Unique Local Citation Descriptions?

[Webpresence]

Hello!

As SEO’s we have always understood that it’s best practice to craft a number of unique descriptions when submitting to local directories, rather than using one generic description across all directories.

However, if we look at this logically;

An average business owner (even if Google didn't exist) wouldn't bother to vary descriptions. They would have a generic brand template and simply submit the same description to each directory.

What do you think? Is having unique descriptions a MUST for Local Business Citations, or is it ok to use one generic one?

I look forward to hearing your thoughts, Lee.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Lee!

I agree with you that it makes good horse sense to craft unique citation descriptions, but to be pragmatic about this, the past 5 years have seen the development of citation building services (Moz Local, Whitespark, Yext) etc. and, normally, these services are going to push out a single description for you, and that description is then going to make its way further down the stream to platforms higher level platforms push to. In other words, duplication of descriptions isn't only an outcome of using most citation building services, but is pretty much baked into the situation in which data upstream moves downstream.

So - if there is a specific platform on which you feel having an extra unique description might help (like, maybe a Yelp profile), go ahead and write one, but, at this point in the game, I'm honestly no longer worried about duplicate citation descriptions, given that they are pretty much unavoidable.

[Webpresence]

Many thanks for the feedback, Miriam. hope all's well.

You make a lot of sense.. my train of thought though is that if you do have varied unique, optimised descriptions you have more chance of a number of different directory profiles ranking in Google for related searches, therefore increasing your 'third-party' search visibility.

Wouldn't Google only rank one of your directory profiles if the content (description) is duplicated?

Thanks again, Lee.