Do you 'own' your online moving and storage listings? | RELO Roundtable...a gathering place

Do you ‘own’ your online moving and storage listings?

By Eric Anders • Jan 31st, 2012 • Category: Advertising, STORAGE SOLUTIONS

GetListed(1) Do you own your online moving and storage listings? One of the reasons I enjoy hanging around the self-storage community is that those who work in the trenches seem to enjoy a free, unfettered, and mutually-supportive exchange of opinions and ideas – regardless of each individuals position, tenure, or brand affiliation within the industry.

That's the reason the RSS link to Inside Self-Storage (ISS) is included in the right sidebar. I can lurk without feeling any guilt.

Traditional household goods movers could learn a thing or two from their brethren sitting on the other side of the service table!

Back in 2009, I posted a note about GetListed.org in the Self Storage Talk (SST) forums. At the time it was a relatively new search marketing tool which shows small and medium sized business owners and managers how well their companies are listed in the local search arms of Google, Yahoo, and other local search platforms. The goal of the project was to “help small businesses claim and enhance their listings at major search engines.”

I posted the same into in a RELO Roundtable article in 2010. There was never any feedback from movers posted about the RELORT piece. That's not really a surprise, though, considering the low number of subscribers at the time.

Several SST regulars, however, not only tried the GetListed tool but posted what they found in the forum thread. No surprise here! The SST forums are packed with thousands of similar examples of mutual cooperation and self-storage tips, tricks and tools used by their 4800 members.

Regardless of which side of the service table your sitting on, having your moving or storage company's identity or brand misappropriated, stolen or hijacked by unknown 'virtual' thieves is more prevalent as more and more small and medium businesses move their sales and marketing efforts online.

When I first discovered GetListed.org, it could only be used in the United States. Today the easy-to-use resource has helped over 1.3 Million U.S. small businesses take control of their online presence. Now beta versions of GetListed can be used by vendors in both Canada and United Kingdom.

To see how the process works, Randy Smith of the Self Storage Anti-Aggregator Alliance prepared the following article which includes a link to a 'free guide” at the bottom. Interested readers DO NOT have to 'register' to access the downloadable PDF file. The easy-to-understand, helpful information includes instructions that users can follow to make sure their presence in the virtual marketplace is accurate and up-to-date.

Have you checked the accuracy of your company's online business directory listings recently?

The Self Storage Anti-Aggregator Alliance warns of possible questionable practices & publishes free how-to guide for every self storage operator allowing them to simply check for correct content on multiple online directory listings.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – (McAllen, Texas) – The Self Storage Anti-Aggregator Alliance has released a brief synopsis of one issue brought to light concerning a possible questionable practice as employed by some businesses. Randy A. Smith, the industry’s most outspoken critic of the online aggregators is quoted as saying, "I've received numerous reports from operators of every size and location from around the USA. One issue in particular seems to be rising to the top of the list of complaints. Operators are discovering that some of their free, online business directory listings at sites like Local.com, Merchant Circle, and CitySearch have had their contact info changed. In several cases, the listing has the right business name and address, but the phone number and/or website link leads to another business, which in many cases is a competing business."

Smith is not claiming intentional misconduct by any particular company but notes, "it is extremely interesting to see the breadth and depth of this issue, and the number of cases in which this is occurring. A couple of names keep coming up. The industry association executives at the national, state and local levels really need to investigate this matter further. Is someone manipulating the listings? Are these public directories being used by some in violation of the directories’ own terms of service? Are these just honest mistakes and due to search engine errors? Nobody knows, but now several people at various levels are looking into it. I've even been able to get through to the folks at Google, who were extremely interested in how some in the industry are using their Google Places listings."

To that end and to help operators see if they have a problem of their own, the SSAAA put together an extremely simple how-to guide that any person can use to check their own self storage operation's free online directory listings. Smith says, "the guide takes you to two independent websites that check dozens of directories and in less than 10 minutes you can see if you have an issue. I guarantee you’ll see listings out there or directories out there you didn’t know existed." The guide is absolutely free and downloadable as a full-color PDF document that walks one through less than half a dozen steps, with screen-by-screen, step-by-step instructions.

"Operators are beginning to ask questions that they hadn't asked before, which is good," Smith said. "Information is power. The more information the individual operator has about different web technologies out there, the more informed they become and the better business decisions they can make. This is all about protecting the operator's online presence, and indirectly… profitability."

To learn more or download the free guide, visit The Self Storage Anti-Aggregator Alliance at http://www.ssaaa.org

Related Resources:

How to Protect YOUR Free, Online Business Directory Listings – Self Storage Anti-Aggregator Alliance

Lead Aggregators: Friend or Foe? – RELO Roundtable

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