Does anyone use web.com services
-
Just wondered if anyone had any thoughts on the services offered with web.com, particularly the local listings service of 525 local directory listings?
Have you had success with using their service like this or not?
-
Hi There!
I'm so sorry, but I have no experience with this product. Maybe others in our community will?
In the meantime, just a word to the wise: modern Local SEO has moved away from the idea of building hundreds and hundreds of citations as a smart use of time/funding, as when you start talking numbers like that, you are likely talking about very low-quality directories that your customers will never see and that will have little or no effect on your local rankings.
Rather, these days, a typical approach to citation management would look something like this:
First, audit your existing citations by a) doing a lookup of your name/zip on a free tool like Moz Check Listing to discover where you have accurate, inconsistent, missing, incomplete and duplicate listings on the most important general local business data platforms, and, b) do direct searches in Google for your brand name and your industry/geography to see which platforms are coming up in the first 3-5 pages for your searches, again, to discover any missing or problem listings. This combination of efforts will turn up the platforms your consumers are seeing and that are most like having the greatest impact on your local rankings. Likely, were talking about 50 or so citations - not 500 of them, as you can see.
Next, once you've identified all problematic listings from the above 2 steps, you have 3 choices:
-
Correct everything manually, keeping track of all of these listings in a spreadsheet, including columns for the data they contain, their location, their status and any user/passwords you were obliged to create to set them up. Then, on a regular basis, you will want to manually monitor these listings for any changes that might occur (automation of bad data or third party edits).
-
Pay someone to do everything in option 1 for you, including the ongoing monitoring of the listings.
-
Use a citation management service. You might like to check out Moz Local if you've not done so before, as this is our product designed to manage your citations and monitor them on an ongoing basis for any changes. Moz Local covers the most important general platforms, and you might want to back this up with manually managing a handful of other citations if there are major industry-specific platforms in your industry (like Avvo for lawyers or ZocDoc for doctors). Using Moz Local tends to represent a major savings in effort on your part, and does contain that vital element of notifying you if your listing data changes (as well as other really cool features like review notifications). You might like to compare it to some of the other citation management services out there, like Whitespark or Yext.
In any case, you should not have to worry about hundreds and hundreds of citation regardless of how you approach their management - it's just not going to move the needle. These days, you want to get those core citations accurate, be sure you've dealt with any rank-draining duplicate listings and that you're monitoring your listings for changes. Then, move onto other areas of marketing that require more creative investments: content development, earning and building links, managing your reviews, social participation, offline marketing, etc.
Hope this helps!
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google My Business - Service Area - Use Zip Codes or City Names?
Google allows you to choose up to 20 locations as service areas, and you can choose based on cities, counties, or zip codes. I'm trying to determine if zip codes, cities, or counties are better to select for our GMB profiles. We are located in the US. I am thinking it's best to use all 20 areas allowed on a profile as long as they are relevant, generally giving Google all the info they will let you provide is best. I also am leaning toward using zip codes because it also includes the city when you choose by zip code. For example: Entered the zip code 21009 and the service area selection provided was: Abingdon, MD 21009, USA Entering the city/state returns a selection of Abingdon, MD, USA I also think it may have to do with how people search and find your business as well? Does anyone have experience with this? Best practices? My google searching has not turned up any reliable info.
Local Listings | | WadeBayMgmt0 -
Adding Schema to multi-location Wordpress Website using Schema Pro
All, we're building a new version of our existing website using Wordpress and have both Yoast SEO Premium and Schema Pro installed. Our site has 70, a medical practice, has 70 different locations. Each one of our locations has a page tile like the following: "Los Angeles | ABC Dental". The first part of the site title is the town we're located in followed by our site name. Using Schema Pro, we're not sure about what to place into the "Name" field. You can see the direction from Schema Pro for local businesses here, https://wpschema.com/docs/add-schema-markup-for-a-local-business-page/ By default Schema Pro has the name field set to Site Title. However, using this on all 70 or our landing pages wouldn't provide the local aspect we want. It would just say ABC Dental. We changed this to use a new custom field where we could enter a more descriptive name. Using our page title example of "Los Angeles | ABC Dental", would we simply enter this into the name field of Schema Pro? If not, would we format this another way such as "ABC Dental Los Angeles" We could use some help in a strategy for Schema markup for multi-location businesses, in particular, the name field. All other information such as address, phone number, etc seems rather straight forward. Thank you for the assistance
Local Listings | | morciuoli0 -
Pointy.com has anybody heard about it here?
Hi I have a client that has bought into pointy.com. I am looking at it and it basically scans barcodes of products and creates a directory of it and then creates some sort of local product search! has anyone else come across this thing and what are your thoughts on it. Is it any good?? Cheers Steve
Local Listings | | funky-frizby1 -
Good service that helps optimize and create citations to google map listing?
Hi guys, Anyone know good service that helps optimize and create citations to google map listing? Also is there recommended WP theme that helps the ranking on google map? Thanks in advance!
Local Listings | | Tariq_Jameel1 -
Can I use the same interior photos for multiple stores in Google My Business?
Hi, The company I work for has many store locations across the country. Getting good/quality interior pictures has become very difficult for us. We recently good a Virtual Tour from Google for one of the locations, and they took some really good pictures. According to Google, the "Photos should represent the actual business" and "Represent the real-world business location". My question is: since our stores are VERY similar in the interior, can we use the same pictures for them while we get more pictures? Would Google penalize this? Thanks!
Local Listings | | SO-MarceloOtero0 -
Is Moz Local useful for a specialized small business?
I can see the use of Moz Local for businesses for the general public, like a restaurant. But is it useful for a more specialized business like a recording studio? The studio ranks high on Google already for our city (usually #1 but some days #2). It's not like people are driving around and grab their phone to look up an emergency recording studio stop. Is it useful?
Local Listings | | amybethmegjo0 -
How To Change Image Used In Business Knowledge Graph...
How can one change the image that Google shows in a business' knowledge graph in the SERPs? And the image I am referring to is the one that typically appears to the left of the map within the knowledge graph box, above the business' name. The current image that is being used in my client's case is an image that was uploaded in their Google+ My Business profile, but there doesn't appear to be any particular reason why that one was chosen (it wasn't the first or last image uploaded, nor is it selected as the profile picture). As user-interaction increasingly becomes important in rankings, I would like to change this to something more attractive. Thank you for any help and guidance!
Local Listings | | gbkevin1 -
How is this Ge Factory Service ranking like this?
Recently I was doing some research on "appliance repair" for a new client and I ran into some listings that are ranking locally on the 1st page without barely any backlinks or citations. I am wondering how they are doing this. I under stand since they are a GE company maybe this is why but there is not even no backlinks from the GE main site. This Ge Factory website is a pr0 so how is it ranking hundreds of listings without almost any citations?After searching Google I found over 10k listings for "GE Factory Service". How are they doing this? As I understand only Franchise listings are allowed to be posted Nationwide. After investigation I came to the conclusion that GE does not offer any Franchise Opportunities for their repair service. So isn't this in violation of the terms and conditions? These listings all have the address hidden since these are not storefronts. I have checked many listings and they are ranking for most cities I search including:Atlanta, San Diego, Dallas, Tucson,phoenix.Does anyone have any ideas how these listings with virtually no SEO? Any feedback is appreciated thanks
Local Listings | | bajaseo0