In times past, we could find our way easily through the web with comparatively few websites and little competition. Fast forward to today’s digital marketing landscape, though, and things have drastically changed – it’s a make or break situation for local businesses trying to win at SEO tactics in the long-term. And that brings us to this review today between two powerful SEO tools – BrightLocal vs WhiteSpark.
If you own a business that serves customers within a certain locality, local SEO should be at the forefront of your marketing strategy. By utilizing effective Local SEO tactics and optimizing to appear on local search results, you can not only improve visibility but also draw in an unprecedented amount of traffic to your businesses. To make the most out of this breakthrough SEO tool, it is critical to comprehend its functioning thoroughly.
Are you looking for ways to increase your visibility and maximize revenue with Local SEO? Look no further! Here, we have compiled two of the most popular and effective Local Listing Management Tools. Read on to learn more about how these tools can help propel your business towards success this year and beyond!
What is Local SEO?
Before we dive in, it is important to talk about local SEO.
Local SEO is a powerful optimization practice to increase visibility for your business in the area it’s physically located. Through local SEO, you can make sure that search engines like Google prioritize your website over others in both the Local Pack and organic results when someone searches related areas near their current location. In addition, other search engine algorithms take into account users’ IP addresses so they can provide them with content individualized to their whereabouts. This allows people who are actively looking for services or products close by get exactly what they need from an efficient local provider – you!
Utilizing the power of local SEO is one of the best ways to boost your organic search results. There are a few key steps you can take to improve your Local SEO such as optimizing your website with accurate details and information including business address, contact info, etc., as well as enhancing your Google My Business profile with pertinent data. With these tactics in place, you will be able to drive more traffic and increase visibility for potential customers or clients looking for what you have to offer!
Ensuring that your website is mobile-friendly will enable users to access it from any device and anytime. Additionally, utilizing apt keywords and phrases when constructing your local SEO plan can be a tremendously effective strategy.
What is Local Listing Management?
Local Listings management is the act of curating and organizing your business details for online access. This includes fundamental pieces such as company name, phone number, address, etc., but also more robust inclusions like website URLs, core services/products offered by the organization, operating hours/days and additional useful information. All these components are necessary to be included within Local Listing Management so that customers can get an accurate impression of your small business’ capabilities!
Local Listing Management Tools work by bringing your business’s details and information to the notice of various online directories, mapping applications, Google My Business, and an abundance of other data sources.
BrightLocal’s Local Citation Report reveals that an astonishing 80% of customers become mistrustful and 68% cease utilizing services from local businesses if they cannot acquire accurate, consistent information about them. Countering this issue is simple; with the assistance of local listing management tools, you can easily increase your ranking on popular search engines and expand your online reach exponentially!
Best Local Listings Management Tools in 2023
With so many local listing management tools on the market, determining which one is ideal for your business can be a difficult task. To simplify this process, we’ve narrowed our list down to two of the most powerful and commonly used tools – BrightLocal Tool and Whitespark Tool. Let’s explore their features further and find out how they differ from each other!
BrightLocal
BrightLocal is an invaluable tool for businesses with 3-100 locations, offering a comprehensive and cost-effective listing management solution. With BrightLocal, you can monitor citation opportunities and remove duplicate listings while generating reports that provide valuable insight into review management––all at the same time! Plus, this amazing local listing manager features everything from tracking to managing reviews – so you can get the most out of your business without breaking the bank.
Moreover, for a more efficient and accelerated analysis of your local SEO strategy, it is integrated with Google My Business and Google Analytics.
BrightLocal tools are an essential toolkit for businesses looking to optimize their local presence. The cost of utilizing these services range from $290-$790 per year, depending on the number of locations your business is targeting. What’s more? With BrightLocal you can audit existing listings, monitor location rankings and track competitor citations; uncover citation opportunities; detect duplicate listings; keep track of likes, views and followers across all social media platforms – plus so much more!
To determine if this local listing management tool will be beneficial for your business, consider your financial investments and specific business needs. After doing so, you can assess the value of the data provided in these dashboards and have a better idea of which option is right. Don’t forget to factor in what could be possible with accurate metrics accessible through this useful tool! Additionally, for businesses in the fintech sector, collaborating with specialized fintech software development companies can further enhance the effectiveness of such tools. These companies can tailor solutions to meet specific financial service requirements, ensuring that the data and metrics provided align closely with your unique business objectives and regulatory needs.
Whitespark
Whitespark is a top-tier alternative to BrightLocal, offering a free version that covers the basic needs of users. With it you can easily uncover citations on the web and optimized them for local SEO tactics – perfect for small or mid-sized businesses who need help with their business listing management. It might require slightly more manpower than other tools out there, but Whitespark will provide solutions tailored to your specific business size needs!
Whitespark offers four plans ranging from $204 to $960 annually, each boasting features like the comparison tool, citation monitoring, competitive analysis, and progressive tracking. It’s also important to note that depending on your plan selection certain features may be limited or expanded; for example search results per day or searches per day might be restricted. Get the most out of Whitespark with a plan designed specifically for you!
Summary: Brightlocal vs Whitespark
Brightlocal and Whitespark are two noteworthy local SEO services that can assist with helping your business climb the rankings of search engines. Whilst Whitespark boasts more features than Brightlocal, unless you have generous resources, paying for these extra bells and whistles is not worth it.
Here’s how they both compare to each other:
Features
Sites Submitted to
Whitespark and Brightlocal are two services that allow your website to be listed across multiple sites, offering a wide array of exposure for increasing visibility.
Local Citation Finder
To effectively promote your business, Whitespark’s Local Citation Finder tool is a must. This resource quickly locates the best areas for you to focus on advertising and marketing efforts in order to compete with similar businesses. With citations, not only will customers be able to find and access your website more easily through search engines, but they’ll also view it as credible and trustworthy. Plus you can save yourself time by allowing this tool does all of the hard work of finding websites where you should list your business! (Try our local citation finder for free)
Citation Submission and Cleaning
Are you a veteran in the industry who is exhausted from fixing wrong listings and errors? Let Brightlocal take care of it! With their tools, this headache can be gone in no time. Their services help to fetch these citations and update them automatically with accuracy. What about Whitespark? They have your back too! Whitespark’s SEO service will audit all existing business citations for you, which keeps them looking fresh – resulting in improved rankings for your business.
Sites Network
Brightlocal assures to have over 1600 sites on its network to list your business. Whitespark, in contrast, boasts an impressive 1800 sites included in their ever-expanding network.
Local Rank Tracker
Are you wondering why your business isn’t showing up in Google’s search engine results? Keeping an eye on your rankings is essential to ensure that your company survives. Thankfully, with the help of Brightlocal and Whitespark, monitoring local SEO has become more straightforward. Not only can you monitor keywords related to your industry as well as those used by competitors, but also discover how to optimize more efficiently for higher rankings or stay at the top!
Fast Google Local Optimization
If you’re looking to rank faster on local search engines, Brightlocal and Brightspark can help. These companies offer rapid SEO audits that will get your business on the top rankings in no time. Moreover, their comprehensive yet concise audit reports enable you to take steps for optimizing your website quickly and efficiently. So don’t wait – utilize Brightlocal or Brightspark’s services today for fast results!
Manual Submissions
Brightlocal and Whitespark are two well-known platforms that not only offer automated submissions, but also manual local citation submissions. These manual submission processes have been finely optimized to help your sites gain an edge against their competitors in the rankings.
Aggregator Listings
Alongside manual listings, these two SEO services also provide aggregator listing as an automated machine service. This method is more cost-effective than the traditional way of submitting manually since it allows you to save a lot of money. However, bear in mind that Brightlocal’s aggregator listing might take up to three months before going live due to certain limitations associated with using this approach for listings management solely.
Reputation Builder
When it comes to local business listings, reviews from the internet will always be a deciding factor for customers. Just think of your own experience – when choosing a hotel for your next trip away you’ll certainly check online reviews before booking. This is exactly what potential clients do when selecting between businesses – they begin their research on the web and Whitespark can help ensure that this process paints an accurate picture of who you are as a company by collecting feedback from those who know and trust in you best: Your top customers! With Whitespark’s comprehensive review collection tool, businesses have the opportunity to build up their reputation more easily than ever before.
Brightlocal unfortunately does not have a feature to directly address negative reviews. However, their Review Monitoring capabilities allow you to both locate and respond to new reviews about your business or client’s businesses – both the good ones and the bad! This way, you can proactively protect your reputation from any potential damage caused by disparaging feedback.
Brightlocal allows businesses and clients to showcase reviews from Yelp, Foursquare, Google Business Profile, Facebook, and Yahoo on their websites by adding review badges that quickly capture customer feedback.
Local spark
Whitespark’s Local Spark feature is a powerful time-saver, designed to make your local SEO research easier and more efficient.
Availability
In addition to the features highlighted earlier, area availability is critical too. Sadly, Brightlocal and Whitespark are not available globally.
To use BrightLocal, you must be present in any of these locations they serve: USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland , South Africa , Netherlands, Germany, and Singapore.
Whitespark is supported in the;
United States, Canada, UK, Australia, Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Chile, Columbia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Malaysia, Poland, Philippines, Portugal, Russia, Romania, Serbia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, and United Arab Emirates.
Brightlocal vs Whitespark – Advantages and Disadvantages
Whitespark
Pros
- Accelerate your local recognition and establish yourself as an authority in the community with ease.
- Quickly and Easily Audit Your Site’s SEO for Optimal Performance.
- Now available in multiple countries!
Cons
- Constrained to regional establishments i.e. local businesses
- Costlier than BrightLocal
Brightlocal
Pros
- Economical
- With the click of a button, you can easily submit your claims directly to GoogleMyBusiness!
Cons
- While they make every effort to ensure that all submissions are published, there’s no guarantee that this will always be the case.
- It normally takes 2-3 months for your listings to become visible on aggregator websites.
Pricing
For manual submissions, Whitespark charges between $4-5 per listing while Brightlocal’s fees are quite low at only $2-3/listing. For aggregator submissions, you can take advantage of Brightlocal’s yearly fee of just $60!
For a convenient fee of $279 per year, Whitespark offers aggregator submissions. Both organizations provide additional payment options for their individual services; however, keep in mind that Brightlocal’s aggregator postings take two to three months before they become operational.
User-Friendliness
Making the most of SEO services has never been simpler. Both platforms provide tailored solutions such as an SEO site audit, which will optimize your website for improved search visibility without you having to get into any technical details. With these auditing packages, you can devote all your attention to providing exceptional customer service while a team of experienced professionals takes care of the rest!
Integrations
Brightlocal and Whitespark offer open APIs that enable you to integrate their services into any application, plugin, or widget. With Brightlocal’s API data can be pulled directly onto your desired service. Similarly, for Whitespark, keyword searches and phone numbers are easily accessible with the help of its own dedicated API which ensures seamless integration as well as gives users complete control over customization on their platform/dashboard.
Furthermore, Whitespark conveniently integrates with Google Analytics. This integration allows for easy tracking of offline conversions and provides a customizable form to capture data from both online and in-person customers. Once collected, the information is intelligently stored into WhiteSpark’s database for future reference.
Customer Support
Struggling with your Whitespark and/or Brightlocal services? Worry not, for both companies offer a variety of support channels. To begin, Whitespark offers phone-support via two numbers – one for the USA and another for Canada – as well as email assistance. If you’d like to take matters into your own hands then the knowledge base center is available at all times to help solve those everyday inquiries!
Brightlocal offers a comprehensive knowledge base center that provides answers to frequently asked questions for self-help and assistance. If the FAQs are not enough, Brightlocal also provides other support channels such as live chat (Monday-Friday from 5am – 7pm ET) and email support.
Conclusion
When weighing up the two options in terms of their services and prices, it is clear that Brightlocal comes out on top. Whitespark’s fees are rather high, making them unsuitable for small or even medium-sized businesses. In comparison to this, Brightlocal offers a much better price range – an understatement if ever there was one! But wait, there’s more; not only do they offer affordable rates but also exceptional customer service too!
Nevertheless, if you find yourself in a location where the service isn’t available, Whitespark is still an option – though it comes with a steep price tag. Ultimately, Whitespark can prove to be your best bet for success.
With the insights provided in this article, you now understand what sets BrightLocal and Whitespark local SEO tools apart. The choice between them ultimately depends on your individual business needs. Both of these robust management solutions are widely used by entrepreneurs across the globe; leaving your listings unmanaged could have considerable consequences for your company down the line. We hope that with our guidance, you can make informed decisions to effectively manage all of your listing requirements.
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