biz Directories

November 19, 2012 by Phil 28 Comments

IYPs – short for “Internet Yellow Pages” – get a bum rap.

Some of it is true:

Yes, they’re directories, not search engines.

Yes, some of them are mere flies on the windshield of Google.

Yes, we often harbor murderous fantasies when one of their sales representatives calls us on the phone.

It’s for all these reasons and others that most business owners pay little attention to these sites.

This makes sense on one level: these sites don’t have nearly as much “eyeball share” as Google does.

But it’s a mistake. If you’re in a competitive local market, you’re going to want every edge you can get.

More specifically: you’ll want every promising eyeball you can get (not to sound creepy or anything). On the whole, many people use IYP sites – partly because Google usually ranks them above or right below its own local search results.

That’s why you need to know basically how these third-party directory sites rank their business listings: as on Google, on these sites there are visible businesses and invisible ones. You want yours to be in the first group.

These sites influence your Google+Local rankings, too, but that’s another story.

I recently spent a few hours trying to figure out what separates some businesses from others on 7 of the biggest IYP sites. I’ve listed the sites in alphabetical order, with the ranking factors for each underneath.

Here are the ranking factors I’ve found for each site:

(Please note: these simply are my observations, based on a few hours of gumshoeing and several years of helping my clients with local search.)

1. Reviews (AKA “ratings”). That’s it. One ranking factor.

In terms of how CitySearch ranks businesses, there is a very clear pecking order:

-“Best of CitySearch” winners (if there are any in a particular local market).

-Then businesses that havereviews, ranked in descending order of “CitySearch score” and/or number of reviews (more on this in a second).

-Then businesses with no reviews.

A little more detail:

Businesses that win the “Best of CitySearch” award tend to have some reviews, but I’ve seen winners that have 1 or 2, which leads me to believe reviews may not even be a factor in winning. My understanding always has been that there are judges – AKA “scouts” – who pick the winners, but I’ve always been unclear on the specifics (despite a couple of unanswered inquiries on my part). Whatever the case, BoC winners get the top spots.

Slightly farther down the totem pole are all the businesses with reviews. All of them rank above all the businesses without reviews.

How do all the businesses with reviews get sorted out? Well, that leads us to “CitySearch score.” It’s the equivalent of an “average rating” (like what you see on Google and Yelp). 100% is perfect. 75% may mean that 3 out of 4 customers gave you a positive rating – which they can do without actually having to string together a couple sentences in a review.

CitySearch ranks businesses mostly by score, but also by number of ratings.

CitySearch usually ranks businesses with 90% above ones with 85%, which in turn outrank the ones at 72%, and so on. You get the idea.

There are some exceptions to this: Occasionally a business with a 90% CitySearch score will outrank one with a 100%. In these cases, the number of ratings also seems to be a factor: a business with 95% based on 60 ratings may outrank a business with 100% based on 20 ratings.

But businesses with a score of 50% or more always outrank the ones that have a score below 50%

When several businesses have 100% scores (which is common), it seems that the one with the highest number of reviews/ratings will be at the top.

Given that your local competitors probably don’t include many or any “Best of CitySearch” winners, and that businesses without any reviews rarely are contenders on the site, your #1 task is just to rack up a couple of reviews on the site. (CitySearch reviews help you out on many other sites, too.)

1. Paid results. Businesses that pay get the top spots. Everyone else dukes it out based on:

2. Reviews. InsiderPages is similar to CitySearch in this way. All businesses with reviews outrank all the ones that don’t have any.

Here, too, the businesses are ranked based on the number of reviews they have and by order of average rating (e.g. 5-star average, 4-star average, etc.). But unlike on CitySearch, here the number of reviews seems to carry a little more weight than how high the average star rating is. It appears quantity matters a bit more than quality, in this regard.

1. Being “Verified by Manta.” Once you create your Manta profile, they call you up to make sure your info is accurate. I don’t recall ever having done this with my clients (maybe once or twice…don’t remember), but I believe it’s free.

2. Business name. If the name of your Manta listing includes a given search term or city name, you’ll probably rank highly for it. But do NOT mess with your business name just to grab an extra edge: it may hurt the all-important consistency of your “NAP” info across the web.

By the way, there’s no such thing as a “Manta review,” so reviews aren’t even part of the equation here. Probably all you can do to climb over a few competitors is owner-verify your Manta listing (again, with the caveat that I’m not 100% sure whether it’s free – not that it necessarily would be a bad use of a buck).

1. Paid results.

2. Business name.

3. Reviews (?). This is a bit unclear to me: although businesses with reviews generally seem to outrank ones that don’t, sometimes I’ll click on a listing with a star rating next to it and the actual listing page for the business won’t show any reviews (I have a theory about this, though). I do know, though, that MerchantCircle is no stranger to the occasional shenanigan. It’s definitely a good site to be on, and you’ll want to make sure your listing is complete and accurate. I just don’t really know the extent to which MerchantCircle reviews help you on the site (or in your Google+Local rankings).

1. Paid results. SuperPages seems to have a ton of businesses on-board with “sponsored listings” – to such an extent that the “basic” listings often are halfway down the page or lower.

2. Business name.

3. Categories. SuperPages has an unusually wide range of categories you can list your business under, but you can’t specify any custom categories. You can pick up to 5. It’s really worth taking a few minutes to make sure you pick them wisely. (One good practice is to check out which ones your competitors are using.)

4. Reviews. Relative to other sites, SuperPages doesn’t have an enormous amount of review activity – though certainly it would be smart to make sure you get a couple reviews on it. In effect, this makes the other 3 main ranking factors I’ve identified a little more important.

I did a whole post on Yelp ranking factors, as you may have seen. But here are the CliffsNotes on what seem to be the biggest ranking factors:

1. Existence of reviews.

2. Keyword-relevance of reviews

3. Categories.

4. Name of business.

5. Number of reviews.

6. Reviews by “Elite” members.

7. Check-ins via smartphone.

8. Quality of reviews.

(For more detail, check out the post.)

Let’s start this one off with some great observations by my good buddy Darren Shaw of Whitespark.ca:

I looked at some businesses ranking in yellowpages.ca a while back and it looked to me that the #1 thing was just to get a couple reviews. Any reviews. Most businesses didn’t have any reviews on the site, and the ones that did tended to rank. The trouble with yellowpages.ca is that they randomize the rankings on every page load. Refresh this a few times: https://www.yellowpages.ca/search/si/1/plumbers/Edmonton+AB

The items in blue are paid, and the items with pins are paid as well but a lower cost package. It looks pretty random.

I’m pretty sure that if you phone and talk to a sales rep at most directories, they’ll tell you exactly how the rankings are generated. Typically it’s paid level 1, paid level 2, paid level 3, then random non-paid with reviews possibly playing a role. They seem to randomize the various paid levels as well so that each business gets equal opportunity to rank #1 in their section.

Just for the sake of comparing notes, here are the YP ranking factors I’ve noticed:

1. Paid results. They’re everywhere. The only randomized results – the ones Darren mentions (above) – seem to be the paid results. The “basic,” free listings appear to rank the same way consistently – based on some of the ranking factors we’ve seen elsewhere.

2. Business name.

3. Categories.

4. Reviews. YP is an important site to your local-search efforts in a lot of ways – certainly if you’re in the US, but especially if you’re in another country. Even if you don’t give a hoot about how visible you are on YP, I do recommend getting at least a few reviews there.

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Even if some of specific factors I mentioned were news to you, the takeaway messages from all of this shouldn’t be news:

1. Make dead-certain you’re listed on each of the above sites, spend a few minutes picking out the most-relevant categories you can for your listings, and try to get reviews on as many of the sites as you possibly can.

2. Although many ad packages are a waste (or an outright scam), don’t necessarily dismiss them out of hand. For instance, if there’s on IYP site where you have a ton of great reviews, getting more people to see that listing may pay off.

3. Whenever there’s an often-ignored to-do item that can set you apart on one specific site (like verifying your Manta profile), do it. Most of your competitors would rather kick back and shovel Pringles into their faces than take a few minutes to pick low-hanging fruit.

Do you have any thoughts on / experience with the sites I mentioned or with others? Any advice or suggestions? Leave a comment!

InfoGroup Category List

June 27, 2012 by Phil 9 Comments

There are two business listings you absolutely can’t screw up if you want to get visible in Google’s local search results: The first one is your Google+Local listing (duh). The other is your InfoGroup listing.

InfoGroup – AKA InfoUSA – automatically feeds your business info to sites all over the local search ecosystem. If your InfoGroup listing has info that’s inaccurate or that differs significantly from what’s on other sites, the chances are excellent your local rankings will be lousy.

The data InfoGroup has on your business also gets piped right into Google. Ever wonder what causes duplicate Google listings to show up? Or how a business can have a local listing on Google even though the owner never created a listing? That’s usually because of InfoGroup.

The bottom line is you need to take two steps with your InfoGroup listing:

1. Make sure it exists and that your vital info (name, address, phone number) is correct. Do this at ExpressUpdateUSA.com (which is a site specifically meant for building / managing your listing). Create your listing if it’s not already there. If it’s in the system, claim it and make any necessary tweaks.

2. Beef up your listing with as much relevant additional info on your business / services as you possibly can. This additional info matters to your local rankings. This includes the “description” and “services” fields you’re allowed to fill out – and that are easily to fill out. But most importantly it means you have to pick out relevant categories to list your business under. The categories can be a little trickier. That’s what this post is for.

As I’ve commented before, picking the right business categories is crucial not only to your rankings but to the range of local search terms you’re visible for. This is true of the categories you pick for your Google listing, and of the categories you pick for your third-party listings – of which InfoGroup is arguably the most important of all.

Everything I recently wrote about categories on LocalEze is also true of InfoGroup: you have literally thousands of categories to choose from, but they’re not easily searchable and sometimes aren’t called what you think they’d be called. With InfoGroup it’s hard to know if you’ve even found the most relevant ones.

Many of the categories aren’t even relevant to “local” businesses. They have categories for bologna makers and yurt manufacturers alike. If you’re an alpaca farmer, they’ve got you covered. Wholesale zipper seller? Yup. Uranium dealer? No problem.

That’s why I’ve put all 9,854 InfoGroup business categories into one list. The benefit of this is you can search it using CTRL+F or Command+F, or even browse it if you must. You could find the right categories using InfoGroup’s search feature, but it will take you a bit longer.

Plus, you can even edit or process the categories list if you use the Excel or .txt versions – if you wanted to get all fancy.

But all you really need to do is find the 5 most-accurate categories for your business – or at least however many are relevant to your business and what you offer. Add those categories when you create or edit your InfoGroup listing.

By the way, I highly recommend you use CTRL+F to search the list, at least to narrow down your options at first. I hope you were planning to anyway. I suppose you could read through the list from top to bottom, but your head may explode and you’ll have eyeball prints on your laptop screen.

Happy category-hunting!

View or download the InfoGroup category list:

PDF

Excel

Text

categories

Categories

Business Address/Location

Business Name

General

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