Best Local Search Tool

[HangTenSEO]

I am aware of 5 Local Search tools and would like to know what your thoughts are on these and any others I might be missing.

1. Obviously just using Google and seeing how results get displayed is very helpful.
2. BrightLocal - Seems to dig pretty deep into citations and competitor's citations.
3. Moz Local - Great for showing you what the main citation providers have on your business and what needs to be fixed.
4. Yext - Haven't used their services thus far.
5. WhiteSpark - Helpful for finding local citation listings.

So far I have found both Moz Local and BrightLocal very helpful when first starting out. Once you have your citations built out for a location, Moz Local becomes less useful.

 

[HangTenSEO]

I spoke with the folks at Yext today. Their service is quite a bit more expensive than Moz or Brightlocal, BUT... there are some really nice advantages to using them.

1. They have a non branded (White Labeled) console, so you can share it with your clients to let them also manage certain listings.
2. The changes you make to citations are updated very quickly via their API connections. With Moz and BrightLocal you might not see new changes in you listings for a while.
3. They have a listing scan tool that you can use on your own website to attract customers.
4. They have something called enhanced content which basically would allow you or your clients to add pertinent content to a listing. Examples might be sales that are happening that week.
5. They are working on a review monitoring tool that would send you review alerts.
6. They have a social post component to allow you to post to multiple social media.

All in all, it sounds like a great service. My take is it is too expensive right now for a single location over moz or bright local, but if you have multiple locations, the price becomes much more affordable and the ability to manage multiple locations becomes a really big time saver.

 

[James Watt]

I know they use Yext at local SEO guide, from what I hear they're an especially great choice for larger, multi-location companies with data integrity issues.

The biggest upside to Whitespark over Yext, is that Whitespark manually builds and corrects the citations for you, vs having them being done on an automatic feed. With whitespark you get the logins when they're done, and they're yours. With Yext on the other hand (or potentially other automated services like Moz) once you cancel your account they can revert, either through information further up the line propagating downwards, or from some other behind the curtains technical reason. In practice, with Moz at least I haven't seen anything revert, so I treat their per-year service as a one time boost to get new clients in order. No idea about Yext. For my own two cents, I like Moz for hitting the main 4, whitespark/brightlocal for getting the bulk of citation research/building taken care of, and whatever manual work turns out to be necessary for nitch/location specific sites. I've used Whitespark and Bright local's citation audit and competitive research tools, I don't have a strong preference between them.

Brightlocal is great for tracking rankings over time, they have quite a few useful reports. I use their free 'see results from location x' tool as well when I need to check rankings from the client's city.

As far as local tools go though, there's way more than just citation building. It's definitely important, don't get me wrong, but it's much less important than it used to be. Once you've taken care of the worst data integrity issues and gotten a few dozen of the most important citations, you're pretty much free to move on.

Personally, Ahrefs is my favorite tool. I use it pretty much every day. Citations might be a commodity, but backlinking isn't... and even though Possum seems to have shaken up the relationship between organic and local ranking a bit (I saw at least one company start showing in the 3-pack in spite of a site with a home page that was being filtered from a penalty for example) I'm still convinced that organic ranking is a big make or break factor. That means solid on page, technical SEO, and backlink profile. Ahref's is my favorite tool for profile competition, though I tend to trust Majestic's citation/trust metrics more than Ahref/moz site explorer's.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

I am aware of 5 Local Search tools and would like to know what your thoughts are on these and any others I might be missing.

I would add in a couple tools that perform backlink analysis. ahrefs is my personal favourite.

 

[HangTenSEO]

Have you found any tools that build some high ranking backlinks? Something similar to Moz Local, that looks at various high ranking sites that offer backlinks.

 

[Aarthi]

You can try Synup for managing your citations, reviews and more.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Have you found any tools that build some high ranking backlinks? Something similar to Moz Local, that looks at various high ranking sites that offer backlinks.

In terms of whitehat linkbuilding, there aren't really any tools out there that will do the building for you. LB tools are used to guide and support the link building strategies.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

I spoke with the folks at Yext today. Their service is quite a bit more expensive than Moz or Brightlocal, BUT... there are some really nice advantages to using them.

1. They have a non branded (White Labeled) console, so you can share it with your clients to let them also manage certain listings.
2. The changes you make to citations are updated very quickly via their API connections. With Moz and BrightLocal you might not see new changes in you listings for a while.
3. They have a listing scan tool that you can use on your own website to attract customers.
4. They have something called enhanced content which basically would allow you or your clients to add pertinent content to a listing. Examples might be sales that are happening that week.
5. They are working on a review monitoring tool that would send you review alerts.
6. They have a social post component to allow you to post to multiple social media.

All in all, it sounds like a great service. My take is it is too expensive right now for a single location over moz or bright local, but if you have multiple locations, the price becomes much more affordable and the ability to manage multiple locations becomes a really big time saver.

Yext is a great tool it's just a little expensive for what it does and there's also the problem of reversion. You're basically locked into an agreement with them for life because if you cancel, there goes your listings. Two pretty big issues.

Your ideal listing service should be inexpensive (either one time fee based or lower recurring), you should get to own your listings with usernames and passwords, and the listings should be permanent.

The tools Yext provides (white label option plus white label scanning tool) are pretty awesome.

Review monitoring is pretty standard. Being able to post to social accounts is okay.

"Enhanced content" isn't really much a feature to be honest. No one really looks beyond Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yelp, Facebook and YP.com these days anyway so updating a sale across the network more than likely won't have an impact.

That's pretty much your basic Yext run down.

 

[Linda Buquet]

You can try Synup for managing your citations, reviews and more.

Thanks Aarthi, I was just coming to mention Synup too. They are definitely worth checking out!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Places Scout is another tool many of the pros here use and love.

It doesn't do citation building or submission like Synup, Yext, Moz Local & Whitespark do, but it provides all kinds of other Local Search solutions including: Local Rank Tracking, Competitive Analysis, Lead Finder, Local NAP Audits & Reputation Management. Here's an overview I wrote about it with more details.

<a href="http://www.localsearchforum.com/local-seo-tools-software/36637-places-scount-review-swiss-army-knife-local-search.html">Places Scount Review - The Swiss Army Knife for Local Search</a>

Here's a testimonial from Joshua Mackens in that thread:

As far as the rank tracker goes, it blows any other tool I've ever used out of the water.

Been a customer for I believe over 3 years now. Worth every penny.

And you can read what other pros think about it there too.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Places Scout is another tool many of the pros here use and love.

It doesn't do citation building or submission like many of the others you've been discussing, but it provides all kinds of other Local Search solutions including: Local Rank Tracking, Competitive Analysis, Lead Finder, Local NAP Audits & Reputation Management. Here's an overview I wrote about it with more details.

<a href="http://www.localsearchforum.com/local-seo-tools-software/36637-places-scount-review-swiss-army-knife-local-search.html">Places Scount Review - The Swiss Army Knife for Local Search</a>

Here's a testimonial from Joshua Mackens in that thread:


And you can read what other pros think about it there too.

Yup, Places Scout is the bomb.

 

[JoyHawkins]

To echo what Colan said, tools don't build you backlinks (or at least any kind that have value) but you can use them to get ideas for what type of links to go after.

 

[James Watt]

Places Scout is my favorite tool for competitive research, it's definitely worth exploring.

 

[CodyBaird]

I recommend reading up on some of the strategies at http://citationlabs.com/

 

[HRobinson]

I'd appreciate a suggestion too.


I monitor 16 locations and 121 donation locations that I don't want in maps.


Is there a tool that can search by address and report back any duplicates, removals, and locations I don't want showing up?

Specifically:
1. I want to monitor these 16 locations for duplicates and when they are taken down.
2. I want to monitor the 121 donation locations to make sure they are not showing up as they are not real sites but bins and trailers at other places. (But show up because of citations on other websites.)
3. We are a nonprofit so we can't afford $30/location.
4. I have some incorrect citations out there is it best to do that manually or use a tool?

Thanks

 

[JoyHawkins]

@HRobinson - unless the locations don't actually exist you won't be able to get them removed from Maps.

 

[HRobinson]

@HRobinson - unless the locations don't actually exist you won't be able to get them removed from Maps.

I understand that. I'd like to get notified when the location does exist, so I can remove the new location from Maps.

I can search for them individually, but I can't search for all 121 locations at one time.

I was wondering if there was a tool that would search for you and let you know when new Google My Business Locations appeared via the addresses you provide.

For example, let's say I have a Donation Bin at 121 Main St. It's not in Maps but some citation triggers a new Google My Business for that location. This tool would be searching for those 121 locations by address and then notify me when that location shows up so I can go and remove it.

Maybe this is a new thread question?

 

[JoyHawkins]

You probably should start a new thread about this and maybe list the details of the business. I was trying to clarify that you cannot remove a listing from Maps. If a business doesn't want to be listed, there is no way to remove a listing. The only exception is if the listing is spam or for a business that literally doesn't exist in the real world.

 

[allieglas20]

Out of your list of tools, I currently use Yext for a company with 75 locations and Localeze and manual entry for a client with over 500 locations. These two tools are definitely two ends of the spectrum. If you need reporting, instant fix for your listings (and to know where your info is going), have a large budget, and want to use a tool that you can post to social media from, I would use Yext. I do think you can use multiple tools for a cheaper price to get everything that you can get from Yext.

For me, there really isn't a huge benefit for using Localeze alone since you really do not know where your information is going and the product is not very innovative.

Most recently, I really like Advice Local after seeing a demo. It has a Visibility report that you can run for potential customers or use it as a benchmark to measure where your client was before you implemented their local strategy. You also get 4 different aggregators (similar to Moz Local), there is a review monitoring tool, keyword tool and automated reporting. The price is also pretty reasonable for resellers. I have also been impressed by BrightLocal which is not too different from this platform.

 

[Andrew Shotland]

I'd be remiss if I did not troll this thread to shill for NAP Hunter, our free citation checker Chrome extension.

It's free.
It's fast.
It kicks citation ass.
(testing out new jingle)