Rainy-Day SEO: Third-Party Business Profile Optimization

Welcome back to our series on Rainy-Day SEO (otherwise known as the initiatives you can always work on if/while you’re waiting for roadblocks to clear on high-priority projects).

As mentioned in our intro to Rainy-Day SEO, there’s a good-sized list of activities that should be part of any good holistic organic strategy – and don’t need a lot of two-way communication for you to jump in.

For today’s post, we’ll talk about third-party business profile optimization – how to do it and the role it serves for your brand or client.

What are third-party business profiles?

Presumably, you all have a Google My Business profile (right?). That’s the most universal example of a third-party profile, which essentially means a profile of your business that’s hosted by another company or site.

Other common examples of these: G2, Capterra, the Better Business Bureau, Clutch, Yelp, etc. In most cases, you can pay for enhanced profiles (and more prominent placements in search listings on those platforms), but even organic profile optimization is important to do.

Here’s an example from the Better Business Bureau:

What do third-party business profiles do for your brand?

There are two big benefits of having a built-out business profile on a respected third-party site:

1. Visibility on the platforms used by your consumer base so they can find accurate information about you that carries the clout of the third-party site.
   
   
2. Another option for the search engines to show a broad and accurate representation of your business, which increases your chance of ranking for core product or service-related queries. Well-established sites like G2 can be hugely impactful in hogging SERP real estate and drawing engagement for your brand:
   
   

What are some optimization best practices for third-party business profiles?

Most of these make it very easy to fill out – there’s no rocket science required. The first order of business is making sure you know the top 3-5 third-party sites that are relevant to your type of business; once you have your list, make sure you’re building and/or claiming the profile for your brand.

As noted, many of these profiles have the option to pay for more premium features and higher list placements. It’s completely above board to get a rep on the hook to answer questions if you have any on the organic listings – you’ll generally find them helpful because building a relationship with you makes it more likely to sell you on their platform in the future.

In just about every line of work, it’s easy to get stalled by a lack of feedback – from clients, managers, teammates, etc. Maybe your main contact is on vacation and can’t answer; maybe someone’s working on a relative emergency that takes precedence over your questions.

In SEO, whether you’re working in-house or for an agency, there’s never an excuse to sit on your hands while you wait for communication from another party. Even if you’re waiting anxiously to hear about an ultra-important, super-secret set of keywords to prioritize in your organic optimization efforts, there’s a long list of initiatives you can tackle in the meantime.

Check out the next edition of our Rainy-Day SEO series on link-building here!