Local Profiles Need Updating to Include COVID Delta Variant Precautions

With COVID-19 numbers on the rise due to the Delta variant, it may be a good time to make sure the safety precautions your local business customers are taking are updated on their local profiles.

Update These Local Profiles to Include COVID-19 Safety Precautions

We actually talked with you last week about optimizing local profiles on Yelp, Bing & Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business). This week we are covering the added features available that they can update to share about their COVID-19 protocols.

Add Yelp Attributes to the Listing

Just last week Yelp announced the addition of Proof of Vaccination Required and All Staff Fully Vaccinated attributes. They already had Masks Required and Staff Wears Masks attributes.

Within this same section of the Yelp profile, businesses can add a banner message for the top of their Yelp page. While businesses can’t publish regular posts on Yelp, this banner message is a great way to communicate important notices to the public.

Add a COVID-19 Announcement on Bing

Yelp isn’t the only one that has a banner message option. When a business logs into their Bing Places listing they immediately see COVID-19 Related Announcement front and center.

Along with the announcement, the business can specify a timeframe during which the announcement is valid – and include a link to the business’ website that relates to the announcement. Adding announcements such as these will help to communicate how they are protecting their customers and their team.

Google Business Profile Has COVID-19 Communication Options, Too

Google Business Profile (GBP) allows the business to add a COVID-19 Update. Just head over to posts and make sure COVID-19 Update is selected to add one.

Even before Google added the COVID-19 Update option, businesses could utilize the post feature to put up their message. We recommend that the message is added under COVID-19 Update, because Google calls it out differently in search. We’ve talked with you before about COVID-19 actions to take on your client’s listings.

You should also make sure all the GBP Health & Safety attributes are added for the business. Adding attributes to a GBP listing can really help the business listing to stand out in desktop and mobile searches. Adding Service attributes will help with this too.

We Help You Better Prepare Your Businesses for Success

At Advice Local, we’re all about helping our local marketing and agency partners to better help their local business clients. We can help with all your listing management needs. Google Business Profile, Bing & Yelp is just one area of our expertise. Request a demo today to learn more.