The Impact of Having an Outdated Directory for Your Business

Several factors affect the online visibility of a business. How well a business manages its online listings plays a massive role in determining how often it will appear in relevant search results and how many local customers manage to discover the business online. This means simply being on a business listing isn’t enough as several wholesale distributors in Canada have found out. You need to take the initiative and actively resolve any issues in the listings to ensure that you don’t damage your local presence and online visibility.

You can easily find any business online today by visiting any wholesale directory in Canada, but businesses who have outdated directories will suffer a lot. Some of the common problems they could end up facing due to an outdated directory include the following:

• Incomplete or missing information
• Using a single listing for multiple locations
• Low-quality visual content
• Unverified or unclaimed listings
• Inconsistent, outdated, or inaccurate NAP data

There’s a reason why B2B wholesale distributors focus on keeping their online presence updated always. To learn about the impact of having an outdated directory for your business, we’ll take a closer look at the issues they can fix and how businesses can fix them to protect their local presence.

Impact of Having an Outdated Directory for Your Business

1. Incomplete Listing Information

Wholesale distributors in Canada should share as much information as they can online. This increases the likelihood of potential customers finding them online, visiting their website, and going to their store location. This is why a business must always keep their listings as detailed and updated as possible; otherwise, you may end up losing out on a lot of customers.

Some directories even allow businesses to add additional information like hours of operation, photos of products or buildings, and driving directions to the store.

2. Inaccurate NAP Data

B2B wholesale distributors must pay attention to the accuracy of NAP data because, even if you have listed it, there’s a good chance that it’s not accurate. NAP data can become outdated due to several factors like when a business gets a new phone number, moves to a new location, or changes its name due to a merger or acquisition.

You must focus on keeping the basics accurate and go straight to the source. Having inaccurate NAP data will make it impossible for customers to find your business.

3. Duplicate Listings

A mistake commonly found in most wholesale directories in Canada has duplicated listings of businesses. More data isn’t always a good thing because it helps create duplicate listings that wreak havoc on the local presence of a business. There should only be 1 listing per business location in the local business directory so that there’s no chance of a duplicate listing.

Most times, duplicate listings get created when a business changes its location or name and instead of updating its existing listing, it creates a new one. That’s something that wholesale distributors in Canada must keep an eye on; they should remove extra listings from the directory so that they are easier to discover, and customers don’t get confused.