If you’ve moved your small business to a different address, changed your contact information in some way, or you have a new second location, how do you go about updating all of your local online listings? And do you even know what directories your listings are in?

It’s important to track down all your local internet listings with the correct updates instead of creating new ones because duplicates are a big problem. They can lead to Google penalties in search results. Leaving incorrect listings due to a move or other change causes confusion for both the user as well as the search engines.

While it might seem like a simple matter—you just log into the existing accounts and re-verify every listing—the claiming process isn’t always straightforward and the data clean up is time consuming and requires thorough attention to avoid duplicates.

Citation editing, marketing jargon for updating your business listings, involves a comprehensive process that requires much more than a quick edit on Google. Google is a good place to start, but there are hundreds of apps and directories that direct users to the right destination and Google is watching them all.

Google constantly crawls the internet looking for updated information to provide in its search results. This means two things:

1. The more listings for your business, the better. The more information available to Google, the better your business will do in search results.
2. Erroneous information on listings can cause Google to update using this incorrect data. The more listings for your business, the greater potential for Google to find incorrect information, which it pulls from many sources across the internet.

By completing an accurate and complete digital footprint or NAP, Name, Address, and Phone number, you’re removing as many barriers to online discovery as possible.

There are many methods to updating your business citations. In this post we’ll go over the popular business citation services, and in the next post we’ll cover the top business listings you need to be on.  

Yext

Called the godfather of citation building services, Yext boasts a PowerListings capability to make sure your listings have correct information with automatic updates across over thirty local listing sites. By entering information into your Yext account, including details such as special announcements or specials, you can change it whenever you want.

Pros: Fastest service available; increased accuracy when you need to update regularly.

Cons: Most expensive; limited to somewhere around 50 directories.

Cost: Ranging from $200-$999 a year.

BrightLocal

BrightLocal claims and submits directly to 1,600 sites. You select which sites and the number sites, with 70% guaranteed to go live in four weeks.

Pros: High accuracy with manual submissions; prioritize NAP fixes; duplicate removal.

Cons: Don’t currently submit to top data aggregators Factual and Localeze; don’t provide custom citation research.

Cost: Starts at $19.99 for single business; free 14-day trial.

Whitespark

Whitespark has two separate citation services:

1. Citation audit and cleanup removes duplicates, fix inconsistencies, make corrections, and claim the important listings you’re missing.
2. Citation building looks for relevant key listings and manually submits them.

Pros: Greater accuracy with manual submissions and cross-checking systems.

Cons: Cleanup service doesn’t provide verification of listings (although there are step-by-step instructions available); building citation service doesn’t remove duplicates but doesn’t create them.  

Cost: Citation cleanup and audit $900 one-time fee includes top 30 sites. Citation Building $4 each for national directory listings and $5 each for local city level directories or industry-specific listings.

Moz Local

Moz helps you claim all the important listings, including the ones that require manual verification with Google Local. You get access to all the local data aggregators for fast updates.

Pros: Make updates at any time via one dashboard; great Q&A service.

Cons: Listings are slow to go live – can take up to three months; doesn’t create listings on all directories.

Cost: $84 a year.

UBL/AdviceLocal

Universal Business Listing is now working under Advice Local. Easy updates from one dashboard. They provide ongoing checks for consistency. Submit to top fifty directories as well as popular review sites, and will even do social media profile optimization.

Pros: Merger provides expanded local listings with full access and ownership.

Cons: Need to subscribe to higher-priced packages to get full-service offerings. Reviews indicate complaints about duplicate listings.

Cost: Packages beginning at $100 a year up to $250 a year plus $20 monthly fee.

Synup

Synup is a relatively new service that covers forty-six of the top directories. You can manually add and manage an additional 150 sites. All changes made from one dashboard.

Pros: Duplicate listings suppression and monitoring of reviews included.

Cons: Not 100% effective in identifying duplicates; can get pricey with multiple locations.

Cost: $30 a month per location.

Directory Bug

Directory Bug manually lists your business on a minimum of sixty sites without creating duplicate listings. Over 100 of the top local business directories scanned. A premium members option is available with better optimization for local SEO.

Pros: Creates report with these sites and any other existing listings found.

Cons: Requires a custom quote for updating and cleanup based on number of sites needing it.

Cost: $140 for citation audit and $169 for power listing service.

It’s not an easy choice to select a business listing service. Each one has limitations, so the decision depends on your unique business needs. None of the citation building sites are completely hands-free. Many of the big search engines require manual verification of listings. The tendency for duplicate or inconsistent listings depends on various factors, including which data suppliers used and the relationship the service has with the directories. In addition, in some cases when you stop paying for the service all of your listings may be dropped.

As a small business owner, business listing services can save you time and money. In return, you get your business out there in the local search ecosystem without spending the many hours needed for accurate, thorough results.

Information is being shared across a landscape of digital information that’s growing faster and faster. The internet population has grown by more than 60% in the last five years, with mobile phones outnumbering people on the planet. No wonder our mobile use now makes up 65% of our time over desktop.

Everyone is on their mobiles or computers, engaged in digital exchange. They’re communicating, reading, and searching on the internet for all their needs. It’s more important now than ever to meet your audience where they’re spending time and adopt a blogging strategy for your small business.

Here’s how you reach new and existing customers with a small business blog.

Increase Traffic To Your Site

Every blog post published is one more opportunity for someone to find your business and drive traffic to your site. People read blogs to discover helpful industry information. Search engines like Google read blogs to learn what your website is about, and then send the right response to users performing internet searches.  

For example, every time you write a blog post about a specific process or service you provide, you’re giving people who’re looking for more information on that subject another way to find you and get answers to their questions. The more blog posts you write, the more opportunities you’re creating for people to discover your business. Write 100 blog posts and you have 100 more avenues of discovery.

Improve Your Search Engine Results

Your search engine results will reflect the amount of information you’re publishing on the internet.  Your blog isn’t meant to be a static page like your About Us or Home page. It’s a brand new search result for search engines and people searching the internet for what you offer.

Blogging helps your business website get more traffic because every blog post you publish is a new URL. There are only so many product and service pages you can create, but the number of new URLs you can create with blog posts is endless. And every one of your posts will be read by both Google and people – people that didn’t realize your business sold the very product they’re looking for.

“Am I the only one who realizes you could hide a dead body or drugs on the second page of a google search and it would never be found?” This insightful bit of humor was first found on Twitter in 2011 and still holds true today, because who goes directly to Google’s second page search results?

Search engines are smart grading robots who take your written content and put it through algorithms. The more frequently you post and the better quality the content, the better grade your blog gets and the higher it will rank in search engine results.

Build Trust With Your Audience

When you’re shopping for a new household appliance, you’re more likely to buy from someone who’s spent time with you answering your questions and giving you unbiased advice. Someone with whom you’ve grown comfortable with, not someone whom you’ve never laid eyes on before.

Not only are people more likely to buy from someone they’ve spent time with, they’re also going to remember who gave away helpful information. Blogging is a way to communicate to your audience so they grow to know and trust you as a source of information.

Once you’ve established yourself as a credible resource, people will choose to buy from you over your competition, or they’ll consider working with you as a business partner rather than a business who isn’t making the effort to communicate and share valuable content.

Develop New Leads

Being a strong source of information is a conduit to being a source of value. You provide value up front for free when offer a continual source of educational, entertaining, and informative content.

The new opportunities created by blogging about valuable content are also opportunities to develop leads. For every blog post you publish, you’re creating a new call-to-action within the post. Again, 100 blog posts become 100 potential call-to-actions.

A call-to-action can be anything that asks your audience to do something else. It could be to click on a link for more help, your contact us page, a free ebook, a free quote, or another page, such as your product page, for more information.

Blogging brings you new leads because you’re writing about things you want to sell. You’re tailoring your audience to individuals who’re interested in your topics and who would feasibly purchase your product or service.

Thanks to your increased traffic due to the new ways (a.k.a. blog posts) to find you, and your improved search engine results from all the new URLs (a.k.a. blog posts), your opportunities for new leads grow.

Blogs continue to be a source of leads for years. Have you ever Googled something and got a response dating back to the 1990s? Those earliest articles or blogs are still chugging along, sending out digital data into the cybersphere, bringing in a new audience of potential customers.

It’s never too late to begin blogging for your small business. As Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the French novelist best known for writing The Little Prince, said, “The time for action is now. It’s never too late to do something.”