One of the areas that is most confusing in my line of work is helping businesses decide how to claim and update all the various directory listings.
Having accurate listings in a multitude of online directories IS important for a variety of reasons.
a. They can be a helpful ranking factor in getting your site higher in the search results, especially for local type searches.
b. Those directories might come up before your own website in a search result, and you want to be sure your businesses is on the results that directory provides.
c. You want to be able to make any changes, and respond to comments or reviews.
d. If you don’t claim your listing, a sneaking competitor might, making life harder on you.
So it’s not a matter if IF you should claim those listings, but HOW.
Here are the best options I have found. There is no one answer that is right for every business. Hopefully, this list will help you decide what you should do.
Ways to Claim listings.
– Manually
– Using a service to help you claim your listings
– Using a premium service that claims them for you and allows you to update them via the service
As with many things, there is a Time/Cost trade-off. Let’s discuss each.
Option 1: The manual method
To claim your listings manually, you need to visit each of the directory sites, find your listing, and then go through a process of proving you are the one who should be allowed to control the listings. This usually means filling in a form, and then either getting a phone call from an automated system asking you to enter a PIN, or waiting for a letter with a code you must enter. This proves you really are at the business. I certainly recommend this for your Google Business listing, but for most of the others, the time it takes to claim your listings is not worth it.
Option 2: Get a system to help you claim your listings:
The next level up is to use a system that will go out there and automate the claiming of your listings for you. This means entering your business information once, and perhaps passing along the logins of sites you’ve already claimed in the past. The system will then help you claim the rest, and submit your site to the 5 main data aggregators, which are databases that many of the other directories use to get information about your business. My favorite is called Moz.com/local and it runs about $50 per year at the time of this writing.
Option 3: Use a full service system
This is the set it and pretty much forget it option, but it comes at a price.
If you tend to update your business hours frequently, or want to make sure it’s all done right, and quickly, you can work with a company called Yext, who has partnered with most of the important directories. You simply fill out some forms, and Yext will update your directory listings in the matter of a few hours to days. This CAN be good, and if the price isn’t too shocking, it’s a good way to go. This service runs about $800 / year if you buy it directly from Yext. However, I’m currently a Yext Partner, and can get you a year long subscription for $500. Note, while super fast, if you stop paying, they unlock your listings that they have been managing, and everything reverts back to the information the directory had on file prior to the Yext override.
Now you may be wondering what your listings currently look like. I actually have a neat little tool for you to use. Now, I’ll warn you, I recommend you use MY tool rather than visit Yext.com directly and check your listings. Going direct will almost guarantee a call from a sales rep, who likely can’t give you as good a price as I can. My tool uses Yext, but they don’t share with me who is using the tool, nor do they make sales calls after someone has used it.
The special link to my tool is here: http://www.yext.com/partner/andycommonsconsulting/diagnostic.html
This will give you a good idea of how your business is currently being listed in many top directories.
I hope this gives you some direction on which way to go for managing your online directory listings. If I can be of any assistance, please let me know.
-Andy