Most contractors do not have too little presence online. They have too much of the wrong kind: a duplicate map listing at an address they left in 2018, a directory page carrying a number that no longer rings, a social account nobody can log into. Adding more before that is cleared up spreads the confusion rather than fixing it.
The listings that are taking calls away from you
An old listing with a dead number does not sit there harmlessly. Somebody finds it, calls it, gets nothing and calls the next company. Worse are the numbers that still work but ring somewhere else: a former partner’s mobile, an answering service you cancelled, a tracking number from an agency you left three years ago. Those calls are yours, you paid to create the demand behind them, and you will never hear about them.
A duplicate Google listing is the expensive version of the same problem. It splits your reviews across two profiles, it can rank for a town you no longer work out of, and it quietly competes with the profile you are actually maintaining. Duplicates are usually created innocently: a new profile after a move, a second one made by a marketing company, one made by an employee who did not know the first existed.
Wrong information keeps coming back because it has a source
Directory data is republished. If you correct a listing on a site that pulls its data from an aggregator, the correction holds until the next refresh and then the old address returns, and it looks as though the edit never saved. Work out which sources feed the others and fix those first, then the visible listings, rather than the other way round. It is dull work, and it is the reason local visibility problems survive somebody having “fixed the listings” twice already.
The accounts nobody can log into
- A Facebook page whose only administrator was an office manager who left, still carrying your name and your old opening hours.
- A Business Profile owned by whoever built your first website. This is the one that matters most, and people usually discover it at the moment they try to change something.
- A YouTube channel or an old social account set up on somebody’s personal address, dormant for years, still surfacing when a customer searches your name.
- An old site on a staging subdomain that was never taken down after a rebuild and is still being crawled.
Every one of these has a recovery route, and every route takes weeks and asks for documents. Start the process now rather than on the morning you urgently need to change your hours.
Two websites are worse than one
After a rebuild or a name change the previous site often survives, on a subdomain, on an old domain, or on a website builder still being billed to a card nobody checks. Two live sites with overlapping content compete with each other and neither wins outright. Retire the old one properly, with redirects to the matching pages on the new site, and keep the old domain registered so that it cannot be picked up by somebody else.
An audit you can finish in an afternoon
- Search your business name and go three pages deep, listing everything that carries your name.
- Search your phone number in quotation marks, then do the same for every number you have ever used. This finds listings a name search misses.
- Search your old address and look at the map at that location.
- Call every number you find, including the ones you are certain are dead.
- Check your state licence record for the name and address it holds, because that is a source other sites copy from.
Write the results down as a list with an owner and a status against each item. Most of what you find will be harmless. A few of them will be costing you calls every month, and those are the ones to fix first.
Frequently asked questions
Should I delete old social accounts or leave them alone?
Recover them if you can, then either use them or take them down. An abandoned account showing old hours and a dead number is worse than no account at all, because people believe what they find.
How do I remove a duplicate Google listing?
Claim it first, then report it as a duplicate of the profile you intend to keep. Do not simply create a third one. Expect it to take a few weeks and to require verification.
Does being listed on lots of directories help my rankings?
Consistency helps more than quantity. A handful of accurate listings on well-known sites beats fifty listings that disagree about your phone number.
What if I cannot get access to an account at all?
Most platforms have a claim or dispute process for a business account held by somebody else. It needs proof of the business and patience. Start it early, and in the meantime make sure the account you do control is the more complete one.
Where to start
Search your own phone number in quotation marks, then search the number you used before that one. Whatever comes back that you did not know about is the beginning of the list.
Real Time Marketing has worked with home service contractors since 2016: plumbing, HVAC, roofing, electrical and other trades, nationwide, from our office in Bradenton, Florida. Agreements are month-to-month. See our Google Business Profile management or book a strategy call.
