When Studio City Patch launched in September 2010, editors and contributors ventured to local businesses to collect information for our directory. The result: Patch Places.
Patch Places is the spot to find descriptions, hours, accepted payment methods and more for spots around town. You can even see what your neighbors think of a business before you try it or write your own review.
But local businesses get extra bonuses when they claim their free listing.
Owners or managers can sign in and search for their business. Underneath the photos, there is a box with the question: Do you own or manage this location? Claim it! Just click Claim it! and a form will pop up asking for contact information and authorization to claim it.
Within a few days, someone from Patch will contact you to verify your authenticity. You'll then be approved as the business owner and will see a "Manage Your Listing" button.
From there, you have lots of options to add photos, see your statistics and edit the listing. Here are the tools you'll see and what they mean:
Your Stats:
Here you can see how many users have rated, reviewed or follow your listing. You can e-mail your customers to seek out more reviews, and link the Patch Place to your Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Edit Listing:
Add photos, website information, hours of operation, contact information and more under the Basic Info tab. Some of this information cannot be changed, but you can request a new description if you think your business is inaccurately described.
Choose Extra Info to add information like the founding date of your business, what kinds of payments you accept, parking information and more.
Manage Photos & Media:
Here you can add and edit photos and choose which image is featured. If you have a video or PDFs, you would add that here.
Reviews:
You can see what people have to say about your business and respond to reviews.
Free Tools:
This is an easy way to post events and add job openings to our classifieds section, also known as the Marketplace.
Paid Tools:
You can upgrade your listing with a video profile, add a message from the owner and become a featured business on the Places page for a fee. You can learn more about these options and see how to get in touch with a sales team member.
Claim your listing today to help keep Patch users up to date with your company and keep your listing looking fresh.
Here's what you need to do to claim your business listing:
- Sign up and create a free account on Patch.com.
- Confirm your new account by clicking the confirmation link in the email we'll send you.
- Go to your directory listing and click on the "Claim it" link halfway down the page.
- Email me to let me know you've done this so I can approve your listing claim.
- Done!
You'll then have the ability to update your listing and then fill in the numerous fields, upload pictures and video, select your featured listing (and hide your business address if you'd like).
How to get your listing to rise in the Patch Directory:The directory ranking system favors ratings and relevance. Within each category, the directory will default to sorting by the ratings with the highest rated businesses showing up first. So if you click on any category (e.g. Food & Dining), it will show all businesses under that category with 5 star ratings appearing first. Also, if you search by keyword (e.g. by typing "italian restaurant" into the search box) it will then sort by relevance. This takes into account words in the description and the other fields so you'll be rewarded by customizing your directory listing.
So you, as a business owner, have 2 ways to get your listing to appear higher in the rankings:
- Encourage your customers to rate your business (share it via email, facebook, twitter, etc.)
- Claim your listing and then fill in the editable fields once you have claimed your listing with relevant information and keywords. This should then cause your listing to rise in the category and keyword searches.
Questions? Contact your Studio City Patch Advertising Manager at dominique@patch.com.
