The Importance of Consistency in Local Business Directories

By Lesley Mailman

Variety — it may be the spice of life, but when it comes to directories and citation sites it falls short when stacked up against consistency. Important for two reasons, consistency will contribute to your local SEO rankings and your customer experience. Here’s why: according to the newest local citation trust report published by our friends at BrightLocal: in the last 12 months, 71% of consumers had a negative experience because of incorrect local business information found online.

Despite the reality that you may have never heard of business directories like City Data, it’s still crucial that they have your correct business info. That’s because Google sees these smaller aggregator and directory sites, and leverages them in verifying their own information. All those small inconsistencies across directories can add up and take a toll on your local SEO rankings. If you’re not convinced, consider that an example directory site saw over 14 million users per month in 2016—that’s a hard number to ignore.

Secondary to Google using these smaller listing directories as checkpoints is the user experience — users are generally not happy to find varying information on different local directory sites. Inconsistent business information can have a significant negative impact on the customer experience, and 68% of consumers would stop using a local business if they found incorrect information in online directories. That’s two thirds of your online customer base giving you the side eye and walking away, so to speak.

It falls to you to ensure that your information is correct and that you’re using the right tools to get the job done. Upon finding an inaccurate listing, consumers are more likely to blame the local business than the directory. Whether you’ve added the information to these sites or not, the customer holds you accountable for your online reputation and information.

So you’re on board with the idea that these secondary listings are important— but where do you start? The good news is that there are many scanning tools that can help you check the health of your business information. Moz has a free scanner that will examine directories and tell you if your listing is complete, incomplete, or inconsistent. It will also give you a list of directories where they found duplicate information. Duplicate information, regardless if it’s correct, can harm your local SEO ranking as well. It confuses Google and as a result, the search engine will favour your competitors’ listings.

If it’s too much to handle on your own, there are various local listings platforms you can hire to be your online cleaning crew and help with citation building. Why citation building is important for your business is a topic for another day, but in short, it’s basically building your online reputation and making sure no matter where your potential customers are searching on the web, they are able to find your business.

Acknowledging the importance of the issue is a magnificent first step. With some help, you’ll soon be on your way to pleasing your potential customers, and Google, with consistent business information across the web.

VERB Interactive is a leader in digital marketing, specializing in solutions for the travel and hospitality industry. Find out more at www.verbinteractive.com.