Best Way to propagate citations. Purchased an SMB: new name, same phone # & Address

[Dave]

Best Way to propagate citations. Purchased an SMB: new name, same phone # & Address

We recently purchased an existing SMB. We have changed the business name, but kept the address and phone number.

Needless to say The entire ecosystem of citations needs to be cleaned. On top of that the ecosystem of citations was weak.

So I'm looking for suggestions on best way to go with this issue. We have made just a couple of changes to date to citations, set up the name and got acknowledgement from google via card then call. Surprisingly Yelp got out a new page with the new name though I haven't claimed it yet and still has a page with the old name (probably not claimed).

Should we start with an aggregator? Which one and why? As long as we are doing this I'm thinking of some overall control and cleaning for several other smb's. Should I include them in a group for a discount. Who will give the best discount.

Looking for current experiences and suggestions.

One last point. Our key person is always on the road and remote. I'll be the best person to acknowledge changes but am not on site or at that number. Will that be an issue? How to overcome that?

TX,

Dave

 

[Broland]

Re: Best Way to propagate citations. Purchased an SMB: new name, same phone # & Addre

Hey Dave,

I'm the Co-Founder of DirectoryBug and we have a tool in Alpha testing and finishing up development just for dealing with issues like yours. The tool scans for listings on over 120 sites currently to find existing listings (accurately unlike some others). This makes finding and updating existing listings and acquiring new listings where the business is not listed much easier. We also have a good team in place to update/create new listings if desired. We are building the scan tool out of a sheer need for it in this market. The automated services and data aggregators unfortunately create duplicate, miscategorized, and weak listings.

Your business sounds like it would be a good test for our scan tool as we are tweaking it, so if you visit DirectoryBug and click on the scan tool link and sign up for alpha testing, I'll make sure you get pushed through to the top of the list. Just put in the comments that it is Dave from Local Search Forum.

 

[Dave]

Re: Best Way to propagate citations. Purchased an SMB: new name, same phone # & Addre

Broland: More interested in distribution than a scan. Lets assume that all citation sources are wrong and/or don't have any information.
I can submit this for a test.....

but I'm interested in current suggestions for best ideas with regard to distribution. I know that whatever is out there at the current time is going to be wrong.

 

[Broland]

Re: Best Way to propagate citations. Purchased an SMB: new name, same phone # & Addre

Yes. It is better to update the current existing listings that have age and may have reviews, followers etc. Just creating new ones creates more noise and confusion and could even harm rankings.

The first thing to do is find all of those existing "wrong" listings, along with all of the important sites that the business is not listed on. That's the scan part.

Once you have that, {we|you|someone else you hire} can go about updating the existing listings and creating new ones. Our team of course does this the best.