Directories - how often should we check the NAP and other information?

[tarantino75]

While creating a process for monthly optimization tasks, I wondered how often we should review directories for our clients. I'm referring to those relevant, such as Avvo or Martindale, for the legal industry.

At one point, we had decided 3-4 times a year; then, when it was stated that citations didn't have the effect they once had on rankings, we moved to 1-2 times a year. Thoughts?

 

[Colan Nielsen]

I don't see any value in checking citations on any sort of regular basis unless the business had moved or changed some other piece of core business information that you needed to update.

 

[Nyagoslav]

Hi Monica,

I would first like to point out that in my humble view the idea that citations don't have the effect they once had on local search rankings is not based on solid facts. Here is a telling example.

Last year Uberall conducted a very interesting study. They reviewed ranking data for 6,000 randomly selected enterprises across the US and the EU between September 2019 and October 2020. The divided the enterprises in two groups:

Group 1: submitted only to Google Maps, Apple Maps, Bing Maps, and Facebook
Group 2: submitted to an extended list of business directories (between 10 and 40, depending on the market)

They found the following difference in visibility and engagement between the two groups:

• Between 65% and 91% higher visibility in searches for Group 2
• 13% more phone calls for Group 2
• 87% more website clicks for Group 2
• 102% more direction searches for Group 2

Additionally, looking at a set of SMB and Enterprise locations, they found 55% to 58% higher visibility for locations with 31-40 listings as compared to locations with fewer than 10 listings. They also found 73% to 200% more engagements (phone calls, website clicks, driving directions) for locations with 31-40 listings as compared to locations with fewer than 10 listings.

You can find a presentation on the study here and a video here. You can download the full research report from here.

In addition to affecting search visibility and engagements, local citations have an impact on customer satisfaction, too. In a recent study, Moz reported that in 52% of cases, one of the reasons for negative reviews is false or incorrect information on local business listings. You can read the report here.

(I have a few theories on why citations might be getting neglected in recent years, and we could probably discuss this some other time.)

Regarding your question, one set-up I would recommend for citations-related tasks would be:

1. Intake. Make sure you ask your client for all their past business details, including old business names, physical locations, or phone numbers they may have used in the past. Ask them for any logins they may have - sometimes they might have worked with another agency in the past and the agency might have prepared listings reports for them, these reports would contain some login details.
2. Month 1: do a thorough listings audit and clean-up on Data Axle, Localeze, Foursquare, Google Maps, Apple Maps, Bing Maps, and Facebook.
3. Month 2: do a thorough listings audit and clean-up on Yelp, Yellowpages, TomTom, D&B, BBB (whenever applicable).
4. Month 3 (onwards): do 10 listings on general business directories and 2 listings on location-specific or industry-specific business directories per month.
5. Month 12: do a thorough audit on all the business directories you have done so far, to make sure nothing has been missed and no rogue, incorrect listings have popped up in the meantime.
6. Once you have gone through all the good quality business directories, you could look into obtaining some extra unstructured citations (blogs, newspaper sites, wiki pages, fora, etc.).

I hope this helps.

Thank you,
Nyagoslav

 

[Lozo Digital]

1. Month 1: do a thorough listings audit and clean-up on Data Axle, Localeze, Foursquare, Google Maps, Apple Maps, Bing Maps, and Facebook.
2. Month 2: do a thorough listings audit and clean-up on Yelp, Yellowpages, TomTom, D&B, BBB (whenever applicable).

Hey @Nyagoslav .

Do you have a checklist or some type of guide for the listing audit?