The best local link your client already qualifies for

Ask a contractor which brands they install and you'll get a list in about four seconds. Sherwin-Williams. Trex. Mitsubishi. James Hardie. Kohler. They'll know the product codes.

Ask whether they're on that manufacturer's dealer locator and you'll get a blank look.

This is the most overlooked link in local SEO, and it's overlooked for a boring reason: it doesn't appear on any citation checklist, no tool surfaces it, and the client has to tell you which brands they use before you can even look. So nobody looks.

Why these are worth more than a directory

A manufacturer's "find a certified installer" page is a different class of link from a directory listing:

The domain is genuinely authoritative. A national manufacturer's site has been around for twenty years and is linked to by the entire trade. You are not going to get that from a general business directory.

The links are usually followed. Directories nofollow their outbound links because they have to — an open directory that passed authority would be spam within a month. A dealer locator is gated by an actual commercial relationship, so there is nothing to protect against.

They're geographically filtered by design. The whole point of the page is "who does this near me". That's the exact signal local search is trying to establish, coming from a source with no reason to lie.

They send real leads. This is the part clients care about. Someone who has already decided on the product and is looking for someone to install it is the warmest lead in the trade. Several of my clients get more work from a supplier locator than from their Google Business Profile.

Nobody can copy it quickly. A competitor can submit to the same two hundred directories you did in an afternoon. They cannot manufacture a dealer relationship.

Finding out which ones exist

Start with the client, not with search. Ask three questions:

1. What brands do you install or stock? Every one is a candidate.
2. Who do you buy from? The distributor often runs its own locator, and distributors are far easier to get listed on than manufacturers.
3. What training or certification have you done? Manufacturer certifications almost always come with a directory entry, and it's frequently sitting there unclaimed because the installer never realised it existed.

That third question is the one that turns up surprises. A two-day factory course in 2019 can mean a live profile on a national brand's site that nobody has ever updated.

Then go looking:

"BrandName" find a dealer
"BrandName" certified installer
"BrandName" where to buy
site:brandname.com locator
site:brandname.com "find a" contractor OR installer OR dealer

The page is usually called one of: dealer locator, where to buy, find a pro, find an installer, contractor locator, find a certified installer, authorised dealer search.

Check whether they're already on it before doing anything else. Search the locator for their city. A surprising number of clients are already listed, with a phone number from two businesses ago.

Getting listed

There's no single process, but there are three shapes and you'll recognise which one you're in within a minute.

A form on the site. The easiest. Fill it in from the record — exact business name, the address in the same format as everywhere else, the phone, the service area, the certifications. Same NAP as every other listing, for the same reason.

A rep. Most manufacturers assign a territory rep, and the client almost certainly has their number in their phone. One email to the rep saying "can you get us on the locator" moves faster than any form, because the rep is measured on dealer engagement and this is free credit for them.

A distributor tier. Some manufacturers only list dealers nominated by a distributor. Go to whoever the client buys from and ask them to nominate. Also ask whether the distributor has its own locator, because that's a second link from the same conversation.

What to send

Whichever route, have this ready in one paste:

• Exact business name, as it appears on the Google Business Profile
• Full address in your standard format, or the service area if there's no storefront
• Phone and public email
• Website URL with https://
• Which of their products you install, by product line
• Certification numbers and dates, if any
• Licence number
• Logo, square, 720px or larger

That's the fill sheet. If the record is complete, this is thirty seconds of copying rather than an afternoon of hunting through the client's email — which is the whole argument for keeping one canonical record in the first place.

Then check it actually went live

Two weeks later, search the locator again and confirm the entry exists and the details are right. Manufacturer sites are frequently maintained by someone who has fourteen other jobs, and "we've added you" does not always mean added.

While you're there, check the link. Some locators render results with JavaScript and the listing has no crawlable link at all — in which case the entry still drives referral leads, but it isn't doing anything for your link profile and you should log it as a mention rather than a link. That distinction matters when you audit what a client actually has, because a backlink tool will not see it either way.

What it's realistically worth

Don't oversell this internally. A typical trade client qualifies for somewhere between two and six locators. That's not a link-building campaign, it's an afternoon's work once.

But it's an afternoon that produces links a competitor cannot replicate, from domains far stronger than anything in a directory pack, pointed at exactly the geography the client serves. Weighed against the hundredth general directory submission, it isn't close.

The reason to do it now rather than later is that these entries are sticky. Once you're on a locator you tend to stay on it, and unlike a directory listing it doesn't quietly decay. It's one of the few pieces of local SEO work that keeps paying without being re-checked — though it's worth putting on the same twice-yearly sweep as everything else, because a brand relationship can lapse and take the listing with it.

Placemark keeps the record you'd paste into each of these, and tracks which locators a client is on alongside their citations, so the next person to ask "are we on the Trex locator?" gets an answer instead of a search. Free for one business.