By Shiva Sharif

Whether a large national brand retailer with thousands of local brick and mortar locations or a smaller regional operation, most retailers now recognize that online business listings are a critical element of their Internet marketing strategy. The listings are crucial to establishing and maintaining a local online presence and in driving sales through the door.

With economic pressures causing fluctuating prices for retail space, merchants are closely considering options for their physical locations, e.g., relocating, closing. This impacts their business listings and findability on the web. And, while establishing and maintaining an online business listing's identity “anchor” — the business’ Name Address, Phone Number (NAP) — seems like a relatively easy task, inaccuracies in retailers’ listings information across local search platforms are extremely prevalent. The result is a significant online brand identity crisis.

National and regional retailers are capitalizing on the current economic times and rock-bottom real estate pricing by gaining more space for less or shifting/opening new locations within a certain area/mall for better visibility. Others are simply closing failing stores. The challenge for all retailers lies in ensuring that its NAP is re-established and managed online for each of the relocating brick and mortar stores.

Some chains are initiating “rebirths” or rebranding efforts to attract new buyers or call attention to product lines or services offered. A retailer previously known as “Oasis Spa” that is now offering fitness services and has rebranded itself as “Oasis Spa and Fitness,” needs to update its name within its local search business listings identity across the web. Otherwise, critical new customers will be flocking to the competition when they find other fitness options through their web keyword searches.

With local search platforms like Bing and others providing business listing details — images, maps, keyword profiles, reviews and social media profiles — in addition to the anchor business listing, it is critical that NAP information is managed and maintained consistently across platforms. This allows users to find your location and/or phone number on the web, share those details with others and interact with your local retail outlet plus provide cross-crawling linking benefits with other platforms.

Best practices for managing your local business listing identity

For retailers and franchises — one store or 1,000 stores — here are a few key best practices that will ensure your business listing identity is accurate and findable:

1. Keep your Name, Address and Phone Number (NAP) consistent across all local search platforms. This creates consistency on the web and will improve the visibility and depth for your listings.
2. Designate an owner. It’s important to designate the owner/author within your organization so they have the ultimate control over the ongoing submission and management of the listings.
3. Don’t confuse a web site store locator with business listings. Store locators on the corporate site are terrific in directing buyers already interested in your brand to find a location, but they don’t help researching online local buyers find your store across the web. Store locators simply aren’t enough.
4. Verify business listings on an ongoing basis. Don’t just submit listings and forget about them. Instead, proactively manage listings, especially as business details change or as locations move, close or open.
5. Be careful not to replace the business’ main phone number with call tracking numbers in your anchor identity. Although call tracking numbers can provide a valuable measure of performance, the anchor identity is the common thread that is used to carry business information across search platforms. Varying phone numbers appearing across business listings can result in the creation of inaccurate, varied identities for a business across the web.
6. Keep NAPs in social media profiles consistent with your business listings. As retailers are now fully engaged in social media, adding accurate NAP information on sites like Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Gowalla, etc., is critical. This ensures that consumers will share correct NAP details when socially interacting with fans, friends and followers and it enables local search platforms to accurately find and link these profiles to their listings.

Retailers, who already have a significant amount of inaccurate NAP information circulating on the web, should work with a technology partner to quickly claim, correct and manage their local search business listings. This will ensure local search platforms have current, relevant and complete data for locations — whether the brand is big or small — and direct potential buyers appropriately.

Shiva Sharif is director, national brands, for search marketing firm Localeze.

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