The Importance of Local Citations and Reputation Management

For local businesses, local citations are important for driving business and continually bringing new customers to your storefront. Ensuring your business is represented by the seemingly endless list of business listings is critical for maintaining your reputation. In this article, we will explain the different ways your business can take advantage of manual local citations submissions, local data aggregator submissions and services like Yext as well as why it is important.

Manual Local Citations

If you are wanting complete control over all of your listings, manual local citations are the easiest way to achieve this. This requires a business owner, or their employee, to manually add their business’ information to each individual online business listing. While this a great way to focus on reputation management, there is one caveat to manually entering your information into each online business listing provider. It’s incredibly time-consuming. Each profile will take at least 20 minutes to complete and can quickly eat into the time you could be using to focus on more important business tasks.

Local Data Aggregators

For a fee, local data aggregators will gather your business’ information and then sell or distribute it over time to major local search engines, mapping services, third-party directories and much more. Unlike manually creating local citations, all that is required when using a local data aggregator is one single profile through their platform. The local data aggregator will then verify the business’ information then send it to third-party services. Typically, you will be charged a per-site fee when using a local aggregator and some will require a recurring monthly cost. When you stop paying these fees, all of your information will be pulled from these business directories.

Yext

As a real-time reputation management service, Yext allows businesses to immediately update their information on all sites in the Yext network instantly. This is different than a local data aggregator because the information you provide may take an extended amount of time before it updates on your business listings. With a price tag that goes up to $500 annually per location, this option is geared at businesses that change their information regularly for seasonal hours, menu updates or changes in services.

Still Need Assistance with Reputation Management?

You can always get in touch with the experts at Skynet Solutions for help with your online business listing, reputation management or anything else you need to help make your business succeed. With our diverse range of skills and experience, we are sure to have the tools you need to make 2018 your business’ best year yet. You can fill out our contact form to get started today. You can also connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn!