Yext is a cloud-based digital knowledge management platform designed to assist businesses of all sizes in managing their database about people, products and places. This helps in organizing the data found pulled from their websites, internal systems and mobile applications. In this software solution, users are introduced to the Yext Knowledge Network. This entails a global network where your data is directly integrated with over 150 maps, voice search tools, search engines, GPS systems, and digital assistants. You can also integrate social networks within it as well—including but not limited to Google, Facebook, Bing and Amazon Alexa.
Other notable features in Yext allow businesses to manage and respond to reviews. One of the key factors people look for in subscribing to new businesses and companies is authentic customer response. With the help of Yext, you can improve your online reputation. This is essential if you want to control what you portray online. This is done by fact-checking reviews and verifying answers related to your brand.
Overall, Yext provides businesses with a necessary platform to drive audience engagement and capture customer intent through a single source. When it comes to maintaining a strong online presence, you need to ensure that what people are saying about you is based on fact. Having spam and baseless reviews can negatively impact your business. To avoid this, companies make use of software solutions to control what information is seen in local directories and search engines. It does this through a series of operations: storing, managing, editing, customizing and synching information across multiple Yext products.
Yext is catered for national and internal businesses of all sizes. If you handle several locations at all once, it can be challenging to keep track of the facts. Customers often turn to search engines to have their questions answered regarding your business. If there is conflicting information online, it can damage your company’s reputation. But with Yext, you don’t have to worry about that as you can maintain a single source of truth for all your locations.
Yext Features
Yext maximizes on improving your search engine ranking and driving authentic customer engagement. It does this through a series of features and functionalities. The top ones include:
Yext knowledge graph and platform
As explained in the previous section, the Yext knowledge graph and platform allow access to a web interface where you can find “public facts about your brand,” according to its official website. It compiles them into a single, centralized location, making it easier to sync relevant information across multiple locations and platforms. You can also guide customers to the right answers to their questions and inquiries about your business.
Other tools include the following:
- Being able to post schema-optimized landing pages for job openings
- Assist customers on where to find products
- Notify people about which products are available in their region
Duplicate suppression
With this feature, you can eliminate double entries for your business listings. It does this by alerting and identifying any duplicates. Afterward, it suppresses these dups through the help of Yext’s direct publisher integrations. Once all duplications have been corrected, Yext preempts instances of duplication at the information sources by collaborating with its network of publishers to ensure no future duplicates ever happen.
Search engine-friendly Yext Pages
Local pages ensure visibility for customers who want to find your nearest locations. Yext Pages improve your business’ online presence by integrating industry standards and SEO best practices. This ensures your pages are tagged in every field. This includes categories, events and hours. By doing this, you have lesser trouble getting picked up by the search engines.
Reviews
Through Yext Reviews, you can monitor and respond to reviews regarding your products. This allows you to generate authentic, first-hand reviews that can boost your overall relationship with your customers. This feature comes with these three tools: review monitoring, intelligent review response and notification and follow-ups.
Analytics
This feature focuses on customer engagement by allowing you to view how well your business is performing across sites, devices and platforms. You can do several tasks with this feature since it provides a multitude of tools. This includes conversion tracking, an Insights Library, report builder, an intuitive dashboard and activity reports.
It comes with three distinct categories: page analytics, listings analytics and reviews analytics.
Yext Benefits
Other than increased customer engagement and efficient business listings, there are other benefits you can enjoy from using Yext:
Boosted digital performance
It’s no question that having online websites can improve the way your business performs. With the help of Yext’s tools and features, you can capture, convert and retain customers who visit your site. This is done by providing them with the right answers to their questions and inquiries. Since Yext focuses primarily on keeping a unified location for all relevant data, you can ensure the answers you provide to your audience comes from the right source.
Improved operational efficiency
Manually checking if your business listings have been duplicated or if a customer has posted a bad review of your products is time-consuming. But with the help of Yext, you can expect an improved operational efficiency within your workforce. Your daily tasks are easily automated and streamlined, reducing time, manual effort and data discrepancies you’d usually make.
Enhanced customer experience
Overall, Yext is designed to enhance customer experience. Without a proper digital knowledge management platform, your customers can easily get confused if they’re faced with inconsistent information and business listings duplicates. Getting customers to subscribe to your brand usually starts with questions. If these questions are not properly answered, you could easily lose a large portion of your customers. This is the last thing you’d want for your business.
Yext Pricing
Compared to other software solutions, Yext does not have a fixed pricing package. If you want to experience its features and benefits, you must contact the vendor first. They will then provide you with a quotation and in-depth pricing information.
Conclusion
Having multiple locations spread across the globe leads to several challenges business owners have to deal with constantly. There are a variety of tasks you must accomplish to maintain a strong online presence. You need to increase your search engine rank, publish verified answers, control all facts about your brand and improve your business reputation. Without the proper system in place, it’s easy to get overwhelmed.
There are three main problems Yext seeks to solve:
Bad customer reviews
It’s frustrating to deal with comments that can tarnish what you’ve worked tirelessly for, especially when it comes in the form of malicious bad reviews and spam. If left unattended, they can pile up and disrupt the way new customers look at your brand. With the help of Yext, you can get notified immediately when ratings and reviews come your way.
Duplicate listings
Having duplicate listings can interrupt your business’s digital presence in search results. This makes it harder for people to find you online. To avoid this, Yext provides users with the Duplicate Listing Suppression tool to scan all listings. You can then eliminate the inactive and unofficial ones.
Weak voice search optimization
Voice search applications such as Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri are now growing in popularity amongst customers. If these applications can’t locate your business listings due to incompatibility, your traffic will suffer.Yext bridges that gap with its robust tools.
At the end of the day, if you handle several business locations all at once and you want a single, centralized location to manage all information, Yext is the software solution for you.
