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ashlen
05-15-2015, 03:17 PM
I am trying to 'claim your business' on sites like Whitepages.com, Mapquest.com but it takes me to Yext.com which requests payment for updating detail. Is there any way to claim the business listing myself or somehow update the information? Would it be better to start a whole new listing? I'm not a fan of repeat business listings.

Harold Mansfield
05-15-2015, 04:01 PM
I am trying to 'claim your business' on sites like Whitepages.com, Mapquest.com but it takes me to Yext.com which requests payment for updating detail. Is there any way to claim the business listing myself or somehow update the information? Would it be better to start a whole new listing? I'm not a fan of repeat business listings.

Sounds like those are paid listing sites. They aren't giving you a listing for free. If you want to claim your listing with them and update it the way you want it you have to pay.

Google Maps and Google Places however, is free and is attached to your G+ Business page.

ashlen
05-15-2015, 04:28 PM
I am able to access major listings on Facebook, Yelp, Bing, Google+, etc.

But other sites such as Local.com, MerchantCircle.com, Superpages.com etc. are not allowing access outside of Yext. I just got off the phone with Yext and they did say paying their fees provides access to premium account features on the listing sites rather than free. I'm just not sure if I want to re-list the business (there would be duplicate listings) or integrate Yext with my service fees.

ashlen
05-15-2015, 04:29 PM
I came across an article that mentioned Yext drops listings once a partner drops out which is bad. I am doing more research on Yext.

Harold Mansfield
05-15-2015, 04:39 PM
I am able to access major listings on Facebook, Yelp, Bing, Google+, etc.
That's because they are free. All you need to do is create an account.


But other sites such as Local.com, MerchantCircle.com, Superpages.com etc. are not allowing access outside of Yext. I just got off the phone with Yext and they did say paying their fees provides access to premium account features on the listing sites rather than free. I'm just not sure if I want to re-list the business (there would be duplicate listings) or integrate Yext with my service fees.

Again, you seem to be confused as to what is free online and what is not. You don't just get free listings everywhere just because you want it.
When you see sites that have your name listed and ask you to claim your listing, all they're doing is scraping business names from search to entice you. They're asking you to join. Not giving it to you.

ashlen
05-15-2015, 04:42 PM
There are free listing options available with many of the websites connected to Yext. The particular company I am listing already has listings on these sites and does not have the login information for any of them so ultimately my goal is to update the listings without duplicating.

Harold Mansfield
05-15-2015, 05:03 PM
There are free listing options available with many of the websites connected to Yext. The particular company I am listing already has listings on these sites and does not have the login information for any of them so ultimately my goal is to update the listings without duplicating.

But Yext itself isn't free. They provide a service that they charge for.

Kumar Palani
05-19-2015, 06:52 AM
I am trying to 'claim your business' on sites like Whitepages.com, Mapquest.com but it takes me to Yext.com which requests payment for updating detail. Is there any way to claim the business listing myself or somehow update the information? Would it be better to start a whole new listing? I'm not a fan of repeat business listings.

In my experience paid listings or directories are hardly worth the effort. Alternatively you can list your website on a free Listing sites, and there are tons of them out there. Google, Yelp, G+ Business page, and more.

BizAdvisor
05-19-2015, 05:46 PM
For the most part, a vast majority of the directories in Yext's network can be submitted to manually and free of charge. Only a select few within the network actually have any type of fee for being listed.

Yext's makes money via convenience; i.e. it is so much easier to simply pay Yext to update all your info instead of doing it all manually, one directory at a time. However, if you wanted to , you can simply go to the Yext site and enter your business information. What will happen is that they will give you a list of directories that you are not on, or that your info is not correct on. All you have to do is click on the directory links, add your business listing info, and submit to each directory manually, one by one.

Keep checking back with the Yext site from time to time and you'll notice that your information is showing up on their list of directories.

5amue1
05-21-2015, 06:29 AM
Google actually penalizes you for using companies like yext, they feel you should be where you on because you earned it and have valuable content and took time, and paid listing sites are cheating, this is a semi new rule. yext has a monopoly on certain directories such as mapquest and a few others. What type of work do you do? i can email you the best directoris for your type of business.

Harold Mansfield
05-21-2015, 12:32 PM
The best local SEO you can do is just getting your Google business profile dialed in, having a responsive site, and verifying your address with Google Places/Maps so that your location comes up in search.

BizAdvisor
05-21-2015, 12:38 PM
I'm not sure I agree with 5amue1 in reference to actually being penalized for using Yext. You see, the bulk of the sites that Yext submits to are legitimate search engines and directory sites, including Bing, Yahoo, Four Square, White Pages, Google... etc, with good page ranking. There is nothing "cheating" about having a third party submit your business info across the web. Now if Yext simply pinged your url to random non-ranking websites on the web that were constantly flagged by Google... Then YES, it is likely it may effect your seo negatively. That's the type of behavior Google views as "cheating"... Not having your business info submitted to reputable websites via a third party.

Business Attorney
05-22-2015, 12:26 PM
Google actually penalizes you for using companies like yext...

Nonsense! I don't believe that being listed in most directories is a great benefit, but the method you use to get your listings into directories like SuperPages or MapQuest is not something that Google cares about.

Goldnote
07-13-2015, 10:56 PM
Google actually penalizes you for using companies like yext, they feel you should be where you on because you earned it and have valuable content and took time, and paid listing sites are cheating, this is a semi new rule..
This is completely false!
Directory listings are also important. All your Citations NAP(name/address/phone number) must be the same throughout all your listings. You base the NAP off how it's listed with Google + local page as this is the most important citation(it's googles after all). Duplicate listings will mess up this process.

I've created Whitepages and MapQuest listings manually without using Yext's paid service. For free too.

Harold Mansfield
07-14-2015, 12:31 AM
Google actually penalizes you for using companies like yext...

This is completely false!
Directory listings are also important. All your Citations NAP(name/address/phone number) must be the same throughout all your listings. You base the NAP off how it's listed with Google + local page as this is the most important citation(it's googles after all). Duplicate listings will mess up this process.

I've created Whitepages and MapQuest listings manually without using Yext's paid service. For free too.


Actually it's not completely false. There were/are many websites that are/were known for selling links and you'll notice that many of them don't exist anymore.
There are/were also sites that were known spam/link farms like Squidoo, Hub Pages, and the ton of "Press release" sites which have also fallen from grace.

The problem with buying links is that they also sell links to other people and you have no control over what those other people do. Whether they are spammers, use crappy SEO methods, or just get pissed off (or their competitors do) and report the site for selling links. It's almost impossible to remove your association from a site that has been flagged or sand boxed after the fact. So in essence, buying links is a crap shoot. You can't control if it's going to go badly for you.

The second part of that equation is that most people aren't careful. While using an automated service has some beneficial sites on it, it also has a few that aren't very reputable and exist only as a source of back links for people. It's absurd to think that I know where they are, but the best engineers and mathematicians in the world who program the search engine that holds 80% of the universe's internet traffic have no idea. Google has spent the better part of the last 5 years figuring out the difference and I'm pretty sure they have a handle on it.

The problem with automated listings is that it's unnatural. Getting a rash of back links all at one time is not normal, so it's easy to determine if they are paid or you used some kind of automation. The other thing is that Google is well aware of the difference between someone linking to your site from an article, blog posts or sharing on social media naturally, and self created, self manipulated links back to your own site.

It's not hard to see that a site has a ton of self manipulated backlinks, yet never has any blog comments, links are never shared on social media, the company has no reviews, no interactions with people on it's social profiles, or all of the other characteristics that would imply a website that is visited and recommended by actual people. Google takes all of those things into account now. So by heavily skewing things to one side without the complete picture you're tactics are actually pretty obvious to the ranking algorithms.


Regardless of whether or not you agree with me, very few directories hold any real benefit to your website anyway and self manipulated back linking should be done sparingly. It's not 2005 anymore and no one is talking about Page Rank.

Famous last words on this subject and I've heard them for years are "Well, I've been doing it for a while now and nothing has happened to me".

janefirst
10-07-2015, 08:17 AM
You can list your site on free listing sites and they will place your link free of cost. You could search for local directories or listing sites. They also have paid and free submission options. You must have good content on your site, and take help of Manage My Business by google. Create Google Map of your location and submit it to the search engine.