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What You Need to Know About Changing Your Business Address

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

When you change your business address in real life, what do you do? You probably start by submitting an address change to the post office. Then, you update any accounts you have with banks, credit card companies, insurance agencies, and so on. You also have to go down the list and notify all of your vendors, marketers, and important contacts. In a nutshell, it’s a big pain.
Unfortunately, that’s not all. It’s crucial that you also remember to update all of your business’s online listings. And we’re not just talking about on Google. Every reference to your business’s address on the web (commonly called a “citation”) must be updated—otherwise, your search rankings could take a serious hit.
We’re not being melodramatic. In this post, we’ll discuss:

  • Why it’s so critical to update all of your listings with your new address.
  • What goes into the process of changing an address online.
  • How a marketing specialist can come in the clutch to help.

Let’s jump in!

An Accurate Business Address Is Vital 

Did you know one of the biggest influences on your rankings comes from the accuracy of your online information? Here’s how we explained it in a previous post about controlling your online presence:

Google and other search engines want to present the best possible information to their users, so they gather data from around the web to verify what’s on your company’s listing. And when Google sees conflicting details about your company coming from different sources, it flags your listing for having the wrong information: Google won’t want to display your business as a search result if there’s a chance it’s not a legitimate company. This results in poor rankings and, sometimes, suspended listings.

So if you update your business address on your Google listing while leaving up the old address on other listings, your local search rankings will suffer tremendously. When your business address changes, it needs to change identically across the board.

How to Update Your Business Address Online

Here’s where things get tricky.
You may have no problem thinking of places where your business is listed online. Google Maps, Bing Local, Yelp, Facebook, Manta, Better Business Bureau (BBB), and Angie’s List probably come to mind right away. However, these directories are only the tip of the iceberg.
You see, some online directories in the darkest corners of the Internet populate their listings by crawling the web for business information. You won’t be aware of them because you never created a listing there yourself, but they exist all the same. And they need to be updated, too.
What does this mean? Essentially, you have to spend hours searching the web for your business name and contact information in order to find every last place that mentions you. Then, you have to figure out how to update those listings, since you never created them in the first place. Sometimes, it’s as simple as claiming them on the spot. Other times, though, the process can present multiple hoops to jump through.
For instance, the BBB is notoriously difficult to work with in this context. It can take three to four weeks to update your information on their site because they want to get you to pay for accreditation (which comes with expedited processing, of course). Updating a Yelp listing may also be complicated if you don’t own your listing. At the end of the day, a lot of variables affect how smoothly and efficiently the update process goes.

Updating Your Business Address May Require a Specialist

If that all sounds like a lot of work… it is. We won’t sugarcoat it.
However, that doesn’t mean you have to spend all of your time and energy doing it. Internet marketing specialists like the ones at Prospect Genius are a great resource to lean on for these types of projects.
Our specialists do this every day. It’s their job. That means they know the most efficient, streamlined process for finding and updating every last one of your listings. Moreover, they’re familiar with the best ways to deal with the BBB, Yelp, and other difficult directories so they can update those listings as quickly as possible. They even know the most important listings for your industry that need to be double- and triple-checked before moving on.
Check out our WebFax® and CleanSlate™ programs for more details on how we can help keep your web presence neat, tidy, and working for you!

Consistency Is Key

When your business address changes, you need to update the entirety of your online presence. It’s not an easy job by any means, but it’s absolutely necessary if you want to maintain your local search rankings. Now that you have a better idea of how to handle your new business address, you can move forward without hurting your web presence!

Are You in Good Shape for Online Marketing in 2017?

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Start 2017 off the right way! 
One easy way to set yourself up for a great year of online marketing in 2017 is to make sure all your online info is up to date. We’re talking directory listings, Google Maps, Angie’s List… Basically, wherever your business is listed on the Internet. Having consistent, accurate information about your business across the web is a fundamental component of your overall web presence. Double-checking that all your details are correct is worth the effort if it means you have a solid foundation for the rest of the year. So get to it!
And if you need more convincing, keep reading.

What Happens If Your Info Isn’t Updated?

Keeping outdated information online is terrible for your business on two fronts.

1. Customers Get Confused:

If prospective customers don’t have the right details about your business, they’re likely to get confused and move on to another company for their needs. For example, if you recently changed your phone number and didn’t update it on all of your listings, a prospective customer might come across the wrong one and be unable to contact you. That’s money down the drain.

2. Search Engines Penalize You: 

Search engines like Google want to present the most accurate, up-to-date information to their users. That’s how they keep users coming back, after all. To this end, they continuously cross-check information from different sources across the web to verify everything is correct. If they detect a discrepancy in your online data, they’ll flag your listing for potentially incorrect information. And if there are enough discrepancies, your listing may be suspended, which means you won’t appear in search results. If this happens, your business’s web presence will plummet.

As you can see, neglecting to update your information is a surefire way to run your efforts into the ground. If you want to establish a solid foundation for your online marketing in 2017, you need to start with up-to-date information.

How Can You Tell If Your Info Is Up to Date?

If you’ve been good about keeping track of all the places your business is listed, then you may be able to double-check your online information yourself. These are some sites to start with, but this is by no means an exhaustive list:

  • Google Maps
  • Bing Local
  • Yelp
  • Manta
  • Better Business Bureau
  • Angie’s List
  • Citysearch

You can also do a Google search for your business name and location and dig through the search results. This will help you track down any other listings you might have forgotten or weren’t aware of. The whole process of finding your listings and verifying the information could take less than an hour or up to several hours—it all depends on how quickly you can find your directory listings.
However, there’s another option: Let Prospect Genius run a WebFax® report for you. We’ll conduct a comprehensive audit of all your online listings and find any errors that exist. Then, with our CleanSlate™ program, we can make the necessary corrections so you can spend your time and energy elsewhere.

What Kind of Information Needs to Be Updated?

Customers and search engines alike are looking for generally the same information. If any of these details have changed, update your listings accordingly:

  • Phone number
  • Street address
  • Company name
  • E-mail address
  • Website URL
  • Business category
  • Service offerings

Alternatively, if you’re a Prospect Genius client, let us know about your real-life changes and we’ll make the corrections online for you. It’s better if all of the updates come from one place. Not only does that ensure consistency, but it also satisfies Google’s preference for listing management to come from a single IP address.
Now that you know what’s at stake and what you need to do, updating your online information should be a no-brainer. So kick off your online marketing in 2017 the right way by making sure your web presence is in good shape for the year to come!

Avoid the Land Mine of Conflicting Information

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Conflicting information is a hidden land mine that business owners step on repeatedly.
We’ve talked at length about how the success of a campaign is a result of synergy—all aspects of your online presence working together to generate greater results—but this synergy can be inverted, as well. If there are aspects of your campaign that don’t match or work together, your entire online presence will sink. Small mistakes like spelling errors and mismatching addresses on different listings may not seem like major offenses, but the synergistic effect of these mistakes could spell disaster for your Prospect Genius campaign and online presence as a whole.
In this post, we’ll outline some common causes of conflicting information and what you can do to avoid it.

Did Your Company Recently Move?

A recent relocation or change of address is a frequent reason for conflicting information. When your business moves (whether physically or just on paper), traces of your previous address and/or phone number could remain on old directory listings—some of which you might not even be aware of. Unless these traces are cleaned up, your online presence will be haunted by the conflicting information floating around the web.

Did You Recently Switch From a Different Advertiser?

If you worked with another online advertiser before hiring Prospect Genius, then you might have some old, conflicting information out there. This happens pretty frequently with our clients. Usually, when you quit working with an advertising company, they’ll just leave all of your old information up without giving you any resources for cleaning it up (e.g. names of directories that you’re listed on, login information for those accounts, etc.). If any of that information is outdated or incorrect, it’ll follow your company until you take the right steps to fix it.

Have You Not Been 100% Honest With Us?

This is a big one. Sometimes, clients are reluctant to tell us that they used to work with a different advertiser or that they previously made mistakes with their marketing efforts. Whether it’s because they’re embarrassed or don’t want to upset us, we’re not sure. But the truth is, we don’t care about the past—we only care about the future and how we can make yours as successful as possible. That means we need to know the whole truth about your past activity so we can take the necessary steps to clean up any messes that could come back to bite you.

How to Clean It Up

In your line of work, you may be familiar with the concept of a little elbow grease being the only fix for most common problems, like appliance malfunctions, plumbing leaks, and drafty windows. You just have to buck up and fix them with your own two hands. It’s the same for the problem of conflicting information. The only solution is for one of the Internet marketing specialists at Prospect Genius to manually find and delete or correct all of the conflicting pieces of information out there about your company. It takes some time, but it’s the only way.
Thankfully, we offer two different tools that are designed to streamline this cleanup process as much as possible: WebFax® and CleanSlate. A WebFax report will find and flag any potential problems; then, with our CleanSlate program, our specialists will fix all of those issues and wipe the slate clean.
Think of using CleanSlate like getting your tires changed. You don’t have to do it very often, but the need for it does grow over time. While the signs of wear and tear aren’t always obvious, if you fail to change your tires at all, your vehicle will have serious performance issues down the road. Similarly, if you never use CleanSlate (especially after relocating or switching advertisers), you can expect lots of difficulty finding traction in the local search sphere. It may only be a one-time chore over the life span of your campaign, but it’s absolutely essential if you want to stay on track.

How to Keep It Neat

Once you’ve cleaned up your messy information, it’s crucial to maintain that tidiness. That means you must refrain from going into your Google listing (or any other listing) on your own and changing bits and pieces after we’ve already worked on it. If you need to change something, let us know. That way, we can make sure all of your listings are changed uniformly across the board.
As we said above, if all the parts of your campaign aren’t working in sync, the whole thing can come crumbling down.

Top 5 Online Advertising Mistakes That Will Waste Your Money

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Make sure you’re getting your money’s worth from Prospect Genius. Avoid these online advertising mistakes that are almost guaranteed to ruin your campaign and wash your money down the drain.Wasting money

5. Hiring Another SEO Company at the Same Time

Many business owners mistakenly believe that hiring an additional SEO company will double their results. In reality, it does the opposite. If you’re already working with us, hiring another SEO company will actually work against our efforts and damage your web presence.
That’s due to a number of reasons. First, we’ve spent years developing and perfecting our lead generation strategies, which are rigidly structured to ensure consistent results. However, since every company has its own unique approach to SEO, the other company’s work may get in our way and potentially counteract our efforts. Second, working with two companies could jeopardize your standing with Google, a far graver consequence. When Google detects multiple account managers updating your listing from disparate IP addresses, it will flag your listing. From there, your listing could be penalized or suspended. Recovering from either of those actions is a long, costly process.
Finally, it’s important to know that there is only a finite number of valuable resources available for optimization. If you have more than one company trying to use those resources, it becomes a battle. Not having access to all of the resources they need will significantly weaken each campaign. Plus, with two companies battling each other and adding different sets of information, you’ll end up flagged by Google for conflicting information.
In short, hiring a second SEO company is a surefire way to damage your campaign—not to mention a huge waste of money. Read more about the dangers of working with multiple SEO companies in our blog post, “For SEO Companies, Two’s a Crowd.”

4. Not Knowing What You Want

We may be online advertising “geniuses,” but we aren’t fortunetellers. We can’t predict what you’ll want in the future—only you can do that. When you sign up with us, make sure you have an idea of what you want for the long term. This is the only way we can tailor our services to your needs. Keep an open dialogue with us about what you want out of your campaign so we can deliver the most satisfying experience possible.
For example, we’ve had clients in the past who decided during their Core campaigns that they actually wanted to focus on their own, preexisting sites rather than their LeadTrax™ sites. If we had known this upfront, we would have been able to save time, money, and hassle for both parties by using our B.Y.O.S. (Bring Your Own Site) package, instead.
If you don’t know what you want out of your Prospect Genius campaign in the long run, you’ll end up spending an unnecessary amount of time and money on a campaign that doesn’t quite suit your needs.

3. Not Answering Your Phone When Customers Call

This one is pretty straightforward. If you’re not going to answer your phone when customers call you for your services, then why are you paying us to connect you with these customers? You may be shocked to discover how infrequently some of our clients answer their phones. These clients are essentially throwing away their money because they’re paying us for a lead generation program and then ignoring the leads that are being generated. This is especially true for PPC clients who are literally paying for each person who clicks on their ad and visits their site.
If you’re having trouble answering the phone, use the Client Portal to reroute your LeadTrax number to your mobile phone or any other phone that you can actually answer with some frequency. For more tips on reducing missed calls, check out “Do You Have a Plan for Handling Missed Calls?” and “You Might Be Paying Your Advertiser for Nothing.”

2. Not Communicating With Us

Having an open line of communication between us is vital to the success of your campaign. Whether it’s turning in your Google PIN as soon as you receive it, responding to our e-mail inquiries in a timely manner, or giving us pertinent company details for your LeadTrax site content, we need you to actively communicate with us. Otherwise, we won’t be able to advertise your business to the best of our abilities.
For example, if you fail to tell us that Google sent you a verification PIN via postcard, we’ll just be stuck in limbo waiting to move forward with your Google listing. If you don’t answer the phone or call us back when we have a question about your company, we won’t be able to finish creating your LeadTrax site. If you don’t give us the full picture of what your business does and how it works, then your site won’t be very accurate. All of these ultimately lead to an unsatisfying campaign.
The bottom line is this: If you don’t actively communicate with us, we won’t be able to do our job effectively. And when we can’t be effective, you’re wasting your money.

1. Leaving Conflicting Information on the Web

Having inconsistent or conflicting information about your business all over the web is the quickest way to drive your campaign into the ground. This often results from working with a second advertising company and not realizing that they created duplicate listings with slightly varied information. However, it can also result from something simpler, like a recent address change or name change. Regardless of what caused the information inconsistency, no amount of SEO wizardry will be successful until all of your online information matches.
To get the most out of your investment in lead generation services, you’ll need to have a clean, consistent online footprint. We recommend a WebFax® report to check the status of your online information and CleanSlate to fix any problems that come to light in the report. If you don’t take action to clean up your mismatching information, all of our lead generation efforts will be for naught.

Help Us Help You

Thankfully, all of these online advertising mistakes are easily avoidable. We don’t expect you to be super-savvy with technology or knowledgeable about Google’s best practices. All we ask is that you are completely forthcoming and honest with us so that we can do what we do best: send leads straight to you.
There’s no such thing as a perfect campaign, but if you’re able to avoid these destructive online advertising mistakes, you can at least know that you’re doing your part to make your campaign as successful as possible.
Questions or concerns? Don’t hesitate to reach out to us at your earliest convenience.

Outdated Google Hacks You Need to Stop Using

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Google is constantly refining and updating its algorithms to generate the most helpful and relevant search results possible for its users. As a business owner in the year 2014, you’re well aware of this. You’ve probably seen firsthand the changes—some more subtle than others—in Google+ Local, Google Places for Business, and even standard Google search pages. But did you know that these algorithm changes have a significant impact on the advertising strategies that businesses are allowed to use?
In this post, we’ll detail some previously popular Google hacks that are now prohibited.

1. Creating Multiple Listings

To trick Google into thinking your business and/or physical location was more prominent than it was, you used to be able to create multiple listings with information that was half true and half false. Now, however, this practice would never fly. Google cross-references every piece of information you include to ensure that there’s only one listing for every distinct business location and that all of the information is 100% correct.
When we talk about multiple listings, this includes:

  • A new listing for every nearby zip code
  • Multiple listings with fake addresses for the same business
  • Listings with the same address but different, fake business names

For example, we once had a client from Boston who, against our advice, used the same street address in 26 different listings, one for each of the local zip codes. Twenty-six! The party ended quickly, though, when Google yanked all of his listings one day. His average of 40 calls per month plummeted to zero almost immediately. We’ll tell you what we told him: This is a spam tactic, and it is a terrible idea.

2. Leaving Fake Reviews

In the past, you could ask your friends and family all at once to go to your Google Maps listing and leave anonymous reviews of your company. You could even post your own fake reviews. But now, you need to be logged in to a Google account in order to leave a review. Google is also able to detect when multiple reviews are being posted in the same time frame, so having your friends and family blast your listing with reviews will only backfire. Moreover, posting more than one review from the same IP address is a huge red flag to Google, so you also can’t have a computer at your store or repair shop for customers to post reviews before they leave.
Now, if you want reviews, you just have to count on real customers to take initiative from the privacy of their own homes.

3. Using P.O. Boxes

In order for Google to consider you a legitimate business, you must have a physical street address. Google must be able to identify your storefront in order to weed out businesses that are lying about their actual location or business name. While Google used to just mail you a postcard with a verification PIN, which meant all you really needed was an accessible mailbox, it will now send its fleet of vehicles to confirm that your business actually exists at the address you listed. If you are being dishonest about your business’s location, the jig will be up before you know it.

4. Remaining Ignorant About Your Online Footprints

Finally, remaining unaware of the condition of your web presence is a huge no-no. While blissful ignorance may not have had a huge impact on your Google rankings a few years ago, the latest algorithms have put a much heavier emphasis on consistency. The result is that any trace of mismatching or inaccurate information could negatively affect your campaign’s performance.
Even if you haven’t outwardly deceived Google or falsified information on your listing, you may not realize that there’s inconsistent information out there about your business. Some of the most frequent problems we see are inconsistencies in business names, street addresses, and phone numbers. Sometimes these mistakes happen because you legitimately moved locations but forgot to update the info on one of your accounts. Other times, the info might be 99% matching except for punctuation (for example, “B & B Appliance Repair” on Google+ Local and “B + B Appliance Repair” on Yelp will not necessarily count as matches). While these may be completely honest mistakes, they can cause your performance to slide.

WebFax® and CleanSlate™ to the Rescue!

Whether you’re guilty of intentionally bending the rules or you just aren’t sure whether you’ve committed any of these faux pas in the past, Prospect Genius has the solution.
If you want to see what kind of condition your web presence is in, we’ll run a WebFax report. A WebFax report will show all the different phone numbers, company names, addresses, and websites that are out there for your business. This can be the first step in fixing existing problems or it can simply be a measure to help you maintain awareness of your Internet presence. Most people won’t buy a car without a CARFAX report: WebFax is the online advertising equivalent.
If your WebFax report shows problems that need to be fixed, our CleanSlate program is the next step toward recovery. CleanSlate will work to clean up past bad behavior, inconsistent info, and other issues that can prevent current and future web advertising from being successful. Because outdated phone numbers, addresses, websites, and company names on the Internet can make you look like a spammer to Google, it’s important to correct them as soon as possible.

Keep It Clean

Google is a multibillion-dollar corporation. It has the resources to catch you in a lie. For that reason, it’s best to avoid these shady Google hacks. While they may have been effective at one point, they are only going to get you into trouble today. To make sure that your web presence is impeccable, get a WebFax report from us and, if necessary, follow it up with our CleanSlate program. Don’t put it off for one more day—call now to get started and ensure your online advertising has the foundation for success.

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