Maintaining consistent and accurate information across all of your online listings is vitally important for small businesses. Consistent listing information makes it easy for your customers to find you, and lets search engines know that your business is legitimate and trustworthy, which will keep you from being pushed down in the rankings. Thryv makes it easy by automating your listing management. All you have to do is submit the correct information into Thryv, and the software will push that information to 70+ listing sites, and then lock down your listings, preventing anyone else from editing your information. What information exactly do they need? Let's take a look!

Fill Out Your Listing Profile

To view your active listings, navigate to Online Presence>Listings Management. This page will show an interactive view or a grid of all of your current active listings. (Note: For new accounts, it can take up to 24 hours for all listings to sync. Please allow time for sync to all sites).

Notes: Sites available will vary by location for international partnerships.

To make changes to your listing information, navigate to the top right and click on Manage My Listings

This will bring us to the page where you can fill out your listing information. Thryv provides a convenient tool to measure the overall strength of your listing profile. Let's take a look at how to change this from Bad to Great!

Fill in your Business Name and Description. The limit for a business description is 200 characters, a counter will display in the lower right corner to let you know how many you've used. It is important that the business description gives your customers enough information to know about your business and a best practice is to include keywords that customers might search for. Make sure these keywords fit naturally within the flow of your writing and don't appear jammed together. 

Choose your business Category. All the categories you see listed in Thryv are predetermined to ensure that you’re listed correctly across the publisher sites, i.e. Google, Facebook, Yelp, Yahoo, and others. We make updates in accordance with what categories are offered by the publisher sites. We recommend that you pick the category that fits as close to your business as possible. The first category chosen will be your Primary Category, and each one chosen after will be listed as a Secondary Category. Most listing sites cut off at 5 categories, so make sure you select up to 5, in the order that they are relevant to your business.

Enter your physical Business Address. It is important that you enter a physical address for your business (not a PO Box). If you don't want your address to show on your listings, you can choose to hide it in Settings>Business Info>Contact Info (Note: If you do this, it is important that you define a Service Area, explained below, so that you can be listed on Google. Google will not list businesses without a physical address or defined service area). 

Enter your Business Phone Number. The phone number you are most likely to answer should be entered in Main Phone. If you have a secondary phone, mobile phone, or fax number, be sure to list those as well. Remember, the more ways you are available to be contacted, the easier it is for customers to get in touch with you!

If you want to enable your customers to contact you by email, enter your email address. Similar to the phone number, make sure it is an email address you check regularly, so that you don't miss out on any potential leads!

For the Featured Message, use the text field to enter your Call To Action. In other words, ask yourself the question, "What do I want my leads to DO when they see my listing?" Then, place the link to your client portal or appointment scheduler in the URL field to enable your clients to take that action. To grab the link to your client portal or scheduler, navigate to Client Portal>Create Direct Links, and select the link you would like to be your call to action. For this example we used the online scheduler.

Enter your Business Hours. It is important to have accurate hours because search engines will display your business as Open during your hours and Closed outside of your hours. You can also use Add More Holiday Hours to edit your hours only on specific days you might have different hours.

Next, define your Service Area. If you hid your business address above, this step is vital. Google will not list a business without a physical address or a service area. If you opt for a service area instead of a physical address, then your Google listing will show a red outline of the area defined instead of a pin on the map. If you have a type of business where your customers come to you, this step is not necessary.

Check all methods of Payments that apply. Remember, more information on your listing is always better, and being easier to do business with increases your chance of getting the job. Are you looking for a payment method that is more convenient for your customers? Click Here to check out ThryvPay!

Enter all appropriate URLs next. Enter your Main Website URL, and then any appropriate call to action links below. Remember to be as specific as possible with your links. For example in the Reservations field, Navigate to Client Portal>Create Direct Links and select Schedule Appointment. This means your leads will be just one click away from setting up an appointment with you. 

Next, enter the links to all of your social media accounts. Make sure the names and information on these social accounts match your listing profile to increase Google's confidence in your listing to rank better.

Pictures are one of the most important ways for your listings to gain exposure. Having relevant pictures on your listings is a huge advantage over listings with no pictures. Make sure you post appealing photos that will create trust in your brand. Like before, more photos is always better, be sure to go to the Google My Business(link to gmb article) to add even more photos to rank better.

That may have been quite a bit of work, but rest assured it was well worth it. By following this guide, your business's image on over 70+ sites has drastically improved. Want to do even better? Go to Yext Advanced in the App Marketplace to add pictures and more detailed listing information