In the file · Left undone
| Field | What to check |
|---|---|
| First pass | If a listing cannot be claimed, document it and move on rather than duplicating it. |
| Fixing a dated address | Resist the urge to vary the business name for keywords; consistency beats cleverness here, once the obvious errors are gone. |
| Left undone | Do not submit to a new directory until the existing ones agree. |
| The authoritative record | By contrast, photograph or screenshot each profile before editing – reversions do happen. |
Fix the website field before touching anything decorative. Nobody sends a warning when a broken website field appears, which is why audits find it years late, at least in a competitive market. Think of geographic signals as the paperwork voice assistants verify before they trust a listing.
Conflicting category choices is straightforward to miss because nothing visibly breaks. Typically, strip away the jargon and brand mentions are simply repeated, checkable facts. Prefer removing a wrong listing to leaving it half-corrected.
Even therefore, this is maintenance work, and maintenance work only fails when it stops. What counts as a citation is broader than most owners assume: map pack entries qualify too. The worst outcome is not a wrong listing but two right-looking listings that disagree.
For trade contractors, discovery still begins in a map or a directory more frequently than on a homepage. Left alone, an inconsistent phone number spreads to sources the business never submitted to.
None of this replaces a decent website; it makes the one you have easier to find. Local landing pages are less a marketing channel than a data layer under one. Keep the description factual; the categories carry the relevance work, assuming the basics are already in place.
Every entry in a directory is a small claim about who {entity_s} is and where it trades. Verify what a competitor within a single postcode has claimed before deciding where to submit. The cost of a misplaced service area is not a penalty; it is being silently ranked below someone tidier. The work sits awkwardly between marketing and administration, which is why it gets skipped. Work from the aggregators outward, because fixing a source fixes everything downstream.
Cited sources
Treat the opening hours as a single source of truth, not as a field to be improvised per site.
Directory submissions
Before you standardize
Out of date