Wholesaler · Mechanicsville, VA · Member since 2015 · 63 posts · 16 votes
As I began to expand my marketing for motivated sellers, I have placed citations on yellowpages, yelp, etc. These citations have led to me getting many calls about expanding my online presence. Today, I got a call from a company called YEXT, offering to place my information on many more of these sites and to help me develop a website. Have any of you used this company or a similar service to expand your online presence, and if so how has it worked out in terms of generating leads?
One of the most important things when it comes to localized SEO is keeping your listings and business information across all of the different platforms accurate and consistent. Further, I feel you should be anchoring all of this with a website to built trust. These listings will help expand your footprint and will help solidify your presence in the eyes of Google.
This is where Yext comes in and allows you to manage the various platforms and the information on each from one place. Small things like "Suite 320" and "# 320" may mean the same thing to you and I but not to search engines, these are the types of things that Yext will point out and allow you the opportunity to fix.
I believe the Yext platform is overkill for what you're doing and you could easily pick the top 5 sites to place your business on and fill things out manually. It would take no time a all. I would certainly build a website if you're trying to drive people from other online directories to contact you as well.
Wholesaler · Whippany, NJ · Member since 2009 · 412 posts · 183 votes
11y
I've been doing a lot of research about citation building over the past few weeks as well. Yext was an option, but there are concerns about what happens to your citations if you ever decide to stop using Yext. Some of claimed your citations go back to what they were before Yext. Not sure I want to marry myself to a service like that.
I will say they are very aggressive interms of getting you to sign up for services and stuff. I created an account with them accidently because they were linked up with another site (forget the name of it now) and I got 4 phone calls + multiple emails over the following week trying to sell me on their service.
What I ended up doing was just creating citations when ever I had some free time. I keep a google doc with all my information (website address, phone number, mailing address, business description, tags, etc..) so I can just cut and past the info into each site. It also helps keep things consistent.
Services like Yext are great if you are changing business information fairly often (maybe for marketing purposes). Then you only have to go to one spot and make the update. My information shouldn't change so I'm fine setting them up myself.
Flipper/Rehabber · Arlington, TX · Member since 2013 · 1k+ posts · 2k+ votes
11y
I started SuperPages.com back in the day, and I know YEXT well.
There is some benefit to their services for some businesses. For what we do, you do not need them. Certainly, you do not need to pay them.
The online marketing thing that actually WORKS is Google AdWords. If you're going to pay anyone to be found online, pay THEM. Google search KILLED SuperPages.com and every other local directory provider. They are like the Mafia, shaking you down for cash, and there's nothing we can do but hand it over because they are large and in charge. =)