Local presence management is a cornerstone of modern SEO for brick-and-mortar businesses. By leveraging listing management services and other complementary techniques, agencies can build a lasting search presence for their clients. The best of these strategies will ensure that businesses improve local search rankings, increase visibility, build trust and credibility and enhance the customer experience overall.

Best Ways to Boost SEO With Local Presence Management

Local presence management refers to the tools and techniques that combine to increase the visibility of a business’ location. As Google and other search engines have improved their ability to recognize local intent, companies have more opportunity than ever to stand out on a city, regional or neighborhood level. Today let’s explore a simple strategy you can apply to business clients.

Optimize Google Business Profiles

Consumers searching for businesses will often look no further than the Google search results. From the Local Pack or Maps, people can directly find name, address and phone number (NAP) details, opening times, primary services, images, customer reviews and more. So whether they want to check if the location is open, get directions or book online, it’s all possible through a Google Business Profile (GBP). By optimizing this key pillar of local presence management, your clients can reach consumers who are ready to make a buying decision.

Claim and Manage Listings

A GBP needs to be optimized and managed, but there’s more – you also need to work with a comprehensive network of directories, review sites, mapping apps and other listing platforms. Essentially, local presence management succeeds or fails based on the accuracy of data. This is the reason why you need to work with a citation service that can claim and manage listings to ensure exact, consistent business details. And if you’re looking for the best local listing management provider, take a look at this comparison of citation services.

Localized On-Page Optimization

If location-based searches are a vital component of your clients’ SEO strategies, using a local on-page optimization approach is essential. Creating dedicated location pages will help satisfy Google’s goal of delivering highly targeted results and provide a relevant landing page for consumers. Even if a business has just a single branch, creating pages for surrounding cities allows you to target a broader range of locations.

It’s important to note that Google aims to deliver results that satisfy three factors – relevance, distance and prominence. However, if not enough local businesses meet all three criteria, Google may prioritize positively reviewed, relevant companies over hyperlocal results.

Reputation Management

Local businesses increasingly rely on a positive reputation to maintain a consistent SEO impact. With consumers being less likely to shop with a brand with a low star rating and a lack of fresh reviews, monitoring and responding to reviews is now an important factor in local presence management.

Apply E-A-T to Business Listings

Google’s E-A-T (Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness) framework evaluates the quality and value of online content. Factors like creating authoritative content, getting citations from quality platforms, plus maintaining accurate data across the web all help to meet Google’s content guidelines. For detailed insight on this subject you can read our report on applying E-A-T to a Google Business Profile.

How to Use Local Presence Management for Maximum #SEO Impact by @BernieColeman
Click To Tweet

We Are Local Presence Management Specialists

At Advice Local, we help agencies and local marketers with a comprehensive set of digital marketing services. Speak with our team today for help with local presence management, listing distribution and review monitoring. Call (214) 310-1356 or request a demo now.

The post How to Use Local Presence Management for Maximum SEO Impact appeared first on Advice Local.

Managing and distributing business listings has been a part of digital marketing for as long as we can remember. However, as the internet has evolved you could be forgiven for thinking that strategy has lost its edge. But in practice, the best directories have adapted, emphasizing quality, trust, interactivity and a series of other factors. So if you’ve stopped submitting client listings to directories – or never even started – it might be time to reevaluate your approach.

How Directories Benefit Local Businesses

The role of directories has evolved significantly over time. Initially serving as essential resources for discovering websites and businesses, they later became primarily a means for acquiring backlinks for SEO. Today, directories have transformed once again, focusing on delivering value through traffic, increased visibility, brand exposure and customer reviews.

5 Business Directories for Enhanced Visibility and Credibility

Finding quality directories for local citation building requires a lot of upfront research. You also need to audit the platforms periodically to ensure the quality hasn’t dipped. If you’re just getting started with listing management, here are five solid choices that have maintained their standards and reputations over many years.

1. YP

YP is one of the most recognized directories, reaching over 60 million consumers each day. The Yellow Pages brand recognition and its place as the largest local ad platform in the U.S. makes it an essential part of any directory listing strategy. For businesses looking to stand out, enhanced listings come with additional features like photos, videos and business descriptions.

2. Superpages

Superpages is a well-established online directory with a wide range of business categories, covering everything from car rentals and pet services to restaurants, plumbers and more. Customers can use the Superpages directory to find local services, monitor reviews, get directions to the business and access opening hours.

3. DexKnows

DexKnows is an online directory with a local focus. With approximately 700,000 monthly visitors, consumers use the platform to find local professionals such as electricians, plumbers and roofers. In addition to the SEO benefits of a listing, using DexKnows allows businesses to build a strong brand reputation within the local community.

4. HotFrog

HotFrog is an international business directory with listings from around the world. Consumers from 38 countries use the platform to identify businesses, products and services across a range of niches. Crafting a detailed listing here provides opportunities for brand building and the ability to increase your reputation with customer reviews.

5. Chamber of Commerce

Chambers of Commerce are trusted around the world, providing opportunities for businesses to network with other local businesses and industry leaders. Its reputation makes listing with the Chamber of Commerce directory an obvious choice for most local companies.

What Listing Management Strategies Work Today?

Success with directories today means applying technology and expertise to create, optimize and modify business listings. Underpinning this listing management approach must be a network of local, national and niche directories that are vetted for trust and authority. Our network was built over several years and features only the highest-quality platforms, along with the option to get listed on Nextdoor for a fee. This combination ensures businesses get the most value from a focused marketing strategy.

5 #Directories That Local Businesses Need and Why They Matter by @BernieColeman #SEO
Click To Tweet

Listing Management Experts for Agencies and Local Marketers

At Advice Local we are listing management specialists, providing real-time submissions to the top business directories. We help agencies manage client listings with a premier directory network and a cutting-edge distribution system. Call (214) 310-1356 or request a demo today.

The post 5 Directories That Local Businesses Need and Why They Matter appeared first on Advice Local.

When it comes to competing with big brands for broad search terms, small and medium-sized businesses often find themselves at a disadvantage. Fortunately, that’s not the case for local SEO, where the power of listing management services, website optimization and review monitoring can transform search visibility. By focusing on local search strategies, businesses can target customers within their geographic area and gain a competitive edge. But what are the best local SEO techniques for boosting local search placements?

How Can Businesses Increase Visibility With Local SEO?

At Advice Local, we create local SEO tools that help agencies improve their clients’ search visibility. This process involves identifying the actions that deliver results for local businesses and streamlining their workflow.

Our Approach to Listing Management

The old approach to listing management involved casting a wide net and getting businesses listed on many directories, often prioritizing quantity over quality. Today, you get the best results from being strategic and selective.

Business data should be distributed to a curated list of reputable directories – local and industry-relevant where possible. Data must be accurate, and duplicate listings should be quickly identified and eliminated. This consistency builds trust with consumers and search engines.

Taking Google Business Profile Management to the Next Level

Google Business Profile (GBP) occupies a unique space between a traditional business directory and a modern social media platform. While its primary function is to provide business data like contact details, opening hours and services, GBP also encourages interaction and engagement.

Features like creating posts, responding to customers, integrating social media feeds and adding Q&As all boost search visibility. To see some of these features, look at how online marketing helps businesses.

Using Data-Driven Website Optimization

A comprehensive website audit will almost certainly identify opportunities for on-page optimization. For agencies, the gaps in a website’s structure and content offer easy potential for local search wins.

Along with the necessary changes to title tags, descriptions, URLs and internal linking, you can go beyond by integrating local business schema markup, optimizing for featured snippets, creating dedicated location pages and organizing the website into topically-relevant silos. It’s also worthwhile to look for opportunities to develop locally-focused content.

Optimize for Mobile and Voice Search

A significant portion of local SEO traffic now originates from mobile and voice searches, as consumers rely on their smartphones and virtual assistants to find nearby products, services and businesses while on the go. In fact, Statista suggests that the mobile share of organic search engine visits in the U.S. reached 63% in recent years.

Optimizing for mobile requires a responsive design and fast loading times. To appear for voice search queries, focus on natural language and answer FAQ questions within content.

A Proactive Approach to Reviews

As a strategy for boosting local search presence, reviews often go unappreciated. The first part of the process involves making it as easy as possible for customers to leave reviews on GBP, Yelp and other platforms.

But reviews shouldn’t just sit there – your business clients must also respond to reviews. A fast response is good customer service, and it also provides opportunities for natural keyword integration to improve local SEO results. As you help your customers stay on top of new reviews that are received, a quality review monitoring tool can be a great help – and by the way, we include one for businesses at no additional charge.

Local #SEO Strategies for Boosting Search Visibility by @BernieColeman
Click To Tweet

Try the Leading Local Search Management Suite Today

Advice Local develops world-class local search management tools for agencies and marketers. Access our listing management, review monitoring and GBP tools and experience local search technology at its finest. Call (214) 310-1356 or request a demo now.

The post Local SEO Strategies for Boosting Search Visibility appeared first on Advice Local.

When you’re shopping around for goods or services online, it’s only natural to research and make comparisons. And when it comes to finding the right local listing management company, it’s the same. You’ll have pertinent questions: Are you getting the best value for your money? And what about quality? These questions are important whether you’re looking for shoes, a vehicle, or local listing management companies and citation services.

When buying online you’ll want to know that you’re getting the very best possible solution – and our agency, franchise and brand partners are looking for the same thing. Comparing local listing management companies and citation services before you make a choice will pay off in many ways.

Let This Ultimate Citation Services Comparison Chart Be Your Guide

There’s a multitude of companies out there offering citation services, including Synup, Whitespark, Uberall, BrightLocal – and of course, Advice Local. So which one is the best?

In short, one size does not fit all, and picking the local listing partner solution that works best for a particular business can be difficult. That’s why we’re going to let you look at the facts through our practical comparison chart, so you can easily decide for yourself.

Was that chart techy enough for you? In case it was a bit too technical, let’s detail some of the meanings. We have those definitions for you here.

Comparing the Top Local Listing Management Companies Serving the United States and Beyond

As you can see, two of the citation companies mentioned above (including Advice Local) use a hybrid approach to local listing management. This means we use both APIs and manual submissions to create and claim local business listings. We are data partners with many of the data sources we submit to, which makes it real simple, real fast, plus it works in real time to distribute data around the web. Synup and Uberall are totally automated and Whitespark does it old-school, meaning manual all the way.

You have two approaches to consider for API selection. A direct API allows the citation service to establish its own connections with publishers for listing submissions. On the other hand, an API through another provider makes submissions using third-party APIs. Companies like AdviceLocal, Synup and Uberall utilize the direct approach, which offers faster processing, greater customization and enhanced control over the data.

When it comes to pricing, just think of each dollar sign ($) as $100 or less. As you can see, Whitespark and Advice Local come in at the lowest price on average. The citation industry is also a truly global affair, with company headquarters in Canada (Whitespark), India (Synup) and the United States (Advice Local).

White-label offerings are one of the biggest needs that agencies have, and all the companies represented in this chart offer this feature. The agency partners are always looking for lead generation opportunities, and it seems that BrightLocal and Advice Local have this need met for them. Advice Local’s partners have access to integrating white-label local business data scanning widgets within their website with just a few clicks.

Inaccurate or outdated data is one of the surest ways to harm a client’s reputation and standing with Google. This issue makes data suppression and the ability to correct information a valuable addition to a citation service. Currently, you can find data suppression with Advice Local, Uberall and Synup, though BrightLocal and Whitespark do not offer the service.

Data aggregators – the large-scale distributors of business data – ensure consistent information across prominent directories, mapping apps and more. All the leading citation services use data aggregators to syndicate company data, but Synup, BrightLocal and Advice Local are at the front of the pack by distributing to the big three of Data Axle, Foursquare and Localeze.

GPS and POI submissions are a must for helping local businesses, franchises and brands get found within in-dash navigation and third-party solutions like Garmin. Partners that choose BrightLocal, Uberall, Whitespark or Advice Local are covered here. So far, Synup has not integrated this product into their local listing management solutions.

Vertical and Geo-specific submissions (while important) don’t seem to be a priority for everyone right now. The order for this is Advice Local, BrightLocal, then Whitespark.

Voice search adoption through Alexa, Siri and others shows no signs of slowing down. By optimizing listings for voice search, your clients are accessible to a growing user base. When it comes to voice search, your options are mixed. While some do not offer the service at all, others (like Advice Local and Uberall) include all the main platforms.

A platform like Google Business Profile (GBP) holds such importance in the local SEO ecosystem that we believe it warrants extra attention. Consequently, Advice Local offers agency partners access to specialty features such as GBP synchronization and the ability to auto-reject updates. Whitespark offers some GBP features also, but they are not the same as Advice Local’s.

And what about any contractual commitments? Your options will vary here, with some services requiring a set contract, others using one-time fees, with others using the best of both worlds, a hybrid model.

Another area where all of the citation services companies represented in the chart seem to shine is bulk import. Partners with a big list of businesses they’re representing can get their data imported into the various citation companies’ technology fairly simply, it seems.

It’s quite clear – customer reviews posted on Google, Yelp and other platforms can make or break a business. As a result, the ability to monitor reviews and respond to them quickly is absolutely essential. You’ll be glad to hear that all the citation services offer review monitoring, helping agencies actively monitor their clients’ reputations.

And last (but certainly not least), is the ability to integrate listing management services and dashboards into third-party technologies. It seems that Synup, BrightLocal and Advice Local take the wins here.

Now that we’ve gleaned through some of the differentiators, let’s look a bit more in-depth at how each local listing management company builds citations.

Here’s How Each Listing Management Company Builds Citations

BrightLocal

BrightLocal’s citation services are manual, so the process to get a listing to live status will be longer. They charge per site versus package pricing (according to their website), charging $3 per site retail.

Synup

Synup listings seem to distribute out quickly, so a business that wants to scale up and submit more locations will have an easy time of it. Their pricing starts at $30 per location, and will adjust downwards as the number of locations a business has with them is increased.

Uberall

Uberall offers a multi-location listing management platform, helping businesses create and optimize listings across 125+ popular platforms. Pricing is based on factors like the number of locations and specific features required, and customers must request a quote.

Whitespark

Whitespark builds citations by hand starting at $4 each. According to their website, it costs more for local/niche citations, and they do submissions for every country in the world.

The Results Are Real and in Real Time

Wondering if I forgot about Advice Local? Oh, we definitely make the cut – we deliver real results in real time. Partners describe our solution as real simple, real-time and real fast, and these are the words we live by.

As we shined a bright light on our competition, it’s only fair to do the same for Advice Local’s local listing management and citation services, right? So, let’s go….

• We have 50 data partners we distribute data to in real time through our Data Amplifier Network. We have access to many more through manual options, but real-time is our first priority. The Real-Time Data Syndication Engine behind our technology is powerful indeed.
• There might be other companies that offer solutions similar to ours, but we also provide superior reporting and customer service – we are white-label all the way!
• Our main focus is on servicing our agency, franchise and brand partners (though SMB customers wanting to take control of their data will certainly find themselves welcome!).
• We’re proud to shout from the rooftops that at this very moment we have one of the largest real-time networks available in the United States. If that isn’t powerful, I don’t know what is.
• Unlike some of our competitors we offer Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) and Bing Places claiming and optimization. We syndicate to the hard-to-reach Yahoo Local through our Data Amplifier Network. Not everyone can say this.
• Of course we have all the data aggregators covered – Data Axle, Localeze and Foursquare.
• Everyone who submits local business data with Advice Local gets a premium Judy’s Book Listing (a $250 value).
• We’ve created an enhanced range of GBP tools that allow you to sync your clients’ GBP to a central database, monitor progress with deep insights – and prevent Google from making unwanted data changes.
• Our Review Monitoring Tool makes it easy to send businesses notifications when customers leave reviews on the leading platforms. This allows for the quick response that improves customer sentiment.

The Latest in Listing Management – Citation Services Compared by @BernieColeman #AdviceLocal
Click To Tweet

The Competition Can Be Stiff

When selecting a local listing management partner, let the data do the talking. We have over 3.1 million businesses in our systems and on average, 1,000 reports generated each day.

There’s no better choice for local listing management and citation services than Advice Local (but hey, we’re a bit partial). Request a demo for yourself and find out today exactly why we are!

* Please note: The data in the chart depicted above and within the blog post was compiled based on information on each listing management company’s website as of the date of publication. Solutions are updated regularly, so be sure to do your research as part of the decision-making process.

The post The Latest in Local Listing Management – Citation Services Compared appeared first on Advice Local.

In our current era, just how influential are local citations for an SEO campaign? Although there’s some debate about the significance Google places on citations, no one disputes that listing management services are integral to successful local SEO. However, a common mistake made by some agencies – one that can negatively impact local search rankings – is selecting low-quality directories.

Tips for Finding and Analyzing Quality Business Directories

Citations from high-quality directories contribute positively to any local SEO campaign. Yet, by including untrustworthy, spammy platforms that fail to vet the sites they list, all your hard work can be undermined. Here are some suggestions for finding the directories that will deliver exceptional results for your clients.

Start With Established Listing Platforms

Established platforms like Google Business Profile (GBP), Yelp and Bing Places for Business are safe bets for any business starting out. These platforms are essential in building a local search presence and are trusted for their authority and longevity.

Use Search Engines to Find Local Directories

Optimizing for local search involves demonstrating relevance and proximity to the searcher’s current or intended location. Local directories are effective ways to generate location-specific citations within a city or region. A simple Google search can often uncover relevant local directories.

Get Recommendations From Local Listing Services

A local business listing service submits data to directories for clients. A central part of this process is analyzing the directories to ensure they meet the listing service’s strict standards for inclusion in their network. Through strategic partnerships and relationship building, agencies can receive up-to-date info on solid platforms, as well as those that have lost search engine trust.

Trust Data Aggregators to Syndicate Business Information

Data aggregators submit business data to a network of directories, mapping apps and search engines at once. Working with top providers like Foursquare, Data Axle and Localeze lets you leverage their expertise in evaluating each platform in their network.

Find Platforms With High Domain Authority

Premier listing platforms (called data enhancers) offer high domain authority, trust with search engines, along with an existing user base. From YellowPages and BrownBook to BubbleLife and Judy’s Book, while each site has its own spin they are connected via their adherence to quality.

Identify Vertical Directories in Your Niche

Many of your business clients will operate in niches with dedicated listing platforms. Lawyers, doctors, restaurants and real estate are just some of the industries with niche-specific directories that are full of potential for local SEO. Search Google for business directories, adding the relevant niche keyword.

Analyze Each Directory for User Experience

Before adding a listing, make sure to check the pros and cons of the platform. Use your favorite SEO tool to analyze domain authority and trust scores, look for signs of intrusive ads and spam, assess the site’s layout and read the signup rules.

Work With Trusted Listing Management Services

Working with a dedicated listing management service allows you to tap into an existing network of pre-screened platforms. For a prime example of a wide-ranging collection of trusted platforms, just look at Advice Local’s Data Amplifier Network – the one that is available with our real-time submission service.

How to Find Quality #Directories for #Local Citation Building by @BernieColeman #SEO
Click To Tweet

Try Our Top-Tier Listing Management Services

Advice Local makes listing management easy with our comprehensive distribution service and unrivaled data network. Our local search technologies help digital agencies and local marketers deliver for their clients every day. To try our listing management service call (214) 310-1356, or request a demo today.

The post How to Find Quality Directories for Local Citation Building appeared first on Advice Local.