I make it a practice to clean up people’s notes sections. But, I don’t do it every day. I do my sweeps from time to time and will go through a few thousand listings. What I prefer is if a Notary will email me and ask me to clean up their notes section and make suggestions. The problem I have is that most Notaries have a very stripped down notes section and say very little about themselves. At this point, I ask them to spend an hour or more reading our tutorials and taking notes about what they need to add to their notes that the didn’t add yet. Then, they need to compose a notes section. I cannot clean up a notes section that has two lines of content – there is nothing to work with.

What I found is that most Notaries write jumbled and disorganized notes sections. Sometimes the information is good, but the formatting is generally bad. Additionally, people tend to put the most critical information and bury it below. This is why I like to clean up people’s notes sections. I bring the most salient information to the top, as that will show up on the search results. I organize the content into a well structured easy to read format. Sometimes I rephrase things to cut through the fluff. People reading your profile have no time for inconsequential extra words. Get to the point and be factual and helpful.

Being unique and factual wins the game, while making vague claims about how adjective, adjective, and adjective you are does not help and can often hurt.

The bottom line is: When I clean up someone’s notes section, they get about 55% more clicks than before. I took a sample of twenty listings and took readings. People will click on your listing more if:

1. Salient information or selling features about you appear in the search results. They will appear in the search results if they are the first 150 or 200 characters in your notes section

2. You have a well organized and factual notes section

3. You have unique information

4. You have a lot of useful things to say about yourself.

Paying for a listing on our site is generally a good move, but you have to spend the time to make your presentation be helpful and stand out. This takes time. On the other hand, if you keep your listing for ten or twenty years you only have to write the notes section once, and then spruce it up a little perhaps twice per year. It is not that hard, and it will really pay off too in terms of clicks, calls, and jobs if you do a good job. So invest an hour or two, write a good notes section, and email me so I can do my magic cleaning it up at no cost to you!