Citations, SEO and a skeptical client
-
What do you say to a client who recently purchased an online business and says 'I don't really care if the phone number or address on a directory is old or incorrect'?I've tried to explain the value from an SEO point of view, but he's not really buying it.Anyone encountered this skepticism before and if so, how did you handle it?
-
Intriguing title to this question! You hooked me.
Important question: if your client has an online-only business, why does he have citations? Structured citations are normally restricted to local businesses that make in-person contact with consumers. Does your client interact face-to-face with his customers? If so, failure to correct citations is about the worst mistake he could be making in terms of reputation, rankings and revenue.
But, if your client's business model is virtual, he shouldn't really be creating local business listings and ought to get rid of them - especially any Google My Business listings as they would actually be a violation of Google's guidelines. However, if he has accrued non-structured mentions of his business (for example, social mentions, newspaper articles, blog posts, etc.) and they contain misinformation, the risk of neglecting this is that he is losing customers. If I'm correct in understanding that your client's business is virtual, I'd advise him to:
-
Get rid of all local business listings on the major local business data platforms
-
Make the effort to correct unstructured citations, unless he can afford to lose customers.
I'd give it the 'old college try' to make the client understand his profits are at being put at stake due to misinformation being published about his company and outline a sensible plan for addressing the issue (based on whether his business is truly local or virtual). Then, if the client wouldn't hear this, I'd let him go. In fact, I wouldn't serve a client who felt that bad data about his company could be neglected. I'd be foiled at every turn in trying to market his business and see progress. His attitude would be setting us both up for failure. Hope this helps, and good luck!
-
-
David nails it here. Most business owners understand they need SEO, but don't know how it actually works. They are often told, you need thousands of back links, and then the company promises them these links. You need to emphasize quality and remind them it takes time.
As far as convincing the client they need to update their information, I would emphasize how the search engines draw connections between different sites and if the information is wrong it may look at the business as inactive. I'm sure you've mentioned that you don't want customers calling the wrong number, but they probably responded with "no one gets the phone number from this site". However, if they are searching for the branded name of the business a business directories information may pop up and show the wrong info. Don't miss out on easy conversions. I would try and provide some information or articles showing why they need to follow your advice.
Hope this helps.
Chris
-
All clients are skeptical when it comes to SEO. Because they get bombarded daily with emails from India promising first place on Google. Basically you have to A show them a client you did SEO for and have them Google it for themselves or you have to do one keyword for them for free to convince them of the value.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What is the best SEO practice for listing multiple locations from the same business online?
Hello! The church I work for is launching its third location and we are needing to figure out what the best SEO practice would be when it comes to to listing all three of our locations online. Currently, we are listing the two locations we have as "Church Name - South Campus" and "Church Name - West Campus." Going forward, would it be better to list our 3 location names as: James River Church - South Campus, James River Church - West Campus, James River Church - North Campus or James River Church South Campus, James River Church West Campus, James River Church North Campus or list all three locations as "James River Church" Thank you for any advice you can give me!
Local Listings | | chris.oursbourn0 -
Google Places - Cached Citations
Looking to update my business address where possible because I have moved offices. I know that Google uses citations from multiple parties to impact on the Google Places results. Trouble is when address details are updated on hese third party sites I notice that Google doesn't often recache the page and get the new address. What method(s) can I use to resolve this issue? Justin
Local Listings | | GrouchyKids0 -
Local Search and Schema.org - Do I need to tag up the "same as" Property to all my citations to help with local rankings?
Hi All, We have implemented Schema.og on our website and this also includes the local business schema for all of our branches.However I've read an article (see below ) which says we should also be doing "same as " property and linking this to ALL of our citations such as google plus page , yelp , bing places, city search etc etc as this will help with citations. I am wondering if anyone has done this ? - And if so , has this helped with local rankings etc - I don't really want to invest the extra costs to get this done if I can't find anywhere that says its made a difference - The article from whitespark - says - "when you create new citations for your business (or for your client’s), it’s a waiting game hoping that Google and the other search engines will find your new citations quickly and make the connection between those listings, the business, and the website. The “sameAs” property can help make that process much quicker _and _easier. Schema.org explains that the “sameAs” property is used along with the “URL of a reference Web page that unambiguously indicates the item's [or business’] identity.” By using the “sameAs” property in your NAP schema markup, you can tell search engines that the business you’ve marked up is the same one found at a certain citation URL Of course, Google+ isn’t the only important citation source. There’s also Bing Places, Facebook, Yelp, Citysearch and a few others. The nice thing about many schema.org properties is that you can use them multiple times in your markup." I am wondering what peoples thoughts were and whether they has implemented this and if so , did it help ? thanks Pete | [sameAs](http://schema.org/sameAs) | URL | URL of a reference Web page that unambiguously indicates the item's identity. E.g. the URL of the item's Wikipedia page, Freebase page, or official website. |
Local Listings | | PeteC121 -
Concerned about cannibalization for local SEO results. Should we move some of our location pages to a subdomain?
Currently we are providing local SEO recommendations for a well known pharmacy chain. Like most major brands they enjoy multiple organic (not just 3 pack results) listings when people search for local phrases such as "Dallas pharmacy clinics'". The issue is that all these listings are coming from the same domain page. We are seeing multiple listings both branded and non-branded search queries. Our concern is that Google will someday decide to choose one listing as the most authoritative and nix the rest of the local listings which will reduce their first page search engine saturation. To maintain first page saturation we are considering recommending to the client that they move some of their location listings
Local Listings | | RosemaryB
to a subdomain (different IP address) to avoid a Google "clean up". Please note that our client is certainly not using any "doorway" pages but some of these are very scarce on content. They do not have an issue with duplicate content either. By using subdomains could we help maintain our client's first page saturation? Any links to articles would be much appreciated.0 -
Is it possible to use sub URLs in Citations?
Hello, One of my client has business in 5 different locations so he has URL's like: "www.abc.com/city-service" for which he has listing verified in each location. I can certainly say that Google Business allow sub pages URL in citations (correct me if I am wrong). I am not sure if it is possible to use the sub URL's like: www.abc.com/city-service in different citations websites? Also, if this would be a good approach or not? Please help me. Sam
Local Listings | | BrianBotts.0 -
What is the ideal length of a business description for citations?
I am trying to write a business description for building citations. What is the ideal length or word count for this? I am using Yext to help get them listed, did a lot of searching for an answer and was unable to come up with a definite answer. Any help would be great! The business I am working on for this is James River Church, they have 2 locations. So I am trying to write a unique description for both locations.
Local Listings | | chris.oursbourn0 -
Foreign languages and SEO: product description
Hi everyone, I have hit a brick wall with regards with the SEO of one of our sites. This is concerning a Belgium based webshop which sells toys. The server is based in the Belgium and the domainname ends also .be . They try to put as much possible dutch/belgium text on the website but the amount of this is very low compared to the english text on the website. The problem starts when they import product description from the main manufacturer which is in english. this means when the customer visits the website, it's dutch, but the product description is in english I have pointed out this but they pointed out the fact they import with 1 click 500 products, but it takes them ages to translate this to dutch. Now is my theory, the way they are doing this, will hurt their ranking a lot in the google.be search engine compared to their competitors to the point that less than 10% of their site is in dutch/belgium and the rest in english. I am thinking of the possibility of suggesting to let them use google translate to automatically translate the products before putting them on the website. It won't be a great translation, but it will stop hurting their ranking and will even contribute to increase their ranking. I thought they do this, and put a small link to the english version of the manufacturer. I would love to hear others thoughts on how to do this with as efficient and fast as possible.
Local Listings | | sami800