Claim & Optimize Yahoo & Bing Local Listings

In addition to your Google Business Page, there are two other top Local Search Engines where you will want to be correctly found if possible. They are Yahoo and Bing.

There are many others beyond those, and many of those are listed in the next step. The verification process for all of these is similar to the Google Business page, but ALL will have their own unique differences.

Yahoo and Bing are the most recognizable and widely used of the lesser known Local Business Directories. Their systems are not perfect. This is especially true with Yahoo. So with these and the many other directories, you will just do what you can.

The listing service recommended by Finding Your Church – MOZ Local – does have a much better system for claiming and optimizing, and even has direct connections to the companies themselves. This makes using this Service very valuable. No matter how much effort you put into this step on your own, you will not be able to accomplish what this Service will do for your church.

If you want to take advantage of this Listing Service before going any further click here to get your free church online visibility scan.

But, if you want to continue on your own, you CAN make a difference in your online church findability if you put in the detailed effort.

Issues with Claiming Yahoo Local Listings

Yahoo used to be free to claim and optimize. Then for awhile it became extremely difficult to do, there was no communication that you could access to anyone from Yahoo when you had issues, and there were extreme delays in getting verified if you could even do it at all.

Now it looks like they have gone to a paid service which appears to be the only way you can claim and optimize your Yahoo Listing on your own. You can find that link below.

>> Yahoo Local Listing Service

They also have similar paid options to manage your other local listings like Moz Local, but at a much higher cost.

Moz Local probably has a package that includes Yahoo, but even if they don’t they definitely help you clean up your information on what are called Data Aggregators. The individual local listings actually pull information from these data aggregators sites and I am sure Yahoo does too to some level. If you correct your information there with a Moz Local package at some point it is possible that your correct information will also trickle down to sites like Yahoo too and correct itself.

Steps to Claim & Optimize Bing Local

Bing Local Places for Businesses and Churches

Bing has a much better process than Yahoo, and you SHOULD be able to complete local listing verification and optimization on their site.

  • Go to the Microsoft Login page and create a new Microsoft Account here – login.live.com. At this time you can use your church Gmail marketing email address for your login username, but worst case you will have to setup an actual new account and login for live.com.
  • Once you are logged in, go to the Bing Places for Business site here – BingPlaces.com and click “Get Started”
  • Search for your church by your primary Phone Number or Church Name. The next page should show you options that hopefully include your church. Again, if there are multiple listings for your church, claim all then go back and delete all but one after you have control of the listings.
  • You will either click “Claim Business” next to your church listing or “Create New Business” if you cannot find a listing for your church.
  • Follow the steps for verification. They will most likely send you a postcard with a PIN Number to your church address for verification.
  • After receiving your PIN code, login and complete the verification process. Then go through the steps to completely filling in your Profile Information, Church Logo, Pictures and whatever else they will allow you to add about your church.

Remember, if you are able to claim and optimize them to add your Yahoo and Bing login information to your Local Promotion Resource Document to make it easy to find while waiting on verification and if you need to make future changes to your listings.