Bing – How to Claim Your Local Listing
One of most popular SEO training segments during our advanced SEO Training Workshop covers Local Search SEO.
At our recent Las Vegas and Phoenix workshops we had small business owners who were interested in learning how to optimize their own listings, students who worked with other SEO agencies and even a handful of students who were in the process of starting their own Local Search consulting business.
During this workshop we discuss the 55 most important factors in Local Search Optimization and #1 on this list is claiming your business listing.
So to say the least I felt a little embarrassed when I brought up our Phoenix SEO Training local business listing in Bing and found that for some reason it was marked as unclaimed.
We had claimed and optimized the listing prior to the transformation from MSN to Bing and I have checked it over the past several months, but for whatever reason right there in the class it was marked as unclaimed!
So those reading this post that have previously claimed their Bing local listings I urge you to check your listings now to make sure that you still have ownership.
And for those of you that have never claimed ownership, our SEO tip of the week will cover the steps on claim and first steps in the optimization of your Bing Local Listing.
The First Step is to find out if your business is already listed in Bing’s Local Search Results.
SEO Training SW is listed #2 in Bing’s Local Results under “SEO Phoenix” (see map)
So in our case we went to our local listing page for SEO Training and on the bottom right clicked the link “Change your business listing”
If you cannot find your listing and you have to add it, your first stop will be the Bing Local Listing Center
After clicking the link to “change your business listing” or “adding your business” from the local listing center you will be redirected to Windows Live where you will either need to create an account or log in with your existing account.
The next window will be the “add your listing” window with a green progress bar which will then take you to your local page where you can edit your information.
Ontop of the page you will be asked for your name, address, telephone number and email along with basic information about your business.
Under this area you can also add supplemental information such as additional telephone numbers, other web addresses and additional email addresses.
Next you will enter your hours of operation, in my example I checked “Do Not Display”
Under this area you can then add your payment methods, check all that apply to your business
Then you have the opportunity to add up to ten photos of your business into your listing, each must be under 5 megs
Under this area you then have six text boxes to enter:
- The year your business was established
- Your company tag line
- Your business description
- The brands of products that you carry
- Your specialties
- Your professional affiliations
Don’t forget to sprinkle in some of your keywords for your business into these text boxes!
Next you will be asked for languages spoken and parking options.
When you complete the information press the next button.
The next page you get to select the categories your business falls under. Be selective and don’t spam!
The next page you will have the opportunity to review your listing and if there are any errors or omissions you can go back and edit.
The next page has the service agreement between you and Microsoft and if you accept their terms, press the “I Accept” button.
Next the verification process begins and in my case I was given the option to either verify with the telephone number assigned to my listing or to verify by my mailing address.
I chose the speedy alternative, verification by telephone.
A few moments after pressing the “verify by telephone” button my phone rang and I was prompted to enter the pin number assigned.
After successfully re-submitting my listing, I was notified that my listing would be reviewed and if approved would be updated within the next 72 hours.
That’s all there is to claiming your listing on Bing!
After my listing is approved I will then return and further optimize my listing using the 55 point checklist that we review in our advanced SEO Workshop.
More from SEO Training SW
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- How to SEO Your Images with Metadata
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Comments
15 Responses to Bing – How to Claim Your Local Listing
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sweet spot.
It would seem that the Newspaper Sales teams or even Radio sales teams would be better aligned to sell a local search type product then the yellow page reps.
The Newspaper and Radio reps deal with their clients typically on a weekly basis building a relationship on developing timely content. Tying short keyword campaigns to the content in the ads they develop, would provide nice local search coverage for Local, Local businesess.
I agree that to date newspaper sites and radio sites are blind to the true opportunity presented to them.
#ad use the Kansas Citys premier local search engine and you find what you are looking for
How can you tell if your listing has been claimed on bing? I know in Google it says owner verified, but in Bing I can only see change or update a listing and do not know if it has been claimed by someone else or not.
Thanks!
First you need to head over to the Bing Local listing center to make sure that your business is listed, in your case I assume that it is. So next step is to modify it.
To start you will need to sign in using your Windows ID, if you don’t have one you will need to create one. Once signed in you can edit/create an account. Be as specific as you can. Bing may choose to authenticate your listing by mail and/or a telephone number of record that they have on file for the business
I have added my bing local listing and chose to receive my pin through the mail. Is there a way that I can change that to verify over the phone now instead?
No, Bing preferred method of content are the postcards, sorry…
I have been trying to get my law firm listed on Bing Local for about 9 months, and my listing still shows the following message:
“Right now we’re making Bing better with some ‘behind the scenes’ changes, and updates may take longer than usual.”
Very frustrating. I communicated with tech support, but they appeared to give up after several emails back and forth.
Weird, we have never had this problem with any of our listings yet. Have you thought of killing this listing and starting all over?
How do you claim a Bing Local listing that someone else already claimed?
Trying to find this out from our contacts, so far no luck
I have the same question as Michael. Someone has already claimed our listing (it may have been us but nobody at the company knows anything about it). I need access to it. Anxiously awaiting an answer. Thanks.
@Bob, we just went through this with another student. We went to the Bing Local Business Center page to first find the business and when it was displayed it asked us if this was our business and or if we wanted to edit it. Even though the listing was claimed by someone else it accepted our login to go in and edit it. At the end of the process it said they would verify with a post card. Hopefully this will work.
Bing certainly didn’t make claiming my listing easy. I literally had to hunt for that option.
hello…..I am looking at a biz opp which will offer to small biz owners a very complete verified listing service,webcard,provide an InfoCast as well as submission to approx 350 publishers, portals, etc….all for under $1000 a year……basically the biz will get a report card and monthly reports listing all of this stuff……how does this sound?
How does it sound to me? Sounds like one of the typical local SEO scams that these questionable firms are promoting.