These days, there are lots of places a prospective customer can go to search for local businesses in their area. Top Rated Local®, Facebook, Yelp and Google are just a few of the local sites, directories and apps local businesses need a presence on.

Finding each local website and creating a profile for your business is just the first step. You need to fully optimize your profile on every one of them to ensure that it stands out from the crowd.

The right listings management software helps you get found anywhere and everywhere people in your area are looking for your products or services.

Identifying the right local websites, apps and directories to get your business listed on is a big chore in and of itself, but in order to build a strong local presence for your business, you also need to manage all of those listings.

Any time you change your hours or add a new service, you’re going to want to update your local listings across the web. This can quickly become a time-consuming task that makes you want to pull out your hair.

With the right listings management software, you can update all of your listings from one place in just a few minutes.

Imagine this scenario:

A consumer in your community found your listing on Yelp. They’re impressed with your pictures, and your reviews look good, so they decide to give you a call, only to run into an old phone number.

In situations like these, the likelihood is low that the consumer in question will look somewhere else for your new phone number. It’s much more likely that they’ll move to the next listing on Yelp, and you’ll lose their business.

When you use listings management software, you can avoid situations like these by making updates to every listing you manage from one place.

Some of your listings may be more effective than others. Maybe you have better pictures on one listing, or you have an older business description on another listing.

Contact information, like your phone number or address, is critical to keep updated on your listings, but it’s not the only thing that should be consistent. Everything about your listing, from your logo and images to how you describe your business, needs to be consistent.

Consistency is the first rule of branding. Keeping your listings consistent across the web will make your brand more recognizable and demonstrate your professionalism. This also helps to build trust with prospective customers.

As I said, there are a lot of different places people can go to find local businesses these days. However, the vast majority of those searches start on a search engine, like Google or Bing.

Ranking high in local searches means more visibility for your business with people who are actively searching for what you have to offer — which makes them high-quality leads for your business.

NAP (name, address, phone number) consistency across all of your listings can help to increase your rankings in local searches. Listings management software ensures that every aspect of your business information is consistent on every one of your listings.

Businesses that operate out of more than one physical location have a lot more work cut out for them when it comes to listings management — exponentially so. That’s because they need individual listings across all local sites for each location.

The greater the number of locations a business has, the more difficult and time-consuming manual listings management becomes. Luckily, there’s a better way to manage all of those listings.

The right listings management software can make managing your local listings across the web much faster and easier. That’s true whether your business has a single location or a dozen locations.