Numerous studies have been carried out to help determine the exact impact that both positive and negative reviews have on the popularity, number of sales, product awareness, conversion rate and profitability of businesses selling products or services.

The Positive Impact of Reviews on Businesses

• The increased likelihood of consumers spending more money
• Having numerous positive reviews increases the likelihood of convincing customers to pay more money for products or services. In fact, studies have shown that consumers are likely to spend around 31% more on products and services from businesses that have excellent reviews backing them up.
• Increase in business revenue
• Having negative reviews will surely affect your business, yet for every star that a business gets, chances are that a business’ revenue will increase by anywhere between 5%-9%.
• The customers’ trust is increased
• 57% of customers won’t use a business that has fewer than 4 stars (up from 48% in 2017)

The Negative Impact of Reviews on Businesses

• • Negative reviews can be damaging to the prestige, profitability and trustworthiness of a business
  • A single negative review can drive away approximately 22% of customers, whereas around three negative reviews can drive away 59% of the customers
  • A single negative review could cost a business around 30 customers
  • People hesitate to purchase from businesses with no reviews or with too many negative reviews

Our annual online reviews research shows that negative reviews stop 40% of consumers wanting to use a business. In the unfortunate case that these negative reviews pop up on Google searches, the businesses can potentially lose around 70% of their future customers.

In an era where the internet has taken over the world, online reviews are bound to drive customers towards or away from your business.  Making customer satisfaction an essential part of your business can only help your company’s sales and profitability.

The Best Online Review Sites for Businesses

If you are looking for the best online review sites for businesses, then check out the following:

1.  Google My Business
2. Yelp
3. Angie’s List
4. Business.com
5. Foursquare
6. Better Business Bureau
7. Facebook
8. Home Advisor

Maintaining a positive reputation on a wide range of review platforms is a great way to future-proof your business! 

This means that if you have multiple locations in your GMB account, you can now set these up quickly & easily in your BrightLocal account, allowing you to track their SEO performance and build accurate, matching citations.

Hopefully our users will find this update a huge time saver and a fantastic addition to the manual or CSV import methods!

How to import locations from GMB

3 Options for Setting up Locations

Within the Clients & Locations section of your dashboard, you now have the option to import a location. For importing, you now have 3 options:

1. Import listings from Google My Business
2. Add single location (manually)
3. Import locations from a CSV file

The big change here is option 1, enabling you to import listings directly from Google My Business. Woohoo! ??

Using this new option you can connect to GMB, which will then automatically fetch your locations. After this you are able to select which ones to import into your BrightLocal account.

Handling New & Existing Locations

We query the listings that you have in your GMB account and import any that are in a ‘published’, ‘unpublished’, or ‘pending’ state.

We do not import any duplicate or disabled accounts, as our users tell us that these aren’t accurate or usable locations for them at this time. Do you disagree? Leave a comment at the bottom if you do.

Once we have fetched your Google My Business locations, you will see two tabs:

1. New Locations
2. Existing Locations.

New Locations – in your New locations tab you will see listings that you don’t already have set up in your BrightLocal account. We use your NAP details to match imported listings vs those in your account.

Existing Locations – if we suspect that you already have a listing in your account it will appear on the Existing Locations tab. You can then choose if you want to skip these, import as new locations or import & update the listings that you already have in your account.

There is a useful Comparison option that lets you compare data from a GMB location vs data for an existing location in your account and choose how you want to handle it.

Set-up reporting & citation campaigns for your imported locations

Once imported, you will see the listings in your dashboard, and can choose which ones to set up monitoring or build local citations for.

This is a huge time saver if you have multiple locations in GMB. You can quickly import them, set up your tracking, and kick off a citation campaign in no time at all. Then you can focus on the day’s other tasks and let us take care of rest!

More GMB updates coming soon

This is the first of many helpful GMB updates that we’re working on. Here’s a sneak preview of the next 2 that we’ll be launching in the coming weeks:

• GMB Insights data in your Location Dashboard:

You will soon be able to see your Google My Business insights data from your GMB dashboard, e.g:

• how customers search for your business
• where they view your profile
• clicks & calls to your number from Google
• request for driving directions

Push updated Location data back into your GMB account:

As well as importing data from Google My Business you’ll be able to push location data back up into GMB from BrightLocal. This means that if you update a location in BrightLocal, you will be able to push that data out to Google My Business.

We hope you find this update useful and that it helps you manage your GMB locations better!

As always, please let us know your thoughts & feedback in the comments below. Thank you!

Responsive designs for ranking reports

Our new rank checker designs will make reporting to clients a much better experience!

The new look reports are more responsive, meaning you & your clients can view your ranking reports on desktop, tablet & mobile devices. We have also tidied up the interface and significantly improved the PDF designs.

This update has just been released today (Wednesday), so feel free to go & explore your reports & give us some feedback. We’d love to hear it!

1. Cleaner, Responsive Rankings Chart & Table

2. Great visual Tracker Chart

3. Easy-to-read Aggregate Rankings Chart

3. Clear Competitor Ranking Comparison

4. Awesome PDF Reports

More Rank Checker updates coming soon…

This update is the first of many that we’re bringing to the Local Rank Tracker. Here’s what you can expect to see added over the next few weeks:

• Starred keywords 

You’ll be able to star your favorite keywords & have them automatically appear at the top of your reports.

• Localized, keyword query volumes

See how many monthly search queries each of your keywords receives in your town, city or even zipcode

• Track new Google ‘Paid-Local’ pack

Google is rolling out their Home Services Ads to more cities & industries. We will start tracking visibility of local business within these paid-pack results by tracking both URL & call-tracking numbers.

• Add competitors directly in reports

Benchmarking yourself against competitors is important. You will be able to add new competitors from right within your report saving you time & effort in tracking competitor performance

• Add extra keywords directly in report

Quickly add new keywords into your report so you can build out your reports more easily.

A number of our customers told us that they found it time consuming & frustrating to have to set up different reports (ranking, citation, reviews) individually. And we agree!

So we’ve just released a brand new feature which will save you time & lost-hair by letting you set-up your multiple reports all at 1 time.

We call it Report Creation Wizard – you might want to call it your new best friend!

What is the Report Creation Wizard?

Previously, you had to create each report one-by-one in each of our reporting tools. So if wanted multiple reports for a client (e.g. local ranking reports,  citation tracking reports, Google Business Profile reports) then it was a time-consuming and repetitive process to achieve this.

But now, setting up reports one-by-one is now a thing of the past!

Add a new Location & let Report Creation Wizard do the rest

The start point is the Location Dashboard.

When you add a new location you get prompted to start ‘Monitoring Data’. After that there are a few simple, guided steps.

Here is a step-by-step walkthrough:

Once you’ve added a new Location, the Report Creation Wizard will walk you through your setup.

Just use the check boxes to select which reports you want us to create for you:

After you’ve selected the reports you want to set up, you’ll just need to fill out some basic business information (just one time) to set the Report Creation Wizard in motion.

Depending on the reports you have chosen, this may include Location Data, Search Terms, Search Rank Settings and Advanced Location Data.

Then you’re done!

The great thing is, you now only need to enter this information once — rather than individually for each report. (This saves you time — so you can give your clients’ extra attention!)

Currently this feature is only available when you setup a new location, but our team are working hard to add this functionality to existing Locations and make BrightLocal even more useful for you.

We hope you like this latest update and that it saves you valuable time.

If you have any feedback or questions, let us know in the chat box or comments section below.

Welcome to the Expert Citation Survey 2016. This study takes a deep dive into the world of local SEO citations with the help of 21 local search experts who have provided their experience, knowledge, and insights. This is the 3rd time we’ve run the survey, having published previous editions in 2013 & 2015.

We asked our local SEO experts 17 questions that would discover how relevant citations are in 2016, how important they are for local businesses, and current best practices for building and cleaning up citations.

Citation survey participants

Huge thanks to the 21 local citation experts for taking the time and effort to give us their insights for this research. You can find the full list of participants below the survey findings and their sage quotes throughout.

Survey Questions:

• How important are Accurate Citations to local search ranking?
• Are Citations more or less important now than 12 months ago?
• What is more important, quantity or quality of citations?
• What level of importance do these factors have when selecting which citation sites to use?
• Which type of sites offer the greatest authority for structured citations?
• Which of these sources of unstructured citations do you favour above others?
• Do you update existing wrong citations or build new citations first?
• How important is it to merge or delete duplicate citations?
• Does address formatting need to be 100% perfect or do small differences not matter?
• How important is ‘richness’ of citations and ensuring listings contain additional data?
• Aside from NAP details, which additional data is most beneficial to citations?
• Do you think it’s best to build citations quickly or steadily over time?
• For a new business vs. pre-existing business, do you fix/build citations at same velocity?
• For a new business, how many citations do you aim to build within first 1-2 months?
• Which of the main US Data Aggregators do you think offers the best value & distribution?
• Which approach to fixing / building citations yields the fastest results?
• Which approach to fixing / building citations is most cost-effective?
• What are the Pros & Cons of using Aggregators to build citations?
• What are the Pros & Cons of manually building & claiming citations? 

How important are Accurate Citations to local search ranking?

• 33% say accurate citations are critical to local search ranking (vs 55% in 2015)
• 57% say accurate citations are very important to local search ranking (vs 45% in 2015)
• Not a single expert says that accurate citations are Not Important

Analysis:
90% of the experts say that accurate citations are Critical or Very Important to local search ranking, which is the same as in 2015. However, last year 55% said accurate citations were ‘Critical’ but that figure has fallen to 33% in 2016, indicating that the relative power of citations has lessened while other factors have greater impact.

Quick reminder: in the 2015 Local Search Ranking Factors, External Location Signals (which includes citations) made up 13.6% of the overall ranking factors, down from 15.5% in 2014 & 16% in 2013. So Citations are still important to local SEO but their impact is waning.

Expert Quotes:
“Having accurate citations for a business is par for the course. Regardless if a brand has 10 or 10,000 locations, the local listings need to be accurate and monitored ongoing for discrepancies, ensuring users are able to successfully contact and visit the business”. – Nick Neels, Location3
“Correct NAP is essential at all times!” – Sam Austen, Creare
“Citation building isn’t a special strategy in local SEO anymore. It’s tables takes and everyone should be doing it and taking data consistency seriously.” – Dev Basu, Powered By Search

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Are Citations more or less important now than 12 months ago?

Key Findings:

• 10% say citations are more important year on year
• 19% say citations are less important year on year
• 71% say they have the same importance

Analysis:
19% of the experts rate citations as less important vs 2015, with only 10% saying their influence has grown year on year. The large majority (71%) say their importance has remained the same.

We can see in this study that, since 2013, there has been steady decline in the perceived importance of citations. So why is this?

The primary reason is that Google has invested heavily in building up its own local data set to a point where it trusts the quality of its data more and more. When it comes to confirming the data it holds, Google looks to certain authoritative sites such as Yelp and Foursquare, and they pay less and less attention to the data held by smaller, less authoritative sites whose own impact and fortunes are in steep decline.

So, whilst citations are still very important, other factors such as traditional rankings factors (e.g. links) now carry more authority in local search.

Of course, ranking factors go in cycles. Links were recently confirmed by Andrey Lipattsev Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google), to be one of the top 3 organic rankings signals. But we also know that links themselves have had a very chequered past, so putting all our SEO eggs in one basket is never a good idea.

Expert Quotes:
“My opinion on citations hasn’t changed for the past few years. They are important, but they are only a small piece of the puzzle and I think the local community focuses too much on them. Get the Aggregators right and directories that bring you business and rank on industry search phrases and spend the rest of your time elsewhere… probably link building” – Mike Ramsey, Nifty Marketing

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What is more important, quantity or quality of citations?

Key Findings:

• 86% say quality of citations is more important than quantity (vs 71% in 2015)
• 5% say quantity of citations is most important (vs 10% in 2015)
• 10% say the same  (vs 19% in 2015)

Analysis:
Year on year there’s a big upturn in the importance of quality citations over quantity (+15%), and since 2013, that stat has risen by 22%.
By ‘Quality’ we mean the type of sites citations are built on. Quality sites are ones which are more relevant to a business &/or have higher domain authority – see next chart for more detail on this.

However it’s worth remembering that quantity is still important in certain scenarios. For example, in competitive markets such as Attorneys or Dentists, a business may have to build a certain number of citations just to have parity with their competitors. So there needs to be a sensible balance, but one with a focus on building citations on high authority sites first.

Expert Quotes:
“Citations in local SEO are a lot like links in traditional SEO. Back in the day, everyone just bought a lot of links because they helped rankings. Sheer quantity was more influential than quality. Then Penguin hit and sent the SEO industry reeling. I hope the local SEO industry learns from history and sees that citations are headed in the same direction. It’s only a matter of time before the local algorithm becomes refined enough to penalize businesses with citations that are irrelevant to their vertical.” – Cori Graft, Seer Interactive.
“Look at your competitors who are doing the least work with citations and yet getting great results. Try to get the same citations they have because they are doing the least amount of work and getting the best results as opposed to looking at the competitor who has 100’s of citations. I bet the competitor who has fewer has the ‘right’ citations. Remember it’s not the quantity of citations that wins, but the quality of those citations.” – Matthew Hunt, Powered By Search.
“The quality of citations continues to trump the need for simply having a massive amount of low quality citations on questionable directories.” – David Kelly, Location3

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What level of importance do these factors have when selecting citation sites to use?

N.B. We asked the experts to credit each of the above factors with a ‘low’, ‘medium’, ‘high’ or ‘very high’ rating, and created a score based on their responses.
‘Offer Follow Backlink’ is new for 2016, so there is no year on year comparison.
Key Findings:

• Industry Relevance & Local Relevance are considered the most important factors
• Domain Authority is 3rd most important factor
• Design of Site & a Follow Backlink are of lesser importance

Analysis:
Industry Relevance comes out as the most important factor. Industry specific sites are important because they give Google a clear understanding of what product or services a business provides. Because of their industry focus these sites have typically have deeper, more unique content which Google loves and so they rank well for targeted search terms. These 2 things combined means that these sites often deliver more targeted leads for businesses.

Similarly, Local Relevance provides Google with valuable insight on your location and areas served.

Whilst Industry and Localness are key, it’s also clear that there are a number of other factors to consider when deciding which citation sites you want to be listed on.

Expert Quotes:
“By building high quality, industry relevant and local citations you get a good mix for your business. It will help to build some links too, using white hat methods. Also ensure your business is listed on relevant pages. For instance there is no point paying for premium listed citations if the site isn’t getting a good amount of views in your specific category. For premium listings think about return on investment (ROI). Research relevant categories and look out for declining / rising directories to ensure you’re getting the best for your business.” – Sam Austen, Creare

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Which type of sites offer the greatest authority for structured citations?

N.B. ‘Event Sites’ is a new category for 2016 so there is no year on year comparison.
Key Findings:

• 33% say that Niche/Industry Directories have greatest authority (vs 32% in 2015)
• 19% say Local Directories have greatest authority (vs 9% in 2015)
• 24% say that all types of sites carry the same authority (vs 9% in 2015)
• Event Sites offer the least authority (5%)

Analysis:
A structured citation is a business listing with a clearly defined presentation of business name, address & contact details. On many sites these listings will use ‘structured mark-up’ (e.g. schema.org) to make it easy for search engines to correctly interpret the data.

Whilst Niche / Industry Directories offer the greatest authority for structured citations, the rating for Local Directories has jumped up since 2015. At the other end of the scale, the general authority of large, National Directories has declined significantly.

As we saw in the previous chart, Industry Relevance & Local Relevance are considered the most important factors, and so these type of sites deliver higher all-round value as citation sites.

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Which of these sources of unstructured citations do you favour above others?

 

*Experts were asked to select up to 3 types of site
Key Findings:

• Industry Associations are rated the highest (25% vs 17% in 2015)
• Local Business Groups (19%) & Local News Sites (15%) are also very useful

Analysis:
Unstructured citations typically don’t use a defined presentation of business data & don’t use specific mark-up to present the data. Often they will not be complete listings and display basic or even partial NAP mention.

Industry Associations & Local Business Groups come out top of the list. This is because they are comparatively more easy to get a listing on than other sites and they are ‘industry’ relevant which, as we saw above, is very important.

The high authority that comes from a listing on a local Government site makes them appealing sources of citations, but their preference among local experts dropped considerably year on year (from 20% to 8%). They do offer valuable listings but the difficulty in securing a listing makes them harder to achieve so many SEOs don’t target these sites.

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Do you update existing wrong citations or build new citations first?

Key Findings:

• 48% say you should update existing citations first (vs 45% in 2015)
• 48% say you should do a mix of Update & New together (vs 50% in 2015)
• 5% say build new citations first (vs 5% in 2015)

Analysis:
Local experts are split on whether to update existing wrong citations first or to tackle existing & new citations at the same time. However, since 2013 there has been a definite trend towards updating existing citations first.

It’s clearly important to clean up any existing data issues as these will hamper your local ranking and limit the impact of building new citations can provide. Doing a full audit of your existing citations before you start is always advised, then you can build new citations safe in the knowledge that you have a strong foundation.

Quick plug – using our Citation Tracker tool you can get a full citation & NAP in less than 5 minutes so please try it out!

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How important is it to merge or delete duplicate citations?

Key Findings:

• 71% say merging or deleting duplicate citations is ‘Very important’ (59% in 2015)
• Just 5% say it’s ‘Not very important’ (vs 5% in 2015)

Analysis:
Dealing with duplicate citations is a very important task to tackle and despite the fact it’s often a tricky, time-consuming process, it’s importance has grown year on year. 76% of local experts say it is either Very Important or the MOST Important thing to do.

This only reinforces the importance of having a clean data set that doesn’t confuse Google.

Expert Quotes:
“For a business with no citations or with considerably fu*ked up NAP issues, addressing citation issues can often be the key to increasing visibility in both local packs and the organic section of local SERPs…but our tests have shown that in competitive markets fixing citations can get you in the packs, but they are far less effective at moving you up in the pack results if you are already there.” –Andrew Shotland, Local SEO Guide

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Does address formatting need to be 100% perfect or do small differences not matter?

Key Findings:

• 5% say address formatting must be 100% consistent (vs 18% in 2015)
• 57% say address formatting is important but not critical (vs 59% in 2015)
• 29% say this is not an issue (vs 14% in 2015)

Analysis:
Most experts agree that address formatting is important but not critical. However there is a growing trend towards this becoming less of an issue (29% vs 14% in 2015). Likewise, only 5% said address formatting must be 100% consistent (vs 18% in 2015).

FYI, respondents selecting ‘other’ provided the following responses:

• “Address formatting is important, but it’s difficult to achieve perfect consistency due to normalization on some sites.”
• “Somewhere between important and not an issue”

Expert Quotes:
“When I’m talking about address formatting I’m referring to small differences specifically such as North Being abbreviated as N or LLC at the end of a business name vs not having the LLC. I haven’t seen what I would consider major issues with this. That being said I am all for best practices if you’re creating new citations. Regarding if it’s worth the time and effort to update incorrect old ones I would say no unless you spot a specific issue where you’re not given credit for it.” – Casey Meraz, Ethical SEO
“Each directory may have its own address normalization or reformatting process, resulting in addresses being changed from “100 Main Street” to “100 Main St” or visa versa. So while this type of normalization is controlled by the directories, the concept of address validation needs to be controlled by the brand. This means each location’s address and geocodes (latitude and longitude) are verified to be accurate, so when listings are distributed, the data is highly accurate and the address is recognized by all directories. Too many times have I seen locations using outdated street addresses or highly inaccurate geocodes, both of which result in a poor user experience.” –  Nick Neels, Location3
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How important is ‘richness’ of citations?

Key Findings:

• 62% say richness of citations is Essential or Very Important (vs 45% in 2015)
• 29% say richness of citations is Fairly Important (vs 50% in 2015)

Analysis:
When we talk about ‘rich citations’ we refer to listings that contain additional data such as a description, photos, opening hours, payment details etc.

We can see that these type of listings are growing in importance over time, with 24% of experts suggesting that rich citations are ‘Essential’ (vs 18% in 2015) & 38% saying that they are ‘Very Important’ (vs 27% in 2015).

A business listing is akin to a landing page for your business where you can inform & pitch to customers before they even reach your website. Therefore an incomplete listing has reduced value and limits your ability to convince a prospective customer to contact you. But if you add photos, a full description, product details & opening hours, you have a better chance of turning browsers into leads.

In the following chart we take a look at which additional data is most important to feature.

Expert Quotes:
“Citations go beyond name, address, and phone now, and consumers are expecting robust content online if they are to engage with a local business.” – David Kelly, Location3
“Richness of listings is HUGELY important — and not just from a data perspective, but from a customer perspective. If we’re doing our jobs well enough, people shouldn’t ever have to visit our websites. They should be able to get all the information they need to make a purchase decision from our local listings.” – Cori Graft, SEER Interactive
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Aside from NAP details, which additional data is most beneficial to citations?

*Experts were asked to select a max of 2 answers. This is a new question for 2016 so there is no year on year comparison.
Key Findings:

• 39% say that a website link is most beneficial
• 37% say that category is most beneficial
• 16% say opening hours are most beneficial

Analysis:
Getting a backlink from a site & choosing the correct category are considered the 2 most important factors, beyond having a correct NAP.

Backlink – passes link value through to your site which has obvious benefits to both organic & local rank.

Category – this is increasingly important as it informs Google about what your business does. Using an incorrect category can confuse Google’s understanding of your business which can hurt your ability to rank for relevant keywords.

Expert Quotes:
“Always build and update with as much information as possible. Logos, opening hours and sales emails increase brand awareness even if they don’t help the SEO ranking.” – Sam Austen, Creare
“Citations is one of the cheapest, most effective link building tactics around” – Andrew Shotland, Local SEO Guide
“Richer listings… are far more engaging and useful for customers than just a stamp of your NAP.” – Cori Graft, Seer Interactive
“Reviews on third party sites will also continue to be an important part of the mix. In addition to optimizing the “richness’ of citations and ensuring listings contain additional data such as ‘description’, ‘photos’, ‘opening hours” it is important to help business owners develop a review strategy for these sites.” – Colan Nielsen, Sterling Sky

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Do you think it’s best to build citations quickly or steadily over time?

Key Findings:

• 29% say citation building should be an ongoing process (vs 38% in 2015)
• 29% say citation building should be done over 3-6 months (vs 19% in 2015)
• 19% say you should build as many citations as you can now (vs 5% in 2015)
• 19% say it depends on your existing scenario

Analysis:
There’s a real mix of results here, but the top 2 responses suggest that citations should be built over 3-6 months, and that citation building should be an ongoing process that never ends.
19% of experts say that it depends on your existing quantity of citations. This is important because a new business can build 50 citations right away & see some good impact, but for an existing business, this may not even touch the surface. So each scenario deserves its own strategy.

A lot also depends on the level of competition in each industry or location, so it’s useful to benchmark against competitors and then gauge what citation work needs to be done.
There is also an increase in those experts who suggest building as many citations as you can right away (19% vs 5% in 2015).

Expert Quotes:
“I’ve always built my core citations all at once. Since the citations get crawled, indexed, and recognized by Google at different times after they go live, it doesn’t really make sense drip-feed your core citation building. Additionally, the pages initially have zero page authority, so the older they are, the more authority they’ll acquire. Besides, if your competitors have a large gap between their citation count and your’s, why wouldn’t you do everything in your power to catch up as quickly as you can?” – Dev Basu, Powered By Search
“I’ve said this for years now: stop obsessing over citations. Get solid on the top 30-40 generic listings, and on your niche listings, and move on.” – Phil Rozek, Local Visibility System

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For a new business vs. existing business, do you fix/build citations at the same velocity?

*This is a new question for 2016, so there is no year on year comparison.
Key Findings:

• 38% say you should build citations at the same speed for new or existing business
• 33% say you should build citations faster for a new business
• 19% say it depends on the business and location

Analysis:
Once again we see that there is some split on the best practice here, although most agree that building citations faster for a new business delivers value for that business quicker. An existing business is likely to already have some listings so many of those top citation sites that you want to get listed on, may already be in place.

For a new business, you’re starting from zero, so there’s more building work to do and a nice clean slate to start from!

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For a new business, how many citations do you aim to build within the first 1-2 months?

*N.B. This question is new for 2016 so there is not year on year comparison.
Key Findings:

• 29% say a new business should build 30-50 citations within the first 1-2 months
• 29% say a new business should build 50+ citations within the first 1-2 months
• 29% say it depends on the site

Analysis:
The experts are split on how many citations exactly should be built for a new business, but most agree that at least 30 within the first 2 months is the correct starting point.

A new business can tick all the right boxes by getting listed on some of the top citation sites no matter what industry they operate in. Here, we list over 1,000 citation sites for over 41 business categories.

Expert Quotes:
“One problem I noticed recently is the indexation of citations. Some people get too caught up building the citations and forget to see if Google ever sees them. I recommend force crawling the URL’s to ensure they get indexed, found, and that you get credit for them.” – Casey Meraz, Juris Digital

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Which US Data Aggregators do you think offers the best value & distribution?

N.B. At request of some experts we added Yelp as an option to the 2016 survey.
Key Findings:

• 48% say that InfoUSA offers the best value & distribution
• 24% say Yelp offers the best value & distribution
• 10% say Factual, Localeze & Acxiom

Analysis:
InfoUSA is rated by the experts as the Data Aggregator which offers the best value & distribution. Not only does InfoUSA have wide distribution (Google buys data from them), they are also committed to scrubbing data and there is no cost for submission.

Yelp is also highly rated, which might surprise many people. As well as being important citation site itself, Yelp has content and review distribution relationships with other services such as Apple Maps and Mapquest.

Interestingly, Localeze has dropped significantly year on year (10% vs 32% in 2015). Localeze is the only aggregator which charges a fee ($299-$399) to add listings to their database so maybe this is why it’s less popular.

Expert Quotes:
“Yelp is one of the primary citation sources. They syndicate their reviews multiple places (Apple Maps etc) and among certain demographics are widely used for local discovery.” – Dan Leibson, Local SEO Guide
“As apps become more and more important, Foursquare and Factual have positioned themselves well in the Aggregator space over the past year, providing robust data sets and APIs for mobile app developers. Apps can be hard to measure compared to typical sites, which has brought additional complication to analysis and strategy, but has offered unique opportunities as well. It will be interesting to see how this continues to evolve, and how the more legacy Aggregators evolve to compete.” – David Kelly, Location3
“If there is one place that needs to be 100% awesome, it’s Infogroup (ow Data Axle as of 2020).” – Mike Ramsey, Nifty Marketing
“Having correct information at the Aggregators is essential if businesses want to be present when new sites, apps, and tools launch.” – Adam Dorfman, SIM Partners

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Which approach to fixing / building citations yields the fastest results?

Key Findings:

• 67% say submitting manually, direct to each site yields the fastest results
• 29% say that real time distributors yield the fastest results
• 5% say that data aggregators yield the fastest results

Analysis:
To be clear, this question refers only to the speed of results.

Manual submissions, although very time-consuming, deliver faster results than using data aggregators & real-time networks. This is because many sites will put listings live on the same day or within a matter of days after submission.

Compare this to aggregator submissions which can take upward of 4 weeks to result in live listings/updates on 3rd party sites and applications.

Further below we list the full Pros and Cons for manual and aggregator submissions.

Expert Quotes:
“You need to have your citations correct on the Data Aggregators as they will push out that information. If it’s wrong you’re going to have some issues down the road. On the other hand, you shouldn’t count on this as a way of building a lot of citations. These take a lot of time to process and don’t even seem to have a wide distribution. In 1-3 months you can expect next to nothing.” – Casey Meraz, Juris Digital

Back to top.

Which approach to fixing / building citations is most cost-effective?

 

Key Findings:

• 57% say submitting manually direct to each site is most cost effective
• 33% say data aggregators are more cost effective
• 10% say real time distributors are more cost effective-

Analysis:
To be clear, this question refers to the cost effectiveness of each process.

Submitting manually is more expensive as you end up handling or paying for each listing one by one. So the time/cost is higher.

But manual submissions give you a combination of faster results and greater control over your listings. Submitting manually typically allows you to claim a listing so you have control over it forever more which is very important.

Real-time distribution is typically the most expensive option. These services have limited distribution networks (because they rely on API connections which many sites don’t have) and they charge recurring fees so you pay every month and year to maintain your data within their network. If you stop paying your data reverts back to its original state – which is often incomplete or entirely missing from a site.

Expert Quotes:
“The distinction between manual or not manual is a false dichotomy. We use a mix of aggregators, API solutions (Yext) and manual citation building and claiming to make sure brands that work with us are getting a complete solution to the local business listing problem.” – Dan Leibson, Local SEO Guide

Back to top.

What are the Pros & Cons of using Aggregators to build citations?

PROS	CONS
Quick and easy to use	Expensive, with costs regularly growing
Easier bulk management for companies with many locations	Rich citation content is limited
Helps to build a solid foundation	Often create duplication/bad data issues
Cost effective on a small budget	Takes a long time to feel the effects of submissions
Lots of sites buy their data	No guarantee that data will be picked up by all IYP’s
Good solution for businesses that want a wide reach with minimal labor	No control over listings on the end platforms

Expert Quotes:

“Aggregators are not a quick fix, They often create duplication/bad data issues, even after you have fixed them at the Aggregator!”

• Andrew Shotland, Local SEO Guide

“Using Aggregators ensures that your business data is correct at the top of the Ecosystem. Data is continually pushed/pulled into the Ecosystem. However, it doesn’t guarantee that your data will be picked up by all the important IYP’s. Data takes a long time to find it’s way through the Ecosystem and eventually get indexed by Google.”

• Colan Nielsen, Sterling Sky

“Aggregators take forever to “build” citations, if it even happens at all. Also, if you just work on the Aggregators without fixing the downstream listings you’ll have tons of duplicates. Data Aggregators matter from a NAP-consistency perspective. They’re not how you build or fix citations.”

• Phil Rozek, Local Visibility System

“The Aggregator method doesn’t take care of outdated listings on the myriad of sites the Data Aggregators might have distributed data to in the past. The process of the data getting distributed to the end platforms is long – it might take longer than 6 months. And there is no way to control the listings on the end platforms (unless you later claim them manually, of course”.

• Nyagoslav Zhekov, Whitespark

“Data Aggregators provide citation growth over time for new or established businesses. These trusted data sources can be called upon and referenced by various directory sites to confirm existing or create new listings in the directories. However, whilst Data Aggregators have a large list of partners, their distribution method generally relies on their partners pulling data, rather than the Aggregators pushing data into those systems. This passive data distribution method means that their partners may not be up to date and may be missing listing data, if the partners aren’t actively pulling in new data from the Aggregators.”

• Nick Neels, Location3

“The Data Aggregators continue to offer the greatest reach for the least amount of time invested. That value proposition is enticing to many agencies and local search managers, so it’s no wonder that they continue to dominate the local citation building conversation. For businesses that want a wide reach with minimal labor, they are a good solution, if expensive. They can be thought of as the “shotgun” approach, not all sites in the Aggregator networks may be relevant to your business, but you have the opportunity to utilize a blanket approach that can result in notable time savings. However, the cons of using Aggregators seems to increase every year. They continue to be expensive, with costs regularly growing. Utilizing multiple Aggregators can be nearly cost-prohibitive for small businesses. The speed of citation updates from the Aggregators publishing on the directories also has not kept pace with the always on, mobile-first ecosystem, which has made manual citation building and direct relationships more and more important. Aggregators may take less labor time upfront, but with the exception of Data Axle (Infogroup) increased speed, we still see publishing times between 45 and 90 days. Aggregators also limit the amount of expanded content that can be published for each citation. Directories are getting more and more specialized by vertical, which means more thought needs to go into the content of each citation.”

• David Kelly, Location3

Back to top.

What are the Pros & Cons of manually building & claiming citations?

PROS	CONS
Can hand-pick sites you want to be listed on	Takes longer than an automated solution
You have complete control over listings	Expensive
You can fine tune listings for each site	Time Consuming & tedious
Allows you to create richer listings	Semi-Permanent
Manual listings get indexed faster & more frequently	You may miss sites you don’t know about
Easy to update existing listings	Complicated for a multi-location business
You own your listing rather than “rent” them	Complicated to fix problems when directories overwrite your data
Flexibility to spread process over time	If not done by an experienced person, duplicate/outdated listings may be missed
Can remove duplicate and outdated listings
May seem tedious, but it’s worth the time to have control of your data

Expert Quotes:
“The pros of manually building and claiming allow you to hand pick any sites you wish to be listed on / updated. Any information that you want to be changed can be done with any site idiosyncrasies accounted for. This is however a time consuming job and may not be cost effective for businesses with hundreds of citations. If there are any sites that you do not know about that the business is listed on, then you may miss these off too.”

• Sam Austen, Creare

“It takes a lot of time because it requires setting up accounts at each place, but you get complete control over listings.”

• Mary Bowling, Ignitor Digital

“Manually building and claiming citations can feel tedious, but it’s worth the time investment to have control of your data. This becomes especially worthwhile if a business moves and you need to update citations. Manual citation building also typically allows you to create richer listings, which are far more engaging and useful for customers than just a stamp of your NAP. That being said, manual citation building isn’t always the best use of time or money for multi-location businesses. When you’re working with hundreds or thousands of locations, it’s more efficient (and effective) to push a complete data set out through Aggregators and focus on giving a few highly important listings some manual TLC. Which listings you deem “highly important” will depend on the industry you’re in, but as a general rule, it pays to focus manual efforts on listings that people actually interact with. I think of these listings as customer touchpoints, not as data sources.”

• Cori Graft, Seer Interactive

“The pros of manually building and claiming citations is that you will own it and the access to it. If you ever need to change something in the future you’ll be able to do easily. The biggest con with manual citation building is the amount of time it takes to get these done. It can take many man hours just to fix some of the tricky ones. I suggest just adding 15 minutes a day to your schedule and start building these.”

• Casey Meraz, Juris Digital

“It’s more time-consuming initially but it gets the job done much better and gets more citations indexed.”

• Joy Hawkins, Imprezzio Marketing

“If you don’t have pre-existing credentials on already live listings, public edits sometimes take numerous edits to stick if they stick at all. This causes the end customer headaches when they are paying for manual claiming. However, you’re able to reach an entire index with manual claiming & if you’re operating with a team of great magnitude, often times we find businesses live from manual submission on 40 sites or more within 48 hours.”

• Justin Liles, Advice Local

Citation survey participants:

A huge thanks to the following local citation experts for taking the time and effort to give us their insights:

Back to top.

Joy Hawkins alerted us to the development whilst attending SMX Advanced in Seattle. The image Joy shared, although grainy, shows a traditional 3-pack, but with the top result including an Ad label.

We created a mockup of how the new local pack may look below:

Google Local Pack Mock-up

It’s fair to say the update, although not unexpected, hasn’t been well received by those in the industry (see comments from our previous post). Although you can still rank in the Local Finder page, limiting the amount of space by 33% will make it significantly harder for local SEOs & small business owners to gain visibility.

But what will consumers make of the change?

Will they feel duped about being shown paid listings where they’re used to seeing businesses ranked on quality & appropriateness?

Or are they indifferent as long as results are relevant & local?

Consumer Survey: Adverts in Local Listings

This week we surveyed 690 consumers in the USA & showed them the mock-up image displayed above.

We asked them to imagine that they were searching for a local dentist in Google and were presented the following results. Which would they choose & why?

It’s interesting but it’s not science

We appreciate that there are flaws in the methodology of this approach. It’s not a real-world situation and actions are a little out of context. Users may well behave differently in the wild but at least we get some insights into their thoughts & concerns about seeing Adverts in local search results.

Also, it’s important to clarify that:

• The image is just a mock-up (Google may not use this style or color of Ad label)
• We picked this set of results as it has a good mix of 3 results (varying reviews, etc.)

Which of those top 3 businesses are you most likely to click on?

(Users were shown this mock-up image)

Key Findings:

• 36% would click on the top (1st) business
• 20% would click on the middle (2nd) business
• 43% would click on the bottom (3rd) business

Analysis:

From the mock-up, 43% of consumers would click on the bottom (3rd) business, whilst 35% would click on the top (1st) business.

Reviews may play a big part here; the most popular 3rd listing has positive review stars, whilst the middle result with zero reviews was the least popular. Also, in terms of pixel space, both the 1st & 3rd listings take up more room due to their display of opening hours.

All we can gauge from this is that users will not immediately be put off by Ad labels on local results, but that plenty of other factors come into play.

Why did you click on that particular business?

• 47% of consumers picked a business because it had positive review stars
• 16% picked a business purely because it was the top result
• 13% picked a business that stood out to them first
• 12% picked a business which a business name they liked
• 13% either picked a business at random or are unsure why

A majority 47% chose a business because it had positive review stars. The paid listing may have the top position, but it doesn’t have the eye-catching star rating & orange review stars. This just shows that having a review strategy in place will only take on more importance once Google rolls out the paid local results.

16% clicked on the top result just because it was in the top position, which is an inviting statistic for local businesses willing to play ball on PPC. However, it’s hardly an overwhelming percentage & proves that a lot more factors go into the psychology of click-throughs than just ranking positions.

13% clicked on the result that stood out to them first – and it’s hard to pin down exactly what that might be. However, it’s likely that the more you can make your listing stand out (with review ratings & opening hours) the more clicks you are likely to receive.

Did you notice that the top listing was an advert with an ‘Ad’ icon next to it?

• 60% of consumers did notice the Ad icon on the top result
• 40% of consumers did not notice the Ad icon

Although small, more consumers did notice the Ad label on the top result*.

Searchers are used to seeing PPC results by now & most understand that they are adverts even if they’re not entirely sure how they work. However, consumers may have a different reaction to being served paid listings in local results.

*Disclaimer: Google’s paid local inclusion may not use a green ‘Ad’ icon. However, we’ve borrowed the style from other PPC results for the sake of the mock-up.

How do you feel about Google including paid Ads in these type of search results?

• 42% of consumers like paid Ads or are happy as long as the businesses are relevant
• 44% of consumers dislike paid Ads or would prefer not to see them
• 14% feel tricked by Google

When served with a paid ad in the local pack, 58% of consumers have a negative reaction, whilst 42% have a positive or indifferent reaction.

Furthermore, 14% feel tricked by Google.

Conclusion

For some consumers, searching for a local product or service can be a personal experience. Some value the fact that they are being shown results within their local community, as opposed to larger corporations. Many consumers use Google above other search engines because they trust the relevance of their results. When Google starts introducing paid ads in local search results, that trust may start to be diluted.

Consumers may feel ‘tricked’ by being shown a paid result above the most relevant business for them (in googles opinion!) That being said, how often is the top result in the local-pack the most relevant? With spam rife in many industries how can we be sure that the top-ranked business is there on genuine merit and not because the business that has gamed the system the best? It’s always essential to keep by working on your GMB listing, citation building using a local citation service or by yourself, or simply by hiring a determined Local SEO consultant.

From Google’s perspective, most consumers will be happy as long as the local results are relevant to them, no matter if the listings are determined by an algorithm or by PPC.

For this reason, Google is unlikely to be deterred from rolling out these ads; it just means that local business owners & SEOs will have to get used to a new landscape – as we have done countless times before.

Thus the 3-pack becomes the 2-pack…

Hat-tip to Colan Nielsen for using the 2pac quip first!

Joy from Imprezzio Marketing was attending SMX Advanced in Seattle when Google made the announcement in their presentation.

She was even fast-witted to photograph the 2 pack and share it with her contacts.

The photo is a bit grainy so here’s a mockup created from that photo, to show what we think it may look like.

Paid-for Inclusion Squeezes Good Businesses

So it’s here – paid-for inclusion in local results. Now any business – the good, the bad & the ugly – can get a highly prominent placement in local results by paying for it – rather than by genuinely being the best business for local consumers to use!

This will undoubtedly make life harder for local SEOs & business owners.

The 3-pack hard was challenging enough to get included in, but that job has now get tougher with 33% of the local pack space being sold to the highest bidder.

If you consider the amount of spam in certain categories then genuine, quality, play-by-the-rules business owners are being squeezed out!

The upshot for Google is clear = more revenue to satisfy bottom-line growth.

The downside is also pretty clear –

• Worse experience for users
• Good businesses being penalized
• Lower-quality results as more businesses/SEOs employ grey-tactics to get a foot-up on rivals

Local Extensions for Adwords

The local pack Ad inclusion is not yet rolled out and hasn’t been spotted in the wild – yet!

According to Joy these ads will be part of Adwords Extensions which will be available to local business advertisers who have their GMB listing connected to their Adwords Accounts. Presumably they’ll also be available via Adwords Express which might finally make Adwords Express a viable, high performing channel for local businesses.

Paul Johnson

Melrose, MA

"Both the product and the service have been great. I personally like the review monitoring section and the citation building product."

4.8 / 5 from 125+ reviews on Capterra

14-day free trial _{No card needed}

New ‘DEALS’ Tag for Hotel Searches

This new development is different to the green DEAL icons which have recently featured in hotel listings.

As reported by The SEM Post, DEAL tags can feature in both the 3-pack (see screenshot below) and the Local Finder page. They display when a Hotel has rooms offered below normal rate, or lower than the rates of similar Hotels – or when a partner is offering a discounted price vs the market rate.

The big difference to note is that inclusion of a Deal does not put the Hotel top of the local results. The hotel still needs to rank on merit but the Deal tag helps it stand out which should boost conversion from browse to click.

Will Consumers Rise-Up Against Google?!

A key question is how will consumers react to this?

Will they vent their frustration at yet more ad-encroachment and flee to another search engine?

Or will they barely will notice the change, and if they do, will they really care?

Searchers have become accustomed to seeing more PPC ads in organic listings, and most consumers understand exactly what they are. However, despite the Ad label, it may take consumers a while to get used to paid ads in local results.

We’ve run some consumer focused research on this to find out how consumers will react to these local pack changes. In the meantime please let us know your thoughts in the comments.

• Are you surprised by paid ads in the local pack?
• How do you think it will affect local consumers / searchers?
• What’s the future for the new 2-Pack?

You can also follow the discussion with Linda & Joy on the Local Search Forum.

THUG LIFE.

That hasn’t changed for years, and it’s unlikely to anytime soon. What does change is the way in which we try to get links, whether that’s building them, earning them, requesting them, or even buying them. So how do local SEOs build links in 2016?

We recently polled 388 BrightLocal users to find out which link building tactics are most commonly used. As a Local SEO tools provider with a local citation service, our respondents are generally local search practitioners, and we can, therefore, expect the results to reflect that.

The first question we asked was about which tactics are most commonly used. We also conducted a similar poll in 2015, and have therefore shown the year on year comparisons where possible:

What are the most popular link building tactics?

NB. Respondents were able to select multiple answers.

Key Findings:

• 76% of SEOs use Citations / Directory listings to build links
• 58% of SEOs use Content Marketing to build links
• 24% of SEOs use Press Releases to build links
• 21% of SEOs use Guest Posts to build links

Analysis:

76% of respondents use citation building or directory listings as a link building tactic. This shows that many Local SEOs recognise the dual benefit of citation building.

The 2018 Expert Local Citation Survey showed that 90% of experts rated accurate citations as Critical or Very Important to local search ranking. So getting listed on top industry or local directories is not only important for ranking, but it’s also an asset to your link building efforts. We can also see that citations and directory listings were also rated highly in our poll from last year.

58% of respondents selected Content Marketing as one of their link building tactics. Not only is it a popular tactic, but it’s also one of the most concrete ones, with perhaps the best longevity going forward. The key is obviously not to publish content with the sole purpose of generating links – but it does come with that added benefit! In fact the best link-earners are those evergreen content pieces that can be of use long-term. It’s also beneficial to update and upgrade existing content, with new comments, assets, graphics, etc. – as mentioned in this post on Search Engine Journal.

Similarly, Guest Blogging, used by 21% of Local SEO, is a perfectly acceptable practice when you’re contributing high-quality content to authoritative & relevant websites.

Press releases, although a fairly old school tactic, also feature highly. Much like Article Syndication services (also incredibly old school), these are both tactics to be wary of – especially when offered at extremely low costs. With Press Release distribution, the motivation needs to be much more than link earning, and ‘nofollow’ tags are advised. However, as SEMrush points out, a good press release that gets attention from a journalist, offers a great opportunity to gain strong media coverage, as well as plentiful links in turn.

With the poll respondents containing a high amount of local search consultants, it’s a little surprising that only 7% use Local Events, such as sponsorships or meet-ups. We’ve often heard on our past webinars & industry surveys, local experts championing the benefit of these type of links for local businesses. Local groups or organizations bring that genuine ‘Hyper-Local’ authority. Similar to citation building, links from local authorities, associations, groups & community events can really help to move the needle when it comes to local ranking.

NB. In the poll, we also received a number of ‘other’ options which included some of the following tactics:

• Video syndication (testimonials / how to’s)
• Google News inclusions
• RSS syndication
• Allintext searches
• PBNs

How many links do you build for a new local business?

So, now we know how Local SEOs are building links, it’s interesting to find out how many links they are concentrating on building. Depending on factors such as domain age, industry competition, current health & state of link profile, etc, each business will require a different number of links to make a significant impact.

However, we put a specific scenario to our users, to find how many links they would usually build within the first 6 months, for a new local business.

Key Findings:

• 56% build 0-40 links in the first 6 months
• 25% build 40-100 links in the first 6 months
• 13% build as many as possible

Analysis:

We would expect the most common answer here to be “it depends on the business”, but we cruelly removed that option from our SEOs , so we could gauge a good average response.

Most Local SEOs are in agreement that a new business should build between 0-40 links within the first 6 months (56%). Now obviously this figures depends on factors such as industry type & competition, but it does at least show that effective link building is achievable for any new local business – particularly within those first 6 months.

Less than half of that figure (25%) said they would build build 40-100 links. This might be more of a challenge to businesses with limited resources, and definitely requires a more concrete strategy to be in place. As we saw above, citation building is rated as the most popular link building practice and you would expect a lot of those links to be generated in this way.

Can you build too many backlinks?

13% of SEOs said they build as many links as they can. Obviously this comes down to quality vs quantity. Can you have too many high quality links? No. Can you have too many low quality links? Yes.

So it’s a case of treating each site as an individual case. Some industries will be easier to build high authority build links for, and some will be tricky. But no website would surely turn down a bucket load of high authority links – it’s simply a case of quality. And the higher quality links are usually those that take more time & effort to earn.

Take Content Marketing for example. It’s a great tactic for attracting local links, but it’s one that requires time, effort & continued resources in order to reap the benefits. Which is something not every new local business can commit to.

Please let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Poll Respondents

The geographic breakdown of the poll respondents was as follows:

• USA & Canada – 76%
• UK – 11%
• Australia – 4%
• Rest of the World – 10%

In total, 345 SEOs & Marketeers completed the survey. The geographic breakdown of participants is –

• • USA – 67%
  • Canada – 13%
  • UK – 13%
  • RoW – 7%

Which tasks do SEOs outsource?

Key Findings

• • • Citation cleanup / building is the most commonly outsourced task (26%)
    • Content creation (21%) & Link building (15%) also frequently outsourced
    • Reputation management is the least outsourced task (4%)

Analysis

Outsourcing is an attractive option when tasks are either too difficult, time consuming, dull, or just make financial sense. And much like last year, we see that the tasks which tick these boxes that are outsourced the most.

Local citation work is a prime example. Citation cleanup or citation building is often tedious work, so there’s little surprise that it’s come out on top again. At BrightLocal we have tools like Citation Builder & Citation Tracker which help alleviate this day to day burden.

The success of outsourcing ultimately rests upon the quality of the outsourcee, and this is particularly crucial with Link building & Content creation, where, for the latter, there’s an increase in outsourcing year on year (21% vs 16%).

Both tasks obviously tick the ‘time consuming’ box, but can they often be too important to outsource?

In the case of content marketing, the answer to this question obviously comes down to the industry & type of content required. SEOs will be able to outsource content creation easily for some clients, whilst others will require more specialist knowledge. Similarly, for some local businesses, ‘hyper-local’ content is often better served by the business owner / staff themselves, therefore giving a truly local perspective.

Other tasks like Web design / Video creation require a certain level of expertise which some SEO consultant or agencies may not have in-house, so it often makes sense to outsource these to a specialist.

Reputation Management, Link cleanup & Social Media came out lowest in the poll, and none of these are excessively time consuming day to day tasks, nor necessarily require specialist third party expertise. Additionally, there are a range of tools which can be used in-house to help with these tasks, particularly in the case of Link clean-up & Social media.

This is perhaps why they are less outsourced than other SEO tasks.

Are SEOs outsourcing more or less year on year?

Of those SEOs who do outsource tasks, we asked whether they are doing so more or less year on year.

Key Findings:

• • • 60% are outsourcing more SEO tasks year on year
    • 20% are outsourcing less SEO tasks year on year

Analysis:

When we look at respondents who outsource, there is a considerable increase in activity year on year. We look closer at the Pros & Cons of outsourcing below, but it’s clear that it allows any agency or consultant to scale up their operation without having to hire internally.

SEO has changed a lot of over the years, and digital marketers must adapt with it. Conversion optimization, Technical SEO, Local SEO, Organic SEO, Content marketing, Link Building, Social Media, Mobile optimization, Video marketing, Web Design, etc. are all facets of SEO – and perhaps more and more it’s becoming an industry whereby specialist knowledge needs to be applied to these areas, rather than a scenario where one internal team handles all tasks.

Certainly, there are an increasing number of startups that make it easy to outsource many of these areas, thus allowing smaller agencies or consultants to compete with larger agencies.

Below, we asked poll respondents to give us the Pros & Cons  of outsourcing based on their own experiences:

What are the Pros & Cons of SEO outsourcing?

PROS

• • • Frees up internal resources
    • Hiring specialists can be more efficient
    • Some work is cheaper to outsource than do in-house
    • Mindless tasks are taken off the workload (eg. data entry)
    • Helps to scale business & grow client numbers
    • Can make your job less stressful
    • Easy to move on if outsourced work doesn’t meet your standards
    • Allows smaller agencies to compete with larger competitors
    • Useful if working to tight deadlines

 CONS

• • • You have less control over processes
    • Quality of work can vary
    • Potential communication issues
    • Can take longer to change strategy / plan
    • Reputable companies / virtual assistants can be hard to come by
    • Some work is expensive to outsource (especially on tight deadlines)
    • Difficult to find specialists in niche areas, eg local SEO
    • You don’t learn how to effectively do tasks for yourself
    • Outsourcing can require supervision, training & revisions
    • Errors can be too costly (e.g. link building)
    • Potential language barriers & cultural differences
    • Harder to manage staff remotely

Respondent quotes

We’ve hand picked a selection of quotes from respondents who gave us their view on the Pros & Cons of SEO outsourcing, from their own personal experience.

“Pros: Frees you up to concentrate on more important tasks. Cons: You lose control (“if you want the job done properly, do it yourself”).”

• • • Steve Morgan, morganonlinemarketing.co.uk

“Outsourcing allows us to reduce work flows for staff & helps us maintain a large number of customers. Some outsourcing is cheaper than if the work is done in-house & is less time consuming. The opposite can be said as well. If the quality is not there you can end up spending more time sorting work out than you would’ve done doing it yourself. It can also be more expensive if you are working to tight deadlines.”

• • • Sam Austen, creare.co.uk

“Finding a trusted partner who can do the job to the right spec & who actually understands the nuances of “local” marketing. Once you get the right one, it frees up a lot more time for business development.”

• • • Nick Rink, smart-local.co.uk

“The pros are the scalability of operations & an increase in deliverables at a cost that isn’t prohibitive to the customer. The cons are a slight loss of control & degradation in the quality of work product if there is any lack in oversight of the outsourced worker. Outsourced relationships must be cultivated and nurtured through infancy and pubescence before a fully matured relationship can be relied upon to deliver the required work product. There is a lot of effort that goes into doing it right and ensuring quality control. But, when the relationships are fully matured, it can be well worth it.”

• • • David Hall, theseoeffect.com

“It gives more time to other things, and makes your job less stressful. The downside is that you don’t learn how do it yourself effectively & you miss many intricacies and nuances that you might catch if done yourself. Because of that, I suggest first learning how to do it all yourself, then outsource it if takes up too much of your time.”

• • • Austin Lund, bigleap.com

“We are a small firm with a growing number of multi-location SEO clients. In order to keep up with the client growth, we would have to not only hire more employees, but restructure our organization /department. Outsourcing allows us to take on more clients while growing the organization and restructuring at our own pace. Instead of staffing based on clients, we can cost-effectively outsource some of the work and staff in a more effective way as well.”

• • • Marie Werhan, Marketingadept.com

“Outsourcing often means losing control of the day to day progress – and reporting can be limiting. The primary advantage is that you can expand you business when your in-house capabilities are limited.”

• • • Paul Dumas, optimizedlocalsearch.com

“The important stuff like link building with all the anchor text issues is too big of a deal to outsource. Errors can cause nightmares.”

• • • Paul Tufts, juicedseo.com

“We like to outsource to specific teams who focus on doing one or two things really well. A good example is companies who only do citations. We have a separate team for web development. We have local graphic designers. We even rely heavily on our hosting team for IT and website support. By choosing the right outsource agents, you can appear as a huge company with deep resources and a price that no agency trying to do it all can come close to matching.”

• • • Greg Newell, 50bubbles.com

“The main advantage is the ability to upscale or downscale in a linear fashion, with less need to invest and train up front. The downside is managing the internationalisation challenges, getting the language and tone, especially for written content like blogs and social. You can’t call a ‘tap’ a ‘faucet’ in Australia!”

• • • Pete Nicholls, localtag.com.au

“The obvious advantage of outsourcing local SEO work is that it reduces the amount of manual tasks that have to be completed in-house. For an agency, this is essential as we need to maintain efficiency levels and make the most of the client’s budget each month. For example, cleaning up/building citations and content creation are repetitive tasks that can take up a lot of resource, especially when a client has multiple stores/locations.

Outsourcing this work allows us to spend more time on higher level work for the client, such as strategy development and technical consultancy. There are some tasks that we’d never outsource though as it could cause more damage than good, such as link building and clean ups, and we need to outsource other tasks to ensure we have expertise and resource available in-house to focus on these.

There are quite a few disadvantages when it comes to outsourcing SEO work, which is the main reason why we are doing less of it this year. This includes finding reliable freelancers and partner agencies to deliver the work on time and to a high standard.

It takes time to build up a strong pool of freelancers and it’s particularly important to find experts in different industries when it comes to local SEO, as specialist knowledge is required to produce content and understand the target audience’s needs. We’ve found that working with experts can also reduce the amount of work required from the client as they have the most knowledge and often find it difficult to hand over control of their content.”

• • • Tom Etherington, North

These general findings give us a clearer view of how consumers react to local business websites, and the information they expect, want and don’t want to be included on them.

Moreover, it showed us which factors are most likely to influence consumers into using a local business, and which factors are most likely to deter them.

December 2019 update: For a more up-to-date look at local business websites, check out our research into how consumers use websites and Google My Business.

How do consumers of different ages and gender respond to local business websites?

Having published the initial findings we now want to examine the Age & Gender differences in responses. We hope that this will help certain businesses who target specific demographics with their content & website strategy.

From the 800 respondents, the age breakdown was as follows:

• 18-34 – 44%
• 35-54 – 34%
• 55+ – 22%

• Female – 56%
• Male – 44%

Consumer attitudes towards local business websites

Age of Consumers

Analysis:

The results show some interesting differences in the expectations & opinions of consumers of different ages –

Younger Consumers (18-34) expect a business to have a website & are more likely to contact them if they do. If a business does not have a website, or their website is ‘ugly’, then they are much less likely to use that business.

Mid-life Consumers (35-54) are less demanding of a business to have a website, but are still more likely to contact them if they do. A lower percentage believes that a smart website gives a business more credibility, and they are the least likely to be put-off by an ugly website.

Older Consumers (55+) are much less concerned about whether a business has a website, or if that website looks good. They are less likely to judge a business based on its website (or lack of one) but they do think a smart website gives a local business credibility.

Male vs Female Consumers

Analysis:

The differences are less pronounced when we compare male vs female consumers –

Female Consumers are more likely to contact a local business with a website, and believe that website gives the business more credibility. Females are more expectant about a business having a website than males, but relatively few are put-off by an ugly website.

Male Consumers are more likely to contact a local business if it has a website, and give equal credibility to those businesses that do (albeit at a lower rate than females). Male consumers are less insistent about a business having a website than female consumers, however more male consumers are put-off by an ugly website.

Key information on a local business website

Age of Consumers

Most important information

Less important information

Analysis:

It’s clear that across all age groups, consumers are looking for the same information –

1. product/service list
2. price list
3. opening hours
4. phone number
5. physical address

The key questions are ‘When are you open?’, ‘what do you sell?’, ‘how much is it?’ and ‘how can i get in contact?’.

This is good for business owners as it makes it simple to satisfy all age groups easily. But there are some differences –

Younger Consumers (18-34) consider a good looking website to be of more importance than other consumers. A mobile optimized is also a higher priority for this age group.

Mid-life Consumers (35-54) have similar priorities to younger consumers, but are more focused on getting key information about a business.

Older Consumers (55+) are highly focused on getting core information from a site. In particular they are most insistent about getting product lists being displayed, a phone number & physical address. Fast Website Speed is also more important to them.

Male vs Female Consumers

Most important information

Less important information

Analysis:

Both male & female consumers consider lists of products, opening hours, phone number & price lists to be the most important information on a local business website.

But there are some subtle differences –

Male Consumers consider a good looking website to be more important than females. Supplementary website info such as images, accreditations & an updated blog etc. are more important to male consumers than females.

Female Consumers consider lists of products & opening hours to be of more importance than male consumers, whilst some of the supplementary (or bonus) info such as images, an updated blog and a good looking website are of less importance.

Website factors which make consumers WANT to use a local business

Age of Consumers

Analysis:

Again it’s practical data that is most persuasive to all age groups, so it’s critical that business provide this front & centre on their websites. The main age-based differences are outlined below –

Younger Consumers (18-34) are still persuaded by the same core features, but they find these less persuasive than older consumers. However, a good looking website with clear photos is more enticing to this age group than any other.

Mid-life Consumers (35-54) are more influenced by details about a business and business proximity than younger consumers – but not as much as older consumers.

Older Consumers (55+) are the most influenced by business details, business proximity & clear address / contact details. Having website videos & social media is almost irrelevant to this age group.

Male vs Female Consumers

Analysis:

Once again, details about a business, how close that business is (proximity) and having clear address / contact details are key to all consumers. The key differences between the genders is –

Female Consumers are far more influenced by how far a local business is to them (i.e. their proximity). Additionally, displaying clear address / contact details is also more important. They also put more trust/belief in online reviews which corroborates the findings of our Local Consumer Review Survey.

Male Consumers are not as influenced by business proximity or address / contact details as females. Equally, testimonials are less enticing, but a freephone number or fast website speed can be more influential.

Common problems on local business websites

Age of Consumers

Analysis:

Poor quality content, not displaying a phone number & not displaying prices are the main obstacles which stop all consumers from wanting to use a local business. However, what are the major differences in age? –

Younger Consumers (18-34) are not as deterred by how far away a business is as older consumers, but a slow or buggy website can be more off-putting. Equally, younger consumers are less likely to want to use a business if their website is not mobile friendly.

Mid-life aged Consumers (35-54) will be less likely put-off these factors than older consumers, but they will ultimately be more harsh on a website than younger consumers if it does not match their requirements.

Older Consumers (55+) are the most deterred by poor quality content. It’s the no.1 off-putting feature for consumers aged 55+ who are perhaps more diligent about misspellings etc. It’s vital that businesses targeting these consumers get this right.

Male vs Female Consumers

Analysis:

Once again, not displaying a phone number or product prices is the most off-putting feature for both genders, however there are other differences –

Female consumers consider poor quality content to be the no.1 feature that stops them from wanting to use a local business, and to a much larger extent than males.

Male consumers are most put off from using a local business if the website does not display a phone number or product prices. Males are also more discouraged if a website does not show map / address details. Poor quality content is surprisingly not as off-putting to male consumers.

How consumers prefer to contact a local business

Age of Consumers

Analysis:

From the original survey, the preferred method for contacting a local business is via telephone, and this remains the case for consumers of all ages & gender –

Younger Consumers (18-34) are more in favour of sending an email than older consumers & the most likely age group to use social media to contact a business. They are also least likely to visit a local business in person – they prefer virtual interactions!

Mid-life Consumers (35-54) also favour telephone & email contact and are the most likely age group to use any ‘request a call back feature’.

Older Consumers (55+) do favour telephone contact but are also the age group most in favour of visiting the store / premises. In fact older consumers are more likely to visit a business than email them. They also have no interest in contacting a local business via social media.

Male vs Female Consumers

Analysis:

Once again, telephone contact remains the most popular choice for both male and female consumers –

Female Consumers favor telephone contact over male consumers but are more inclined to email or contact forms than male consumers.

Male Consumers still favor the telephone but are more in favour of visiting the store / premises than sending an email. They are also favor a ‘request a call back’ feature to females.