Every year, millions of lonely, unloved businesses go unclaimed all across the web. They are alone, frightened, abandoned, and usually just include generic, basic info such as phone number and address. They are forgotten and forced to live out their eternity in the wastelands of the internet. But you can save them. You can show them that there is indeed someone out there that cares enough to update their tattered, outdated information. Someone that cares enough to decorate their meek existence with colorful and informative pictures. If you show love to your unclaimed business listing, it will return that love ten-fold.
Interested? Great! Now let’s get started.
Where do I begin?
This is the part that takes a little bit of detective work. Luckily, you have the Sherlock Holmeses of the internet at your disposal (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc). First off, you have to find out where these unclaimed listings are hiding. To do this, simply type your business name into the search engine of your choice and let the magic begin. In a few moments, you should have a pretty substantial list of places that your business is appearing online. If you have a personal website or a CityCliq site (shameless plug) you should see those pages towards the top of the list. You should also see a lot of websites that you may or may not have heard of before that are also listing information about your business. These are the ones that you should be after. These are the orphaned listings that are in desperate need of claiming.
Why should I care about claiming my orphaned listings?
More often than not, orphaned listings are confused. They need guidance and usually contain inaccurate information. Everything from wrong phone numbers to old addresses can appear on these unclaimed pages but luckily, you as the business owner have the opportunity to step in and make things right. Almost every directory-style page that provides generic business information gives the owner the opportunity to claim and edit their business on that page. Once you have claimed your business, you can usually edit everything from addresses, phone numbers, custom website addresses (backlinks anyone?) and sometimes even add photos. The listing will be much happier and so will any customers that happen to land on that page when researching your business.
Not only will customers be privy to accurate and current information, they will see your business as being more established and credible than your competitor, who probably hasn’t taken the time to seek out and claim his or her orphaned listing. Essentially, by taking the time to claim and edit your business’ information on as many websites as you can, you create automatic credibility with any consumer that happens to find you on one of those sites. Even if it is a site that you have never heard of, chances are that there are thousands of people who frequent that site everyday.
Alright, I’ve claimed my listings…now what?
If you have truly become ‘Daddy Warbucks’ and claimed as many of your orphaned business listings as you can find, you can sit back and enjoy the benefits of your hard work. Not only have you saved these little listings from a life of mediocrity, you have given your potential customers a much better chance of getting a hold of you and have presented your business in a much more appealing light. If a website sticks out in your mind as being particularly awesome, you can even link to it from your blog, personal website, or email signature and spread the word about its greatness. I’m sure the listing on that page would enjoy the attention.
Keeping your business information consistent across the entire web is no easy task. Don’t let it overwhelm you though. Just take a step back and approach it methodically, one site at a time. Before you know it, you will have a whole slew of happy, claimed listings, all driving traffic to your business.
Feel free to comment and share some of your favorite/least favorite directory-style listing sites or maybe some of the strangest places that you have seen your business information pop up.
