Advice Local Directory Listing Service - Suggestions or Advice

[ValerieM]

Hi All and happy Friday!

I could use your expert help please! I'm losing my confidence with my other vendor who has been updating citations manually for my clients. Part of the reason that I want to change is because of the phone verifications are becoming too difficult (Im ending up doing them for them!). Plus due to some major NAP changes with my clients, its important to do aggregators and my current vendor does not have this capability.

I've use Whitespark, Brightlocal, Yext, SEMRush, and Local Market Launch in the past, and just discovered Advice Local. Before I invest in AL (Its $250/month for 10 locations), I am wondering if any of use have experience with Advice Local or have other recommendation? My budget is not big, so a price point like this would work for me.

Also, I like that Advice Local does the voice search directories and include alot of other directories in their package (https://www.advicelocal.com/partners/our-network/)Seems kinda cool!

Thanks in advance!

 

[ChloeButterfill]

Hi Valerie,

That's a great question and one that comes up a lot! With the phone verification, unfortunately, because we operate as a silent partner and work with clients across lots of different time zones, setting up the calls isn't a feasible solution for us to offer at this stage sadly. We have some great strategies to help streamline the process, and we do also partner with the four major data aggregators if you were looking to utilize the power and reach they have.

If you wanted to explore this a bit more, we’d be happy to answer any further questions you may have here: About BrightLocal | We're Passionate About Helping Our Customers Grow

I hope that helps a little

Best wishes,

Chloe.

 

[sarmcl]

We had AL years ago and fired them. They were terrible. Promises after promises. Nobody communicated with us. We would have monthly calls with them and hear alot of promises and nobody would deliver. Very frustrating then they started outsourcing alot of things. We moved all of our clients to Moz..........who is also now in flux. Grrrrrrrrrrr

 

[CarrieHill]

Whitespark. Whitespark. Whitespark. Some phone things you have to do, but they make it dead easy with step by step instructions, and their customer service and communication is fabulous.

 

[whitespark]

Thank you for the kind words, Carrie!

By default, we send guides on how to do the phone verifications, but we always give our clients the option to just have our team do them if you prefer. We schedule a call with the business and get them all done in one shot. Takes about 5/10 minutes. The hardest part is scheduling the call, of course.

We're all about one-time service, rather than recurring fees for citation work. Pay once to get it done right, and then you're set. You don't need to touch citations again for that location unless they change their primary information, which doesn't happen very often. If they do need an update, our refresh service is only $3/site to do the updates for you, or, you could easily do them yourself since we provide you with the user/pass for each listing.

Valerie, the service Carrie is referring to is our Citation Audit and Cleanup Service.

If you have any questions, please let me know! You can email me direct at darren@whitespark.ca.

Thanks,

 

[premiumweb]

I used AdviceLocal in the past and wasn't happy with their service.

I use BrightLocal to submit to aggregators (also heavily reliant on their ranking reports and local search audits).

I am currently testing out dbaplatform for citation submissions in hopes that the combination of the two will cover all the bases. I'm not crazy about a monthly fee (and not convinced it's necessary) so I probably will have them do the citations and then cancel the service. I'm using all of dba's other services. (I don't know of any other provider that lets you do one google post with location placeholders so that it can change the text automagically and be used for multiple locations.)

NOTE: BrightLocal includes updates for a year with their citation service which is only $55 for all of them. One of the aggregators is going away so that price *may* even go down in the future.

 

[RICKDO]

No budget left available for the rest of the year for this kind of work.
I’m one man small business operation and been in business for over 20 years so I check and I have over 20 citations with my very old address. I was able to update only 3 or 4 myself.
My question to the experts is, what is the best user friendly tool that I can use to start fixing them myself manually?
Thank you for your help.
Rick

 

[premiumweb]

No budget left available for the rest of the year for this kind of work.
I’m one man small business operation and been in business for over 20 years so I check and I have over 20 citations with my very old address. I was able to update only 3 or 4 myself.
My question to the experts is, what is the best user friendly tool that I can use to start fixing them myself manually?
Thank you for your help.
Rick

Take a look at Local Citation Tracker | Find Local Citations on New and Existing Sites.

Sample report:

Location Dashboard | Citation Tracker

www.local-marketing-reports.com

 

[premiumweb]

No budget left available for the rest of the year for this kind of work.
I’m one man small business operation and been in business for over 20 years so I check and I have over 20 citations with my very old address. I was able to update only 3 or 4 myself.
My question to the experts is, what is the best user friendly tool that I can use to start fixing them myself manually?
Thank you for your help.
Rick

You could also just use this list.

Top 50 General Citation Sites

Check out the best citation sites for businesses to get listed on, boost local SEO, and find new customers.

www.brightlocal.com

 

[ValerieM]

We had AL years ago and fired them. They were terrible. Promises after promises. Nobody communicated with us. We would have monthly calls with them and hear alot of promises and nobody would deliver. Very frustrating then they started outsourcing alot of things. We moved all of our clients to Moz..........who is also now in flux. Grrrrrrrrrrr

Good to know Sarmcl. Appreciate the feedback but wonder if they have improved since then!!?

 

[ValerieM]

Thanks @CarrieHill and Darren @whitespark Yes, I have used WS and actually still do for your reputation service which I really like. I also used your team to do the citations before years ago but was hoping I could find a less costly service since my medical client has 5 locations plus the doctor. But good to know that you will reach out to my client and do it. That medical client has a system which requires the dialer to press 1 before the caller can get thru. Is that a problem?

 

[Scott BLV]

Hi Valerie,

We specialize in the sites that require phone/postcard verification (Google, Bing, Yelp, etc ...). We work on a white label basis, as an extension of your business. We have been helping agencies with listing verification's for the last 9 years & follow through until they are completed as part of our management service. I would be happy to provide more detail or help with any verification questions.

Thanks

Scott

 

[ValerieM]

Hi Valerie,

We specialize in the sites that require phone/postcard verification (Google, Bing, Yelp, etc ...). We work on a white label basis, as an extension of your business. We have been helping agencies with listing verification's for the last 9 years & follow through until they are completed as part of our management service. I would be happy to provide more detail or help with any verification questions.

Thanks

Scott

Thanks Scott. Can you give me more details?

 

[ValerieM]

I used AdviceLocal in the past and wasn't happy with their service.

I use BrightLocal to submit to aggregators (also heavily reliant on their ranking reports and local search audits).

I am currently testing out dbaplatform for citation submissions in hopes that the combination of the two will cover all the bases. I'm not crazy about a monthly fee (and not convinced it's necessary) so I probably will have them do the citations and then cancel the service. I'm using all of dba's other services. (I don't know of any other provider that lets you do one google post with location placeholders so that it can change the text automagically and be used for multiple locations.)

NOTE: BrightLocal includes updates for a year with their citation service which is only $55 for all of them. One of the aggregators is going away so that price *may* even go down in the future.

Thanks

I used AdviceLocal in the past and wasn't happy with their service.

I use BrightLocal to submit to aggregators (also heavily reliant on their ranking reports and local search audits).

I am currently testing out dbaplatform for citation submissions in hopes that the combination of the two will cover all the bases. I'm not crazy about a monthly fee (and not convinced it's necessary) so I probably will have them do the citations and then cancel the service. I'm using all of dba's other services. (I don't know of any other provider that lets you do one google post with location placeholders so that it can change the text automagically and be used for multiple locations.)

NOTE: BrightLocal includes updates for a year with their citation service which is only $55 for all of them. One of the aggregators is going away so that price *may* even go down in the future.

Thanks PremiumWeb!!

 

[whitespark]

Thanks @CarrieHill and Darren @whitespark Yes, I have used WS and actually still do for your reputation service which I really like. I also used your team to do the citations before years ago but was hoping I could find a less costly service since my medical client has 5 locations plus the doctor. But good to know that you will reach out to my client and do it. That medical client has a system which requires the dialer to press 1 before the caller can get thru. Is that a problem?

Hi Valerie,

To answer your question, yes, the phone tree is a challenge. The verification systems are automated and they won't press buttons to proceed, so there is no way for the call to get through. What we do in these cases is schedule a time when the business can turn off the phone tree for a 15 minute window, and then send the verifications through. We'll even do them at 4:00am. This adds some complication to the verification process for sure.

 

[Scott BLV]

Thanks Scott. Can you give me more details?

Valerie,

Thanks for the interest, here is a little more detail. We provide agencies with a yearly renewable solution to location data management, which includes any needed verification or re-verification work. Initially we provide a manual audit for the location, along with claiming/creating listings. We follow up with the locations by phone (white label) as needed to complete all verification's (phone/postcard), this is done by trained USA based phone reps when calls to the locations are required. All of the verification work is done in consultation with you to minimize any issues/concerns of your client. We also utilize verification by domain email or bulk verification when available. So basically, if we need send 4 postcards & call the location on your behalf 10 times to follow up we will do that. If a more efficient way is available (depending on the site), we will do that. Our verification service is just part of our year long coverage (data updates, photo updates, troubleshoot publishing issues, monitor dashboard updates, resolve duplicates & ownership issues, etc...) providing you with the support/responsiveness needed to effectively manage your client's location data on critical sites like Google, Bing, & Yelp.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

There is a spectrum. On one end, there are the automated services and on the other are the manual services. Unfortunately, all have their issues. There is no perfect solution. The company that invents one will be highly successful.

Automated solutions cost too much, have accuracy issues, support issues (technical things like GMB troubleshooting are usually too much for them) and other issues.

Manual solutions have accuracy issues, timeline issues (verifications), support issues (everyone has support issues).

So I would start with understanding there isn't going to be a perfect service. In fact, that can be shown just by the sheer fact there are hundreds of directories out there that no service can submit to or change info on. With that expectation in place, I think you can find a manageable solution for you.

From what I read you need something within your budget, that will handle it all for you (verifications included), and do a complete job.

That sounds difficult because of the time, quality, cost triangle but let's see.

Automated end of the spectrum - Yext - out of your budget because of the annual commitment, verifications done for you (for the most part via their API), decent accuracy, listing revert if you cancel.

Manual end of the spectrum - Whitespark/Brightlocal - probably within budget (if not, nothing may be within your budget because they are very inexpensive) + one time cost, verifications not done for you, can't comment on accuracy as I haven't used either of them in a long time since we started our own service, listing will not revert as they are a one time service.

Middle of the spectrum - the only service I know of like this is us, Local Listing Ninja - may not be in your budget, verifications done for you, 99% accuracy (accuracy tool ensures this), listings will not revert as it is a one time service.

Of course, you could also DIY but that is going to take a lot of your time.

Because no tool is perfect, it's important to adjust expectations. It's the time, quality, cost triangle. If you want high quality and low time investment, you can't have low cost. If you want low cost and low time investment, you can't have high quality. And if you want high quality and low cost, you can't have a low time investment

Low cost, high quality, high time investment - DIY
Low cost, low time investment, low quality - cheaper, manual service
High quality, low time investment, high cost - middle spectrum manual service or automated service

 

[ImpactWorks]

Hey there! This thread has been informative and the forum is great! Does anyone have some detailed agency partner pricing for Advice Local? There is NOTHING posted anywhere. I'm looking to get some info today but they are obviously off due to it being the weekend. Any info would be much appreciated!

 

[cssharkey]

I know this thread is a couple months old...but I thought sharing my experience might help someone coming across this...

Something strange has been going on at Advice Local the past 18 months or so...We had over a hundred of our clients in their system. Their system simply wasn't working. They didn't do what we were paying them to do - claim/maintain listings in on their network of partner sites. Their support was non existent. We'd call and call our rep, and she was always not working that day or something...we'd leave messages, never got call backs.

It's like they didn't want our business...because the weird thing was that they stopped charging us, too.

Background: We started doing it all manually ourselves - about 50 or so directories -one at at time-for every single client. Then we went with Moz about 3-4 years ago, and kind of found out it wasn't a very robust solution at all...they hit the major ones of course, but only a couple directories and aggregators. That's when we found Advice Local - everything seemed to go pretty well the first year or so then their s#!t fell off the cliff.

 

[keyserholiday]

If you listings where the hours don't need to be updated frequently, then use Whitespark. If you are dealing with locations that have changed their hours due to seasonality or weather issue, hurricanes, then look into Yext. I switched my company from Mozlocal almost 3 years ago. We use Yext for review monitoring since Google doesn't send review notifications when you have over 100 locations in your account. I looked at Advice Local and Synup and they were the poor man's solution. Yext is not perfect, but I no longer have to worry about a competitor's NAP audit in an attempt to steal my clients.