Value of Online Directories

[Alexander Lau]

Vendasta seems to be a better product, but still at $3000 a year for a dealership with 30 cars for sale?? That's a big chunk of money to manage the listing on avantar or fave.com and all the other sites that get a handful of views..

I'm testing out Synup, since the information does not get deleted when you cancel their service.

Dude, send me a private message. I have contacts there, we're talking $100 to fix. LOL.... Charges after that are minimal. I'll hook you up. I left them with like 50 tops when I moved on from an agency.

 

[GerryFoster]

Pending on how many rooftops you have, this should be a fairly simple and straightforward process for a marketing department that can stay organized. I recommend checking out Casey Meraz's comprehensive article on how to do a local citation audit for yourself.

Yes, this is an old article as far as the speed of change in algorithms goes, but the foundation is there and it should act as an actionable plan to help you move forward. If anyone here has questions about local seo, I am always happy to answer them. It's sort of my bread and butter (Im no Greg Gifford, but I know my stuff). It's automotive that has me brain cramped and trying to figure things out.

 

[Chris Leslie]

Moz Local is pretty good as well.

 

[GerryFoster]

Moz local is ok. the community there is amazing and their customer service can't be matched. BUT, it's a slow service overall as it relies on the aggregation method.

If you want fast, transparent results and a one time fee, along with ALL of your logins and passwords to each update made, I HIGHLY suggest using Whitespark services.

https://whitespark.ca/services/

 

[Alexander Lau]

The difference with Vendasta, they are far cheaper and push to automotive-centric 3rd party listings. No offense, but if you want to try to DIY, I say good luck to that and a tough call. I've gone down that path and it's hard to manage, especially if you're attempting to do it for multiple tops.

Sorry, IMO Whitespark sucks, they dropped the ball with me many times. In fact, they lost us a bunch of business. Just didn't respond = pathetic.

 

[John Colascione]

This thread looks like it has been going for a long time. I like Yext if you are trying to build local citations and control your listings across the web, but I am not certain to how much the listings links really help that much, really in any directories now a days.. I sort of do Yext without thinking much about it, and I do recommend it to others, but directory services in general, I don't use them much any more. I'm worried of gathering up too many low quality links from them. I'm very particular about the types of directories I go for, they have to be very much on theme of the niche.

 

[Alexander Lau]

This thread looks like it has been going for a long time. I like Yext if you are trying to build local citations and control your listings across the web, but I am not certain to how much the listings links really help that much, really in any directories now a days.. I sort of do Yext without thinking much about it, and I do recommend it to others, but directory services in general, I don't use them much any more. I'm worried of gathering up too many low quality links from them. I'm very particular about the types of directories I go for, they have to be very much on theme of the niche.

Local Citation Services Compared – Moz Local vs. BrightLocal vs. Yext vs. Whitespark vs. Advice Local vs. Synup
https://www.brightlocal.com/2018/01/04/moz-local-vs-yext-vs-brightlocal-vs-whitespark/

Direct-to-Site Submissions vs Aggregator Submissions
Citation building can be handled in a number of ways. Broadly, these fall into two camps:

Direct-to-site Submission
Citation service providers go direct to the directories/citations sites they use and update or submit business data to them. This process is either done manually by real people or it’s done via automated means – typically via APIs or data-uploads direct into directory databases.

Data Aggregator Distribution
Local Data Aggregators curate data about local businesses and sell or distribute that data to third-party directories, mobile apps, GPS providers, etc.

USA vs. other countries
This review is USA-centric, focusing on citation listing services that are available in the USA, but only some are available outside the USA.

The US local data market is more evolved and structured than other countries. There are four central data aggregators (Acxiom, InfoUSA, Neustar/Localeze and Factual) that distribute their data out to the wider universe of directories and citation sites.

This aggregator model doesn’t really exist in other countries, although there are some smaller aggregators and even some directories that re-distribute data to other directories. ‘Factual’ is an international data provider so it has data on businesses in many/most countries.

 

[George Nenni]

Jumping on this old thread for related question. I'm seeing Google making more automated changes to dealers' Google My Business listings, specifically website address and phone number. Website address is a challenge as we're UTM-tagging the URL for separate Google Analytics tracking. Google automatically killing the UTM suffix, hurting our tracking. Phone numbers changing likely with local citations not matching the tracking phone numbers we're entering. Any insight appreciated!

 

[Alexander Lau]

Jumping on this old thread for related question. I'm seeing Google making more automated changes to dealers' Google My Business listings, specifically website address and phone number. Website address is a challenge as we're UTM-tagging the URL for separate Google Analytics tracking. Google automatically killing the UTM suffix, hurting our tracking. Phone numbers changing likely with local citations not matching the tracking phone numbers we're entering. Any insight appreciated!

I see your dilemma. Have you an attribution tool in place for tracking GTM as an organic source?

 

[John Colascione]

Unfortunately, Google doesn't want anyone to ascertain anything unless they are running a paid campaign with their tools.