I need help choosing a service...

[Hernandez_Shane]

I have a client who's used a several different (and terrible) marketing companies who've created bad listings. To compound the problems, he moved his business and a few years ago so he now has a lot of incorrect citations.

So I corrected several of the bad listings, then joined Yext in hopes they could do the rest but they're lackluster in deleting old listings. Is there a legit service that can go through and actually delete all those incorrect listings, not suppress them but actually have the different sites delete them?

I know this is keeping my clients site from moving up in the maps, being he's number 1 organically in most keywords.

 

[whitespark]

At the risk of being self-promotional, you've basically just described exactly what we do and why our service exists:
https://whitespark.ca/citation-audit-and-cleanup-service/
Scroll down to read about how we do citation audit and cleanup.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Shane,

I was just going to say that when you have that type of mess you need manual clean-up.
And for manual clean-up, there is no one better than Whitespark!

 

[whitespark]

Thanks, Linda!

 

[JonClassyBrain]

Yup, WhiteSpark is legit. My agency uses them all the time for these kinds of situations.

 

[Hernandez_Shane]

I recently signed up my client with Yext, will that effect if I Whitespark? If so please advise me, I hate to keep joining different companies. Thanks in advance for the input.

 

[whitespark]

Yes, your listings on Yext will be "locked" by them. It is possible to cancel and get them to refund you the prorated amount of your billing though, and get them to release the listings. If you wanted to sign up with Whitespark, I would suggest contacting Yext support and requesting this cancellation/refund first.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Yeah, citation clean up is annoying. Most services (including ours) will clean up listings on the directories they submit to but not outside of their network. If you want a full clean up, it's more or less a separate service from business listings because it's completely different work.

Also, set your expectations appropriately. No one will be able to clean up 100% of the bad information. There are just too many defunct directories out there that have no way for you to manually edit your information and they abandoned their support channels (and likely their directory) long ago. So for some sites that bad information will just sit there unfortunately.

A service like Whitespark's is your best bet but just understand no one can clean up 100% of it all. I imagine Whitespark comes the closest though. Heck, I don't even know anyone else offering just a clean up service actually.

Good luck!

 

[whitespark]

Joshua, I really appreciate such kind words and recommendation for our service. Thank you.

 

[HRobinson]

Great service I'm sure.

Most of my clients have 30+ locations plus misc locations that need to be cleaned up.

At close to $300 / location, it's tough for my clients to accept the cost to do so, let alone any margin leftover.

At $9-10k to audit and clean up these locations, they don't get it. Compared to other services and prices it seems high to them. That's my experience in dealing with about 20 clients like this is that it is not worth the cost to them.

I'm looking for a service geared toward those of us with multiple locations at a much lower price that I can sell to the client.

Again, nothing personal as I'm sure you have a great service. That's just my experience passing on the service to clients.

 

[whitespark]

The huge difference is the one-time fee vs annually recurring. It's actually far more cost effective in the long run, and for a much more comprehensive cleanup job. Once a location has been updated, why keep paying year after year to keep that info updates? Why rent when you can own? Also, the bots aren't nearly as effective as the humans at finding and fixing all the incorrect and duplicate citations. You're getting a much better job for a much better cost. See comparison chart:

	Whitespark Essentials+	Yext	Moz Local Pro
# Sites	13	60	13
Cost per location	$379	$499	$179
Year 1 for 20 locations	$7,580	$9,980	$3,580
Year 2 for 20 locations	$7,580	$19,960	$7,160
Year 3 for 20 locations	$7,580	$29,940	$10,740
Year 4 for 20 locations	$7,580	$39,920	$14,320

If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them!

 

[whitespark]

Oh, and with 20 locations you'd get a 20% discount too.