Moz Local - Needed for good measure?

[SSFCU]

Hello,

Before Moz Local was released, I had worked with a 3rd party vendor and established citations throughout several, several domains. There may had been some directories, such as the databases, that we were unsuccessful at because we're 70 locations and they wanted to charge high fees for bulk. We also were unsuccessful with Yahoo, Yellow Pages and Citysearch (for various reasons that are too complex to get into here).

1. Would it be beneficial to also use Moz Local for good measure and to cover some, if not all, domains we had difficulties with?

2. Would that be duplicating our efforts and/or cause duplicate listings?

3. Can we cherry-pick which domains we want?

Thanks.

[Bryan_Loconto]

Hey Sarah!!

I am not 100% on Moz Local since it came out right after we got set up as a Yext Partner (although I am CERTAIN Moz Local is a top level product), but I can tell you this... Yext just released a duplicate listing suppressor feature in their system.

Have you looked into Yext at all before getting started with Moz Local?

NOTE: I'm not trying to get slammed by the Moz gods or anything or promote a competitors service by this comment, I'm just trying to help you and give feedback based on OUR experience with Yext. Please be gentle with me. Im fragile

[SSFCU]

Yep, I looked in Yext. The package we would need to get just wasn't at the right price point.

[Bryan_Loconto]

Hmm... yeah I can see how it could get a bit pricey having 70 locations!!!

From the looks of it, the Moz Local tool does "Find duplicate Listings" but to play it safe, you should drop them a line and ask what they suggest. Im sure they would be willing to help clarify how to carry out your scenario.

http://moz.com/help/guides/local

At the bottom of their Moz Local page, I saw this. May be the best bet for you! Good luck!

Do you have hundreds of locations, and need help getting started?

Email enterpriselocal@moz.com

[MiriamEllis]

Hi SEOSarah!

If you sign up for Moz Local, we will push your data out to these 7 supported partner sites:

Infogroup

Best of the Web

Factual

Foursquare

Superpages

Acxiom

Neustar/Localeze

Any platform not on the above list, you would need to manage manually. Moz Local will either create or update your existing listings on any of the above so that they are consistent and fully filled out. We will not create duplicate listings.You cannot pick and choose which of the above 7 we would push to, but as we don't create duplicates, this shouldn't cause any problems for you.

The one exception I should mention is that if your are already having a listing managed elsewhere (such as with Localeze) we cannot take over management of it. In some cases, customers close out such listings so that we can bring them into the convenient one-stop management of the Moz Local publishing dashboard, but if you'd prefer to leave management as-is for these pre-managed listings, that's totally fine, too!

In order for us to validate your listings, you will need to have a verified, accurate Google+ Local page or Facebook local business page for each of your unique locations that you'd like to list.

Hope this helps and please let me know if you have any further questions!

[DonnaDuncan]

Hi Sarah,

I'll take a stab at answering your questions, but have to say I have not yet used Moz Local. I plan to at the next opportunity.

It's hard to predict if Moz Local might help with the domains you had difficulty with without knowing the types of problems you ran into. Moz Local is, in my opinion, an educational and time saving tool for local SEO. It will help identify duplicates so you can be aware of them and take appropriate action. It won't solve the problem for you.

Moz feeds the data aggregators and the big-hitters that require manual verification. Would it be duplicating your efforts? I'm sure there's overlap. How much is hard to say.

I don't believe you can cherry-pick the domains you want. For that you'd be better off using a citation builder like Whitespark.ca. They check for duplicates and hand-submit citations. It can get expensive though at $4-$5 a pop, especially when you're talking about 70 locations. They do offer discounts for volume though.

Hope that helps.

D

[SSFCU]

Thanks Miriam! We don't have a company managing our listings, just myself manually. I'm assuming there is bandwidth for 70 locations? We have G+ and FB pages for each one, so that's not a problem.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi SEOSarah,

There are no limits! Add as many locations as you like - and the nice thing is that you can enter them all in one .CSV file and you'll be able to manage them all from a single dashboard. Pretty nifty:)

[irapasternack]

"Any platform not on the above list, you would need to manage manually."   -- Miriam, can you give an example of other platforms?   I thought the point of Moz Local is that the aggregators you submit to will eventually reach pretty much any directory out there, as the info propagates through the local search ecosystem?

[DonnaDuncan]

"There are some outliers - companies that just barely participate in the local search ecosystem. Examples include Judy's Book, Angie's List and Manta. These companies share their data with others (most notably Google), but are not paid subscribers to data aggregator services or data. If you want to get listed on those directories, you have to create the entries yourself."

Quoted from a post on my blog.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Ira,

That's correct that we would expect to see the data we push to our 7 supported partners then be pushed out to their own partners (see Local Search Ecosystem for US: http://moz.com/learn/local/local-search-data-us) but this is not something we monitor or guarantee. We monitor and guarantee pushing your data to the 7 partners, but do not track what happens beyond that point.

Also, when you create a Moz Local account we do provide some additional info about listings on several non-partner platforms, like Google, Bing, Facebook, Yahoo, Hotfrog, YP and Yelp. If our tool is pointing out that a business doesn't yet have a listing on one of these platforms, or that a listing could be improved by cleaning up NAP inconsistencies or adding additional details like photos or categories, we are specifically recommending that you take manual action to improve your overall listing score.

Hope this helps!