What's the difference between Local Listings and SEO?

Owned by Emily Novits (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Oct 13, 2021 by Travis Mortenson (Unlicensed)
3 min read

Your online presence is the lifeblood of your business. We know that. FreshLime wants to help you be visible and get discovered to both new and returning customers. We do that by offering two different services: Local Listings and SEO. Both are FreshLime products, but they work in very different ways. We’ll go over the basics of SEO and tell you how it is different from Local Listings. If you want the nuts and bolts on Local Listings as well-- click this link.

 

SEO

Search Engine Optimization helps your business’s website to appear more relevant when certain keywords are searched. With SEO, you choose specific keywords that best describe your product and services. We then optimize your website for those specific keywords, prompting search engines to give preference to your website when those keywords are used during a search. In a nutshell, SEO helps your website to show up higher when certain keywords are used in a Google search. SEO takes time. It can be up to 6 - 9 months of consistent work to optimize your website for keyword searches. 

 

SEO vs. Local Listings 

Now that you know what’s up with SEO, you can see how Local Listings is different. Local listings manages your business’s online presence through ensuring accurate information across dozens of listings sites so your business gains credibility. Local Listings DOES NOT optimize your business website for search preference (that is what SEO does); Local Listings ensures that your business information is accurate, credible, and easy to find on dozens of relevant listings sites. This helps your business become credible online. As your business gains online credibility, you’ll get preference with Google Maps, Amazon Alexa, Apple Maps (iPhone), and other similar listings. Let’s take a look at the difference between Local Listings and SEO on a real Google search. Searching “plumbers near me” in Google returns the following: 

 

When ‘Plumbers near me’ is searched, Google returns several different categories of information:

  1. Google Guaranteed Business: to show up here, you must become certified by Google. There are a lot of requirements to accomplish this ...which is a conversation for a different day. Neither SEO work nor Local Listings can help you show up here.

  2. Google Ads: Businesses can pay Google to show up within this Google Ads section. Costly and results will vary. The only way to show up here is to buy Google Ads at an expensive rate.

  3. Google Maps: This is what FreshLime’s Local Listing feature optimizes. This is where consumers pay the most attention when searching for businesses. FreshLime’s Local Listings service helps you show up in this all-important area.

  4. Organic search results: At the bottom of the page is where the organic search results begin to show up. This is where links to websites can be found. And, if you are paying for SEO work on your website, you are aiming to claim the top spot in this section of a google search.

As you can see, utilizing Local Listings will help your business get discovered by new and returning customers as we work behind the scenes to prove that your business is credible and relevant.