Unless you play fantasy football or love answering random online questions, you probably haven’t thought about Yahoo in almost a decade. The aging tech pioneer which recently sold to Verizon for $5 billion was once king of the internet, valued at $125 billion.
Despite Yahoo’s commercial failure, they’re still one of the most trafficked domains on the internet receiving more than 200 million unique monthly visitors. For local business owners, a Yahoo business listing is a great way to get a strong backlink from one of the top web properties in the world. Your Yahoo Business listing improves search engine optimization for your website, aids in prompt customer service, and boosts online and in-store conversion.
Unfortunately, Yahoo doesn’t make listing your business a simple process. Yahoo outsources the management of its business listings to a company called Yext. It also heavily encourages you to opt for paid exposure by purchasing a multi-directory business listing package. While a paid membership gives you premium access to Yahoo Local and its sister directories, monthly fees start at around $3 and climb rapidly to $19 for premium options.
If you just want a basic Yahoo Business listing read on. You’ll learn how to set up a free Yahoo Business listing to benefit your business, best practices for setting up your listing, and how to navigate Yext to claim your listing today.
What is a Yahoo Business Listing?
When a customer searches for your brand or similar products or service near them—relevant to your business—your Yahoo Business listing displays your company information, its location, and contact information. When you submit your free Yahoo Business listing, your customers will have the most current, accurate information about your brand—including address, phone number, website, hours of operation, and details on your products or service. If you don’t have a Yahoo listing, you miss out on a valuable opportunity to bring traffic to your website and brick-and-mortar locations.
How to Create a Free Yahoo Business Listing
Creating your Yahoo Business Listing is easy. Here’s the steps you need to follow to get started:
- First, go to Yext’s Yahoo Business listings portal.
- Enter your business details and scan for any existing listings.
- After you confirm your email and create your account successfully, Yext will take you to a landing page that details its various paid plans.
- Now, you’ll be able to submit your new business listing.
3 Benefits of Local Business Listings
1. Boosted SEO
Google is often celebrated as the reigning king of SERP’s, but search engines like Yahoo and Bing still account for a hearty portion of search traffic. Your Yahoo business listing fast track’s your company’s visibility in national and local search engine results.
If you want to elevate your business in Yahoo’s SERP stack, tell Yahoo your brand cares about helping customers find the most accurate information by creating a Yahoo Business listing for each of your locations! You can even create specific geographic landing pages for each of your locations to further boost local search rankings.
2. Streamlined Customer Service
Over 74% of people say they’re likely to switch brands if they find the purchasing process too difficult. It pays to make it easy for customers to find and communicate with your brand! When you allow customers to quickly find the correct details about each of your retail locations, you give them what they want, faster. This is good. It results in higher customer satisfaction and less wasted time referring customers to another location or phone number.
You don’t want to dissuade a customer from doing business with your company because he or she doesn’t like your purchasing process. That may cause them to choose to buy from a competitor. And they certainly won’t become a loyal customer and recommend your business to their friends and family.
3. Increased Online and Offline Conversion
Create a Yahoo Business listing for each of your locations to cash in on opportunity to bring traffic to your website and brick-and-mortar stores. According to Google research, local searches are more than twice as likely to result in a purchase. Many customers prefer to shop locally and support local businesses, so take advantage of this consumer trend.
Multiple Locations?
If your business owns multiple locations, you should create a separate Yahoo Business listing for each. This ensures that your customers can quickly access information for a location closest to them. It also helps your business funnel search traffic to your website through geographic landing pages tailored to each site.
If Yahoo and other search engines see you have on-site content that helps customers learn about a specific location, its algorithm will reward your SEO. The same goes for Google, Bing, and any other popular search engine.
Beyond Business Listings
Using Yext’s scanning feature allows you to create and edit your Yahoo Business listing. It also reveals issues with SEO or sales that you had no idea existed. For instance, you may encounter an old or inaccurate listing for your business that is misleading, prevents sales, and sends your customers on a wild goose chase in search of your retail location. There could also be another brand with a name very close to yours that is erroneously capturing your search traffic. You won’t know until you scan.
Whether your business is new or established, it’s never too late to take charge of your online presence. Creating business listings on the top local business listing sites is a huge step in the right direction. While the process might be a bit complex, it’s well worth the effort. You’ll gain essential knowledge about the details your customers are currently seeing when they search for your business and get a better grasp of potential issues with your SEO, sales, and customer service.
