What are Yext & Citations?
Is Yext worth it? Here's some citation and Yext background first:
A citation is an instance of your business name, phone number, and address. Another name for citations is business listings. Citations are basically online phone books.
Yext is a citations service that you fill out 1 time and it automatically and instantly fills out about 50 of the top citations. Many top directory listings have outsourced their citations to Yext.
What are the Alternatives to Yext?
- DIY Citations
- Hire SEO professionals
- Combination of 1 & 2
- Hire a Citation Company
- Use Yext
1) DIY Citations
Do-it-yourself citations are a free alternative to Yext, services, or SEO companies. However, this takes an extraordinary amount of time. As a business owner, you may have to spend about 20-80 hours total working on these citations over a period of about 2-4 months.
2) Hire SEO Professionals
Hiring SEO professionals will still take you about 1-2 hours. This is because you have to fill out a sheet with your information or do it over the phone and consult on which citations will work for your business and how many citations you would like to do. Cost is usually hourly and can range from approximately $60/hour to $200/hour.
3) Combination of 1 & 2
There is a great alternative to hire an SEO company to train someone on your staff or your 17 year old niece for 1-2 hours. Then you can hire them on temporarily or have your employee do 1-2 citations as part of their morning routine at a much lower hourly rate (like $10-$15/hour) than an SEO professional. Plus, you know they are doing it correctly. The process should take a few months and you can continue to do citations at a much slower rate after the initial top 50 citations. The added benefit is you can gain traction on your competitors by filling out industry citations or local citations as well like your local chamber website if possible.
4) Hire a Citation Company
Hiring a citation company is a feasible alternative to DIY or Yext. These companies are more automated so you don’t get the personalized attention and industry-specific citations that you would get from an SEO professional.
There’s also a larger margin for error. For example, you could be putting in the wrong address (that doesn’t match your Google listing) but you won’t know it and they won’t correct you. You could be forgetting about an old address that will remain unfixed. You could also have duplicate listings. All things an SEO company would take care of for you.
The advantage is that it takes less than 30 minutes to fill out the automatic form and you at least have done something for your company at an extremely low rate of approximately $50-$100. The major disadvantage is that most services only have a 70% guarantee rate which means you won’t fix 100% of your citations, especially the ones where a phone call verification by the owner is required.
5) Use Yext
Advantages of using Yext are that it is time saving and you get your listings showing up instantly instead of waiting 2-4 months for them to show up. You also only need to fill out 1 form and go to 1 website. The disadvantages are that it is pricey and there is no guarantee that all of the citations will be 100% correct or filled out completely. They also do not do phone call verification. For example, it takes about 45 minutes to completely optimize an Angie’s List citation.
Is Yext Worth It: Top Citation Companies
Is Yext Worth It? How Much Does It Cost?
Yext costs $199-$999 per year billed annually as of 8/11/2016 and it an ongoing cost. As soon as you stop paying, they tend to deprioritize your listing or take it off completely.
Can you get the Same Listings without Using Yext?
Right now, you can get the majority of the same listings for free without using Yext. However, you will run into a ton of spam, advertisements, pop-ups, intimidating scans of your website, and other annoying tactics that Yext uses to make you think that Yext is the only option.
You may have to go through a 10+ screen shopping cart in order to buy a free listing on Yahoo. But they make it seem like you have to purchase something. Many times, you can simply Google “how to get a free business listing on X citation” and the instructions will pop right up.
