Local Site Submit

[AlanMosley]

If i were a serch engine, i would see such a pattern and practise as trying to game the system.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Fidelity,

I would love to be able to give you a first-hand experience reply on this, but I've never used Local Site Submit. I did put your question to a few colleagues in Local and received one response from a pro I trust who had used this service a year ago and then switched away because, though he found the pricing to be very good, he found the process 'messy'. He wasn't more specific than this, but at least I was able to track down one person who had actually used the service. Do understand, this is just one agency's experience and it was a year ago, so things may have improved since then.

I've taken a look at the company's main page of offerings. To my eyes, they are offering more than many other mere directory submission sites, including social media and video promotion. They also appear to be guaranteeing inclusion in DMOZ, which I find quite unusual. They also state that the submission is manual rather than automated, so again, that's not exactly across-the-board identical to what some other local submission services offer. All of these things look like they could be very positive. Their execution is what would prove the worth of the service.

Two things which I noticed which did give me a little pause:

1. I do not see a mention in the copy about checking for existent listings. This is important in any listing service, as otherwise, their work will create duplicates which will just be a big headache. Maybe they do this, but I didn't see it mentioned, at a glance.

2. I wonder what this is:

Extra citations via our private network of Web 2.0 sites

Now, call me overly-sensitive, but that language is reminiscent of the way link farming is often described. You don't ever really want to be part of a web of interlinking anything. This is the one point I would want to be absolutely clear on before signing up for anything. As you probably know, link farms are not approved by Google's policies and are typically eventually punished, so be careful on that score.

Unfortunately, without having tried this myself, as I've said, I can't say, "this was awesome" or "this was lacking". And, what one Local SEO loves, another may hate, so your most authentic route for proving the worth of this service is actually going to be trying it for yourself. It might work great for your agency. I would say, call the company and do be extra careful with finding out what is meant by my point #2, and do discover their policy on point #1 as well.

Hope my reply has been at least a little helpful. Good luck!

Miriam

[RyanKent]

Very nice analysis and feedback. I agree with Alan's assessment but would love to be proven wrong.

[stevefidelity]

Hi Miriam,

Thanks. That was very thorough. I did have some of the same concerns, particularly about their network of sites. I'd love to be able to work with them on just certain services. The video for example, I don't need. My clients don't need. It appears as though they put together a cheap montage video that in my opinion has little value. Personally, I'd want to handle setting up a Google+ Local listing for clients as well, but manual submission to dozens of local directories is where it gets tedious and takes up time. That's all I really want them for.

[RyanKent]

Whether they submit to directories manually or automatically is not a consideration. You must be absolutely sure each directory complies with Google's Guidelines or the link will likely be devalued at best, or lead to a penalty / Penguin issue at worse.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Again Fidelityim,

Well, you can ask if they do an a la carte service. If not, perhaps you'll need to go with a different company that offers just the services you want. I'm glad if my reply was helpful in pointing out some things to consider!

Miriam

[MicahMMG]

I don't want to seem harsh, but you should brush up on your Local Search knowledge.  It's not quite the same as SEO.  Local Search is almost entirely about having exactly the same NAP(Name, Address, Phone Number) across hundreds of websites.

Google crawls those hundreds of websites.  If your businesses' information is the same across all of them, Local Search data gets more accurate.

Google WANTS you to have uniform information across the web.  They WANT to have a high quality Local Search product(Google Maps).

Yes, it may seem more "natural" to have an invalid, year old, phone number, on some websites, but that doesn't make it a good thing, and Google doesn't want you to have that, either.

ExpressUpdate, Localeze, and Axiom simply take your data, sanitize it, and push it across the web.  In most cases, your business probably already has a listing with a nofollowed link on all of the websites they're pushing data to.  The point of Local Search products isn't to get the link.  The point is uniform data.

I don't know about the product that the OP posted, but it certainly sounds similar, although it looks like these guys will sell you other SEO services, too.

[KeriMorgret]

Alan can expand on what he meant, but in many situations things like "blast to web 2.0 sites" is cause for concern. Citations being exactly the same are certainly desirable, but it may be some of the other parts of the package that were causes for concern.

On this page about How do Citations Work http://www.localsitesubmit.com/blog/how-do-citations-work it's stated "In addition we place links on all these sites so that your business will gain over a hundred inbound links to your site."

[MicahMMG]

Ok, yes, that looks bad.  I wouldn't buy that.

Other Local Search solutions, like ExpressUpdate, Axiom, Localeze, etc. are not doing that kind of thing.

[Clix]

Three years later, any updates on this software?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Jason,

While I don't know anything additional about the business in question since this thread was first started, there are many more options these days for citation services. Have you considered Moz Local, Whitespark, BrightLocal or some of the other popular services that exist today for this?

[shendison]

I have to clarify  this thread -  I'm actually a reseller now, for LSS, and it's very good, and very useful, and obviously the 2012 comments above were made before the concept of "NAP consistency" was known.

The process and user interface is similar to Yext, only much better, because unlike Yext they DO take care of the 4 core local data providers like Moz does  - (Acxiom, Localeze, Infogroup and Factual)

There are dozens of other valuable directories they list at, (as well as the 'not so valuable' of course), but the full list does covers the spectrum of important sites very well  when stacked up against the others.

As a reseller, I can give my client a white labeled login to check progress month after month, and I'm provided with various widget options that runs "local listing status scans" and then captures the lead data into my system.

To quote my rep from one of his emails when I asked - "We absolutely do NOT create duplicates and have several fail safes in place in our workflow to ensure we do not."

Overall, I've found LSS to be a great value and help, and for the end user, it's one of the best values in the industry. Not as cheap as Moz local, but still 1/2 the price of Yext..