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Do I Have to “Refresh” My Search Engine Listings?
On a pretty frequent basis, our clients will come to us with an idea for how we should be doing their marketing. Don’t get me wrong—I love having involved clients. But at the same time, everything we do is data driven. On the flip side, I have zero idea where some of the marketing ideas my clients have came from. Maybe they read an article that popped up on their LinkedIn feed; maybe their nephew told them something they learned in their marketing class; maybe one of your competitors was trying to pitch them.
It seems just about everyone wants to influence your views on how to market your business. No one is safe. Take a look at this email from a domain registration and Web hosting service:
The email recommends that you submit your site to all major search engine and Internet directories, as well as “refresh” the listings once a month. Of course, this company can do this for you.
At Blue Corona, many of our clients who use this particular company for domain services or hosting see this email and panic. They frantically email their Blue Corona account manager and ask if we’ve submitted their listing to all of the search engines and if we refresh those listings monthly.
What Does It Mean to Refresh Your Search Engine and Directory Listings?
To be clear, “monthly refresh” was pretty vague. So vague that I had to investigate what the company even meant by that by going under cover and live chatting with one of its representatives.
According to Chad B, “if you want to have a good online visibility for your business you’d want to have search engine optimization done on the website and needs to be re-submitted every month. That’s something that needs to be done on going. It’s something that cannot be done once and then be done with it so to speak. Google is always changing their rules and regulations so to speak and our company is a premium partner with google and we keep up to date on all these things for you for your website.”
I may have been a bit facetious when chatting up the online rep. Obviously I’ve more than just “heard of” search engine optimization. While I agree with him on many points, I was still a bit confused on the monthly resubmission.
My new buddy Chad B told me, “People are only finding you if they know what your actual url is for the website. If they have no clue who you are as a business owner, or where you are located, they’ll never find you as they do not know your url. That’s why you need search engine optimization, and be submitted into all your local business directories.”
When this didn’t help answer my question, I asked him to walk me through the “monthly refresh” process:
“So we would consult with you about your website to ensure you have the proper key words formulated into your title tag, as well as a proper meta description. We will submit you into over 100 search engines and local business directories like yellow pages, 411.com, city search, google places, google maps, yelp. Promote you on the high traffic search engines of google, yahoo, msn , bing. This needs to be on going on a monthly basis. You always need to make sure your website is in compliance with google to be able to increase your rankings and to get the online visibility that you need for your business,” Chad said.
But Chad! If I’m already listed on there, why do you have to resubmit me?
“it is something that needs to be done continually. For example, if there are some directories that google says no longer submitt to those, we do not. They’ll give us a list of new directories to submit to and we will. It’s something that is monitored on going. You also would have monthly free consultations with our web consultations and they can let you know where you’re ranking each month,” he said.
What happens if I stop paying you to do this, Chad? Do all of my listings go away? Will I no longer be in the search engines?
“If you stop paying the $91 we stop doing the work and you’ll lose what listings you’ve gained. We will no longer market your site for you any longer. Then you’ll be back to people just finding you with your url.”
So Chad, do you have to have an “in” with Google to do this…because I’ve got a granddaughter in college who’s pretty good with computers…
“IF you are looking to have a good online visibility it’s something you want professionals to do to be quite honest. We are a premium partner with google and work along with them to be able to do these marketing options, Like I shared before, it’s something that cannot be done once and be all over with. Google is always changing how they read the websites, the directories to be submiting to, etc. Here with our company we look after all that for our clients,” Chad said.
But Really, Do You Have to Refresh Your Listings Every Month?
Okay so that was mildly entertaining but only left me a little more confused. I finally decided to ask a member of Blue Corona’s Web team to get to the bottom of this for me. According to Dana Gleason—the Queen of Blue Corona’s Web department—for HTML sites, our Web team updates each of our client’s XML sitemaps on a monthly basis. If you use a CMS like Drupal or WordPress, this gets done automatically.
And What About Refreshing My Internet Directory Listings?
If you reference the initial email again, you’ll see that the hosting company also recommend refreshing your listings on:
- Google Places
- Google Mobile
- CitySearch
- Foursquare
- YP.com
- MerchantCircle
- Etc.
Unless any of your critical business information has changed, I see no reason why you need to go in and “refresh” these listings. In addition, a brief consultation with one of Blue Corona’s top account managers confirmed that a lot of these listings contribute very little in terms of leads or even referrals. The real benefit is to have consistent NAP citations across these directories to increase your chances of appearing in local search results.
Need an SEO Partner?
We might not “refresh” your listings, but we’ll get you more leads and sales from the Web. The best part? If you ever decide to cancel, you don’t have to start from square one. Your website and any content or offsite listings we create for you are yours to keep.
About The Author: Blue Corona's Editorial Staff is determined to help you increase your leads and sales, optimize your marketing costs, and differentiate your brand by passing on our tribal knowledge. The team vigilantly stays on top of the latest in digital marketing, bringing you the top insights with expert commentary. Want to see something on our blog you haven't seen yet? Shoot us an email and our marketing team will get to work.
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The information on this website is for informational purposes only; it is deemed accurate but not guaranteed. It does not constitute professional advice. All information is subject to change at any time without notice. Contact us for complete details.
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