If you are the owner of a small or medium business, or you oversee the marketing for a business, you are probably very familiar with SEO for your local search rankings. You may also be somewhat familiar with Moz Local as well.

However, if you are not, here is a quick overview. Moz Local is a local SEO tool that is user-friendly, and it helps users and search engine crawlers locate your business online. Moz Local does this by ensuring the NAP information for your company is consistent and complete on all business listings online.

For those who have used Moz Local in the past, you understand a lot of work is required to manually update or complete NAP citations for your business. Well, expect to experience more ease when managing this aspect of your local SEO because Moz has announced changes to the platform.

Let us take a closer look at these changes, and what they will mean for you, the user.

Sync Your Google Business Account

Previously, Moz Local would verify the business address you provided by comparing it with the address on your profile for Google My Business. This is the reason why the address could not be edited in Moz Local after it was marked as Google verified. If you wanted to make any changes to the address in Moz Local, you would have had to change it on your business profile for Google first. Then, you would have to wait for the update to occur in Moz Local so you could update the listing everywhere else online.

With the recent changes, you no longer have to go through this exhaustive process. Your Moz profile will automatically sync with your Google My Business profile. This means that if you make any changes to your Moz Local profile, those changes will also occur in your company’s Google My Business profile.

You will never have to worry about managing two separate accounts. In fact, you will not really have a need to log into your Google Business profile again. Everything can be managed from one location.

Update Alerts

Most will agree that Google is a dominant, all powerful being. So, there are times when Google may decide to change your business information without warning because the search engine crawlers believe they have found updated information. It may also decide to change other information in your profile like your company’s business hours, and you may not notice the changes have occurred until you start receiving calls after hours or customers requesting to order products you do not sell. You will then have to take a reactive approach to determine the source of the wrong information and correct it.

Fortunately, listing alerts have changed this in favour of the business. Now, any time your company’s listing is updated, a notification will appear in the Activity Feed. You will be able to stay proactive instead of reactive, and you can reduce the number of misinformed and frustrated customers that contact you about wrong information on your profiles.

Local SEO is always in a state of change and evolution. It can be difficult to stay in the know about new tools and trends. Moz Local is a tool that can help you stay on top of local SEO marketing strategies.