Ranking above national brands isn’t easy, but you want to do everything you can to gain more organic traffic. As search engines continue to place a larger focus on geo-targeting search results, claiming and completing local profiles on Google, Yelp, Bing and Yahoo isn’t just best practices anymore – it’s SEO gold!

Here are a few tips on how to get the most out of your profiles:

Fill out your profiles completely
Filling out a local profile shouldn’t stop with your address, phone and URL. Many local profiles, Google and Yelp included, allow you to add all kinds of information about your business. Whether you want to include payment options or pictures of your business, you should take advantage of every field offered by the local directory. Customers are more likely to click to your site or visit your location if they have all the information they may need right there on your profile.

Monitor your reputation
Now that you’ve claimed your location, you can use this to monitor your online reputation. With local profiles ranking so well, you’ll want to be sure that your business is maintaining a positive reputation online. While one or two negative reviews amongst many good reviews won’t hurt your business, many unaddressed negative reviews could prove to be very detrimental to your business.

Update, Update, Update
Did you just launch a new menu item? Maybe you changed your store hours to cater to a late-night crowd. Either way, these are very important pieces of information. Especially as many people turn to mobile devices for information, you’ll want to make sure you keep the most up-to-date information on your local profile. This way the information is easy for your customers to find, which makes your business more accessible. If you leave your profile unchanged for too long, it won’t look good in the eyes of search engines.

Add a coupon
Want to get an idea about just how much traffic your local profile gets? Add a coupon! As easy as adding pictures, videos and information about your business, you can add coupons to a lot of local profiles. Not only will your client see all the information they need, but they’ll be able to find a coupon without visiting your website! For a lot of people performing mobile searches, a coupon could be the decision maker.

When you. Have active local profiles, not only are they likely to rank better, but you can expect a higher percentage of clicks coming from these profiles. Also, since you’ve provided so much information already, you’re likely to see a Lowe. Bounce rate from traffic coming through local profiles. And, of course, you will always get business directly from these listings from people who never even visits your website.

How have you found success using local profiles? Do you have any local SEO strategies that you’d like to share?