Moz Local vs Localeze vs Yext vs...

[atrust]

Hello forum!

I found this forum just a few days ago and I'm amazed how good this place is.

I'm helping my friend with local SEO and trying to find answers to a few questions I'm struggling with. (that's how I found this forum - googling about moz, yext, etc.)

My friend's business exists for 15+ years. He is not familiar with IT at all, so he used some random people to do SEO. He had 5+ different web sites, some of them were penalized, some of them are just too ugly. So he asked me to help.

We've created a brand new web site, killed penalized ones and redirected 2 others to a newly created one.

Now I'm looking into "fixing" the situation with local directories. There are two problems:

1. There are a lot of directories with outdated info (i.e. wrong website url, wrong phone number, street address etc.)
2. He has a partner doing a business with him. They have an agreement that while the business is the same, each of them must have different web sites and only one of them owns the Yelp page (not my friend).

I started to manually add business into various directories, fixing information, etc. But, uh, it takes so much time... Then I found those services, such as moz local, yext, localeze, synup, brightlocal, ubl and whitespark. I'm completely confused about all of them.

Any recommendations on what should I try first, as a first step towards resolving 1) and 2) issues from the list above?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi atrust,

Welcome to the forum, glad you found us.

I moved your thread from local search ranking to the citations forum since that's your primary question. And this is where a lot of our citation pros often jump in to help. But Sundays are dead, everyone's off with their family, so you may not get answers till tomorrow.

 

[whitespark]

Hi Atrust,

To help you sort out the differences between the various citation providers, you might find this thread helpful on the Moz Q&A:
https://moz.com/community/q/whitespark-or-moz-local

Our Director of Local Search, Nyagoslav Zhekov, provided a very detailed answer that should help you understand the differences between an automated approach vs a manual approach.

As for #2, this is a problem. They should really just have one website and all citations should reference that one website. They're shooting themselves in the foot otherwise and neither of them will be able to get the benefits of ranking in local search. Two websites means trying to build up link authority twice. It's hard enough to do it properly on a single website, let alone two. And, you're splitting your citation equity. I'd probably tell these guys to agree to one website, or expect that they'll have a very difficult (maybe impossible) time trying to rank.

---------- Post Merged at 08:55 AM ---------- Previous Post was at 08:54 AM ----------

Hi Atrust,

To help you sort out the differences between the various citation cleanup services, you might find this thread helpful on the Moz Q&A:
https://moz.com/community/q/whitespark-or-moz-local

Our Director of Local Search, Nyagoslav Zhekov, provided a very detailed answer that should help you understand the differences between an automated approach vs a manual approach.

As for #2, this is a problem. They should really just have one website and all citations should reference that one website. They're shooting themselves in the foot otherwise and neither of them will be able to get the benefits of ranking in local search. Two websites means trying to build up link authority twice. It's hard enough to do it properly on a single website, let alone two. And, you're splitting your citation equity. I'd probably tell these guys to agree to one website, or expect that they'll have a very difficult (maybe impossible) time trying to rank.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Apologies Darren,

We have a bug and it causes a double post. You didn't do anything to cause it.

I'm leaving this one up though because I sent your post as an example to my host, who I'm really hoping can fix this problem today.

I have too much RSI pain to keep going around and editing everyone's posts.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Apologies Darren,

We have a bug and it causes a double post. You didn't do anything to cause it.

I'm leaving this one up though because I sent your post as an example to my host, who I'm really hoping can fix this problem today.

I have too much RSI pain to keep going around and editing everyone's posts.

================

Crap and another double post.

 

[whitespark]

Hey Linda,

What happened was I went to post a quick reply, and it was hanging, so I clicked Go Advanced, then posted again. That could help debug the problem.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks Darren that does help. Phil was giving me some insights into why it was happening for him yesterday too.

 

[Eric Rohrback]

Darren's link to the Moz forum explains the nitty gritty details about each, but I'll try and give a quick summary:

moz local -

• $84 Yearly
• Pushes Data to Aggregates & Other Sites - Does not manually claim
• No control over data. Moz helps feed your data to the right sites

Yext

• Starts at $199 per year and goes up from there
• Overrides listings within their network and controls the data
• Changes go in effect instantly
• Pay to play - you stop paying, you lose control

localeze

• Data Aggregate
• Can't remember pricing long term, but I think it starts around $50? They might even have a free plan
• Pushes/sells data to hundreds of sites
• Definitely worth correcting

synup

• Manual citation claiming
• Never used them, but pricing is relatively cheap (a couple bucks per site?)

brightlocal

• Manual citation claiming
• Never used them, but pricing was competitive
• You tell them what sites to claim, they go out and do it

ubl

• Waste of money
• Push/sell data to other sites
• Used them in the past, and cancelled because none of the bad citations were corrected after 8+ months of paying monthly fees

whitespark

• Manual citation claiming
• Similar to Brightlocal - tell them what to claim they do it
• competitve pricing ($4 or $5 per citation if I remember right)
• Like BrightLocal, used them when I was in a jam. Solid company

And that's my overview of these companies as I've worked with them. Hope that helps a little

 

[Colan Nielsen]

I think these guys have given you all you need. Just in case, here is another great resource to help you make a decision - https://www.brightlocal.com/2014/05/27/mozlocal-vs-yext-vs-ubl-vs-brightlocal-vs-whitspark/

 

[atrust]

Hey guys! Thanks a lot for your help.

@Eric: thank you for your detailed response!

I'm looking through all of it now. It seems there is no the best, so I may end up using multiple. Not sure if that'll make any sense though.

 

[Eric Rohrback]

No one has a one size fits all solution. It makes sense to use multiple (if you want to outsource all of it completely), or use one to offset manual work. It really all depends on your situation. Don't use UBL though... you'll be very disappointed (that's my opinion).

 

[RajNijjer]

Raj from Yext here! I agree with Eric that the best solution depends on your goals. If you value time and control, Yext is your best bet as we will update your listings across all supported publishers very quickly and then lock the listing so it isn't overwritten during publisher data compilations down the road. Now that you have paved the road, you buy yourself time to go back and paint the lane parkers over time with data aggregators and such.

With that, I am happy to give you a walk through of our platform. Feel free to email me at Raj@yext.com.

Cheers and good luck!

Raj
Vp, Community