How do you manage phone verification when claiming listings on behalf of clients (local and remote)?
-
As the top competitive difference maker, Quality/Authority of Structured Citations is pretty important. That being said, I spend a good deal of time manually running around to different citation websites and jumping through their hoops to get my clients' websites listed properly.
I've been using getlisted.org to check my sites, and a lot of the citation sources out there require phone verification. Now I was wondering how you professionally manage the phone verification step for your own clients. I've found it a bit difficult getting my clients to reliably get the PIN numbers for me. I've even had problems with clients checking the mail for the post cards that get sent!
At this point in time, I try to schedule a time (not during business hours preferably) to go into the location and answer the phone to get everything verified in one shot. For remote clients however, I just have to hope that they are on board with answering their phones and getting the PIN numbers back to me.
Lastly, how do you manage to reduce the amount of sales calls that your client receives from these listing sites? I currently register accounts under a separate email address, for example, [email protected]. This cuts down on the email marketing spam, and it obviously helps me stay in control of the listings. How do you handle the phone calls though? Especially from some of the more aggressive companies like Yelp? Personally I've just been 'briefing' my clients on how to respond to these sales calls, and I've educated them on the importance of these listings so they aren't too annoyed with the assault of sales reps calling their business constantly. Are there any magic words that my clients can use with these sales reps to make them stop calling?
Sorry for the long post, if you've made it this far thank you for reading!
-
Thanks for the response. I will be working with a client tomorrow beginning the process of claiming and updating some of their listings. I've schedule a time to go into their location and answer their phone (on a Saturday) so hopefully everything will go well.
I guess the best way to do this is just to educate, plan ahead, and be ready to tackle any small problems that come up. Thanks for the insights.
-
I agree with Chris. It's really a case of educating and supporting your client as best you can. And making sure when you request these calls you do it in a coordinated fashion with the client.
I've had some absolute nightmares with companies that have a shared receptionist answering the calls.
The only thing I'd say, is that as you've probably found, what a client says will happen when they get these calls doesn't always happen. It's important to carry out a test by calling the contact number from an "unknown" phone and asking to speak to someone to verify a business listing and see what happens.
If this is the same number that they're using for sales enquires it can reveal some interesting things about their ability to convert leads.
-
I've always found that dealing with the verification phone call is something that has to be done in a coordinated fashion with the client. I schedule a time with the client to initiate the verification calls (during business hours) and at that time, I first set everything up on the search engine control panel, get codes if needed, then contact the client at the number the search engine will use for verification and make sure they are ready, give code as necessary, hang up and initiate the verification call to the client, then call the client back to get code as necessary, enter code at search engine control panel. I've never found a more efficient way of doing it.
Sales calls from sites has never been an issue clients have brought up to me.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Partner outranking main site in local
I've been working on local for a client, and it looks like the partner's name and one review is outranking the firm name and it's 20 reviews. The firm's GMB profile is better, but they're still buried. Any advice?
Image & Video Optimization | | julie-getonthemap1 -
Local Search Clean up Done. Now Best Way to Index?
I have spent hours doing some local search clean up and have a list of all the URLs to index, about 75. Is there a place I can dump these to get them all indexed quickly or do I have to wait for the hand of Google to come down and bless me with indexing. I don't want to dump all these to Google +, Facebook, or Twitter; that would just be wrong. Any ideas for fast indexing. I want them to all get indexed before the business address changes in a couple years 🙂
Image & Video Optimization | | photoseo10 -
HELP my client wants to run two yoga companies from the same address
My client has been very successful in local for yoga hertford. Now she wants to do an additional site with five other yogies. The name of the company is obviously different and as with her original company hertsyoga - the actual venues for the sessions are all over the place but principally at a local venue called the Castle which hires out a studio. My question is what do I do to keep her Nap consistent. She apparently has friendly neighbours who are happy for her to use their address (one door up), and apparently they wont move! But I really don't think they will be happy for me to put their address on the site and in citations locally. What should I do?
Image & Video Optimization | | catherine-2793880 -
Once you start fixing Local citations with correct NAP, is it normal for your rankings to plunge at first?
I strongly believe that I have received the most solid Local advice I could from these forums and have started (in just a few days) to make the needed corrections. At the same time I'm somewhat excited and optimistic that it will be a long journey but that it's a learning process. About 5 days ago, I set my website up with "City landing pages" and I started plundering through google, fixing and claiming and correcting as many citations as I could with correct NAP. The journey still continues today as I just got my Bing Local card in the mail and verified. I went to check my rankings on Google Maps, just to see if anything had changed and sure enough it had. My listing had been holding strong at page 10 (which drives me nuts) and now after 5 days of solid work its on page 18. I have to assume that because I'm stirring the dust perhaps Google is confused and maybe in a month or so things might start moving the other way? Thoughts?
Image & Video Optimization | | jonnyholt0 -
Local.com
Hey guys! Is there any way to edit a business listing, for the first time, on local.com without paying Yext?!
Image & Video Optimization | | AmberRobinson0 -
Proximity for local intent searches
Based in the UK, I can see clear differences in search results for terms that Google considers have local intent, based on location. I'm interested in the community's experience of how far in distance local intent reaches. Does it depend on the search?, e.g. If I search for restaurant will it have a different local intent radius to a coffee shop etc.
Image & Video Optimization | | bjalc20110 -
Google Local Page Not Showing in Search Results
Hi! I am having an issue with our business's Google+/Local/Places/whatever-the-heck-you-call-it-these-days page not showing up in search results. I work for a company called Nexxtep Technology Services. We are located in Valdosta, GA. We have a Google+ page that's filled out nicely and I would love it if it would show up next to the search results when you search "nexxtep technology services" or "nexxtep valdosta" in Google. For some reason, it does not. I have a feeling what might be a source of the issue...we have developed and hosted websites for clients, and we used to put a link to our site in the footer. Now, I know that's not a good thing to do. We don't do that anymore, and I have since removed those links from existing sites. I removed them almost 6 weeks ago now. Should I give Google a little more time to crawl these sites again? Any guidance would be tremendously appreciated. Thank you for your help!
Image & Video Optimization | | nexxtep0 -
Timeline For Local Prospect
Hi Mozzers, I need a judgement. I've been approached by a deck building company whose business is local. They do have an existing web site, but almost no content or indexed content. Their visibility online is very close to zero. They are also a seasonal business, with people getting interested in decks from April through June by which time they would be expecting a result. There is one very large competitor and many smaller ones. This gives me 6 months, starting from very close to scratch. Would you take it on? Discussion and debate welcome.
Image & Video Optimization | | waynekolenchuk0