It’s no secret that Google absolutely dominates when it comes to online search, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore the other search engines. Here are a couple of reasons why you should be on Bing Places:
Cost: A Bing Places listing is free to set up. All it requires is a little bit of your time to set it up, verify and optimize the listing.
Setup: It’s a simple, one-time setup. Once you set your business up in Bing Places, Bing Places does the rest of the work for you. From start to finish, it takes less than 30 minutes to set up and verify your business ownership, so nobody (including competitors) can make unauthorized updates to your listing. You can update your listing at any time if something changes about your business, but it’s otherwise a true “set it and forget it” system.
Reach: Once your business is listed, Bing Places helps you become more visible to online customers who use the Bing search engine. Millions of people search Bing every day. It’s owned by Microsoft and is the default search engine on millions of computers. That means your business can be featured in Bing and Bing Maps results, including popular local search results, when people search for businesses like yours without requiring you to do anything more.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Getting listed on Bing will even help with your Google ranking. So even if Bing won’t be a primary source of traffic, it’s worth it. When considering rankings for local listings, Google looks beyond your Google listing. One of the factors that it considers is how many listing websites your company is on. This includes websites like Yelp, Yellow Pages and Bing. This means that even if you couldn’t care less about your ranking on Bing, you should still take the time to set up a Bing local listing, because it will help boost your local search results on Google.
Social Proof: When Bing Places showcases your business to online customers, it includes your business’s Yelp reviews, business hours, and contact information, so customers know when you’re open, how to get in touch with you if they have more questions, and how well you serve your customers. The more satisfied customers you have leaving Yelp reviews, the more likely people are to chose your business over your competitors, so serve your customers well and their great reviews will help you attract even more customers.
Analytics: Although you can get a lot of benefits from the one-time, “set it and forget it” system, if you want to go deeper, Bing Places gives you free access to back-end information that tells you how your business listing is performing compared to your competitors and even gives you advice on how to improve your website.
Collectively, this gives you a unique opportunity to connect with potential customers the moment they’re searching for businesses like yours, without having to continuously spend time or money. It’s a no brainer!
Want more Hyperlocal information? What about other Hyperlocal Considerations? Need some tips on how to Optimize Your Yelp Listing. Have you Optimized Your Google Listing? Get Noticed With Hyperlocal Marketing.
