Top 100 Local Business Directories/Citations for Local SEO by Andrew Shotland @Yext

[Linda Buquet]

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We haven't had a top citations list for awhile so I wanted to share this new list of the most important Local business directories by Andrew Shotland over at the Yext blog.

Andrew categorized and broke down the top 100 by directory type, so you can easily find the best ones for your client or your business.

<a href="http://www.yext.com/blog/2016/07/important-local-business-directories-seo/">The Most Important Local Business Directories for SEO</a>

So now without further ado, I am pleased to present the new top 100 online local directories for SEO:

What do you think? Any surprises?

 

[mborgelt]

I'm surprised that Glass Door made the list. We just had a meeting where we briefly discussed its implications to online search, reputation and visibility. Thanks for sharing, Linda!

 

[James Watt]

Good post, thanks for sharing Linda. I've been doing a little citation research myself lately, good to see what others come up.

Andrew's note about non-traditional directories was an interesting one. I haven't seen as much of that for photographers, but I know it's heavily industry dependent. Either way, always good to see what others come up with on their own bit of research.

Personally though, I'm not 100% sure about some of what whitespark has in their lists. I noticed for example that in their top photographers list, service magic (now home adviser) is on the list, though they have no photographer category. I noticed things like that for a number of them, and the JCPenny directory Andrew mentioned... that's not one business owners can even get on, right?

 

[raylaminac]

excellent read, i hope this isn't out of the realm of this forum but is there a good source or tool for submitting listings to some of these directories?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hey Ray,

You'll find lots of great info in our <a href="http://www.localsearchforum.com/local-business-citations/">Local Business Citations</a> forum.

But some of the top ones people here seem to talk about most are WhiteSpark, BrightLocal and Yext.

 

[raylaminac]

Haven't researched WhiteSpark or the citations forum this will be great, thank you!

 

[JoshuaMackens]

The problem with citation lists is that the directories keep changing.

When they find out local search directories just aren't that profitable, they abandon them. Then, you've got all of these citation lists with old directories that don't work anymore. Then new ones replace them. It's honestly really hard to keep track of if you don't work on updating your list all the time and even then, it's hard to do.

I've thrown around the idea of keeping an updated list since we do so many local listings but I just haven't taken the plunge quite yet. The management of it might be more trouble than it's worth.

 

[Robin]

Hi guys,

Does anyone know whether there are lists like this for The Netherlands?

I'm creating lists myself, both for general citations and for certain industy specific websites. So far I haven't found any good ones for The Netherlands myself, but perhaps I'm missing something

Thanks in advance!

 

[James Watt]

I haven't seen one, but there might be. My guess though is that you're going to need to do your own research. Whitespark's citation finder is a good tool to start with, though I don't know how well it works in the non-English parts of the web. It sounds like you've got the right idea though, look at a dozen or two dozen companies to start and pull your list together from therre. Citation work is less important than it used to be, so you don't need to go all out and find every nook and cranny. Just find the few dozen most important directory sites and move on.

The one thing I would do a little extra research on though, in the US there are 4 major data aggregates that feed info to the smaller directories. I'm sure it's the same in the Netherlands, though I have no idea what those aggregators might be.

Someone else with more international experience will need to jump in from here though. Good luck.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

I haven't seen one, but there might be. My guess though is that you're going to need to do your own research. Whitespark's citation finder is a good tool to start with, though I don't know how well it works in the non-English parts of the web. It sounds like you've got the right idea though, look at a dozen or two dozen companies to start and pull your list together from therre. Citation work is less important than it used to be, so you don't need to go all out and find every nook and cranny. Just find the few dozen most important directory sites and move on.

The one thing I would do a little extra research on though, in the US there are 4 major data aggregates that feed info to the smaller directories. I'm sure it's the same in the Netherlands, though I have no idea what those aggregators might be.

Someone else with more international experience will need to jump in from here though. Good luck.

We just went through a round of Canadian listings here trying to get a good list to be able to add a new Canadian service and ran into how ExpressUpdate handles Canada so maybe it will give you a perspective of how that might work in the Netherlands.

What I know: ExpressUpdate doesn't allow you to have a dashboard to access the listing in Canada. The business owner, not you (they are very adamant about this), can email in or call in with their information and they will add it to their database. You do not have a interfacing dashboard to work with for Canadian listings.

What I don't know: Because of the lack of a dashboard, you don't know if your information really was put into the system when you asked them to do it, if they got it correct, or misspelled something, omitted information, etc. But at least it's in there. Also, they say they allow Canadian listings through bulk listings (which of course you have to pay for) but I don't know if they really do or not. The support there is not the best.

I say all that to say that's how the biggest data aggregator (in my opinion) handles the biggest secondary market they have (Canada).

With that in mind, who knows how they handle other markets they haven't prioritized. Which makes me wonder how the other 3 handle those markets as well.

Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if the big 4 don't handle the Netherlands and wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a company that sold Netherlands local business data. But then again, I guess I wouldn't be surprised either. I mean someone has to you would think, right?

If someone is, it's probably not as complicated or as extensive of a network as it is in the US. You would hope so anyway. That would make SEO so much easier there

Let us know what you find out!

 

[Robin]

Thanks for the advice guys!

To my knowledge there's only one business over here which you could call a data aggregator, but they only cover about 20-30 (general) citations and they don't check for duplicates so I'm not really a fan and prefer to do the manual work.

I'm actually already using Whitespark and that's how I've compiled a general list and some industry specfic lists for The Netherlands. So I guess I'll stick to that

 

[James Watt]

There might be a bit of semantic confusion there. There are two kinds of companies that matter when talking about the citation ecosystem as a whole:

Data Aggregators - these are like the mouth of the amazon. They don't directly update anything, they're more like the mouth of the river. Other citation companies 'downstream' will rent or buy data from these aggregators, and use it to populate their lists. For example, say you're going to start a new online directory, and you want to buy a list of a million US businesses to populate your site with. Well, Factual, Express Update, etc. would be companies you would approach. In the US, there's 4 of these aggregators. Even if you do your own manual citation management, it's still worth it to get your data straight in these main aggregators. In your country, that might even just be government incorporation records that 3rd party sites scrape, or a financial information list (ala D&B) who knows? But I'm sure there is one.

Citation listing management services - this can be automated using technology (Yext, Moz, etc) or you could maybe even count companies that do it manually and in house (Whitespark). These services are optional. No one buys information about your business from them, they just use their tools and resources to push your data to the directories they have relationships or experience with.

What you described sounds like a management service, not a data aggregator. A number of the US sites at least will let you know where they got their data from (powered by: ) maybe there's something like that in some of the netherland sites?

 

[Robin]

Hi James,

Thanks for clearing that up! By my knowledge we don't have any data aggregators over here except for the 'Kamer van Koophandel', where every business in The Netherlands is registered. They do sell their data to Google (at least that's what they've told me) and other businesses.