{"id":3067,"date":"2013-08-20T04:49:07","date_gmt":"2013-08-20T04:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpmudev.whitespark.ca\/local-citation-building-best-practices\/"},"modified":"2024-10-28T16:06:20","modified_gmt":"2024-10-28T22:06:20","slug":"local-citation-building-best-practices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/blog\/local-citation-building-best-practices\/","title":{"rendered":"Local Citation Building Best-Practices"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Building citations<\/a> is the hardest part of getting your business visible in the local search results. Doing it right will take you a few hours.\u00a0Doing it wrong will take many hours (and possibly a lot of money).<\/p>\n

Worst of all, ineffective citation-building or ignoring citations altogether can mean fewer customers for you.\u00a0 You’re unlikely to be visible in the Google+ Local results or elsewhere in local search as long as your citations are a mess.\u00a0 That’s wasted time, and a wasted opportunity.<\/p>\n

I’ve written this post to help you keep it at just a few hours of work, to help you build citations the right way the first time (and not have to redo them), and to help you get the most local-rankings oomph out of your citations.<\/p>\n

Pull up a chair, grab your energizing libation of choice, and read through these best-practices.\u00a0 Then you can apply them and enjoy greater local visibility to customers.<\/p>\n

1)<\/strong> Don’t be shortsighted and dig up some poor soul on Fiverr<\/a> or ODesk or ELance to work on your citations. \u00a0Any mistakes they make will cost you in the long run – and it’s easy to make mistakes if you don’t have lots of experience with citation-building.\u00a0 This is one of those cases where cheap is expensive.<\/p>\n

2)<\/strong> Google may be king, but make sure you also have correct and complete listings on Bing Places<\/a>, Yahoo Local<\/a>, and Apple Maps<\/a>.<\/p>\n

3)<\/strong> Know that there are 5 basic types of sites you’ll want to get listed on:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Data-aggregators<\/a> (e.g. LocalEze).<\/li>\n
  2. Horizontal directories (e.g. Yelp).<\/li>\n
  3. Industry-specific directories (e.g. Avvo).<\/li>\n
  4. Region-specific sites (e.g. Denver.com\/places).<\/li>\n
  5. Sites where you can get an “unstructured<\/a>” citation, like a mention in a newspaper or by a “local” blogger.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    By the way, some sites can fall into more than one category (e.g. a site like ghds.org<\/a>).<\/p>\n

    4)<\/strong> Don’t confuse citations with links. Remember: citations<\/a> are just mentions of your name, address, and phone number.\u00a0 To Google, they increase your business’s relevance to and “prominence<\/a>” in a specific city or region.\u00a0 It’s true that most of your business listings include a link to your website, but few of these links pass any PageRank (AKA “link juice”). The real value is in the citation itself.\u00a0 The value of links in your listings is simply to strengthen the association of your website with your NAP information.<\/p>\n

    \"citation-definition-nap\"<\/a><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    5)<\/strong> Follow the rules of each site.\u00a0 They’re usually enforced.\u00a0 If this sounds like a “duh” piece of advice, you’re ahead of the game.<\/p>\n

    6)<\/strong> Put quality over quantity.\u00a0 If your citations are a mess, try to fix as many of them as possible before listing your business on other sites.\u00a0 Keep in mind that the number of citations you have will grow naturally over time – without your direct involvement – because some sites feed business info to others.\u00a0 Bulk will come more easily and naturally if you first spend some time fixing your current citations.<\/p>\n

    7)<\/strong> Consider paying for listings on sites you’ve determined<\/a> are influential and reputable – especially if your better-ranking competitors are listed on them.\u00a0 Don’t confine yourself to free listings.<\/p>\n

    8)<\/strong> Realize that there are some listings you can’t delegate completely, because they require owner-verification by phone.\u00a0 ExpressUpdate<\/a>, LocalEze<\/a>, Acxiom<\/a>, CityGrid<\/a>, and YP<\/a> are the main ones – the sites you must be listed on and for which you need to do some steps personally.<\/p>\n

    9)<\/strong> Try to remove<\/a> any duplicate and near-duplicate listings you encounter.<\/p>\n

    \"duplicate-iyp-listings\"<\/a><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    10)<\/strong> If you encounter a listing with incorrect NAPW<\/a> info that’s been claimed<\/a> by someone else (or by you before you forgot your password!), try to claim it and then fix it.\u00a0 If you can’t do that, try to get it fixed by sending feedback to the site as a non- business owner.\u00a0 If that<\/em> doesn’t work, create a new listing with the correct business info, and try to get the old\/incorrect one (the listing you couldn’t claim) removed.11)<\/strong> Realize that Yext<\/a> is not a substitute for working on citations manually. \u00a0It’s a good tool to give you the ability to update listings on Yext’s network instantly (-ish), and it’s good for enhancing those listings, but it’s not a citation-cleanup service<\/em>.\u00a0 Yext often leaves duplicate and inconsistent citations on the sites.\u00a0 Also, when you stop<\/a><\/a> paying annually, many of the listings it updated may go back to their pre-Yext state.\u00a0 If you use Yext, you should still manually check each site for duplicate and inconsistent citations (or have someone else do so).\u00a0 This is one area where man often beats machine.\"\"12)<\/strong> Make absolutely certain your name and address are squeaky-clean compliant with Google’s guidelines<\/a> before you build any<\/em> citations.\u00a0 If you’re in violation<\/a> and need to change either of those items on your Google listing, you don’t want to have to redo your citations work later.<\/p>\n

    13)<\/strong> Keep backups of whatever worksheet you use to keep track of your citations and logins.\u00a0 (There’s a great post on Moz<\/a> by Casey Meraz<\/a> that has a nice example of a citations worksheet<\/a>.)\u00a0 Keep at least one those copies is somewhere other<\/em> than on your local drive.\u00a0 Preferably you’d keep a backup in the “cloud,” by using a service like SugarSync<\/a> – which is a life-saver, by the way.)\u00a0 Be sure to specify the date in the filename every time you make changes to it, so you know what’s the most-recent copy.<\/p>\n

    14)<\/strong> Keep track of all your login info for each site, if you keep the logins separate from the worksheet I just described.\u00a0 Here, too, keep your logins backed-up safely. \u00a0Google Drive is always good for this purpose.\u00a0 The more backups, the better.<\/p>\n

    15)<\/strong> Use an email account that you wouldn’t mind letting someone else log into, if you ever want or need help with your citations.\u00a0 Ideally it would be an email account on your domain, but if that’s not an option, Gmail is OK.<\/p>\n

    16)<\/strong> Save the “additional info” (e.g. descriptions, list of services, etc.) that you have used or plan to use for each site.\u00a0 Keep it on Google Drive or in a Word doc or somewhere else you consider safe.\u00a0 You’ll want it easily accessible, and you won’t want to have to rewrite or try to remember all of it if it pulls a Houdini from your listings.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \"additional-iyp-info-save\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    17)<\/strong> Think long and hard about whether you want to keep running online Yellow Pages -style ads, which often use separate call-tracking numbers.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 So that when you receive a fat bill at the end of the month, your friendly sales reps can jab their thumbs into their chests and say “We<\/em> sent you 50 calls last month – exactly the number we promised!”\u00a0 But what they don’t tell you is that these numbers can kill the consistency of your business info online, and kill your rankings in the process.<\/p>\n

    18)<\/strong> Use the USPS ZIP Code Lookup<\/a> to make sure the ZIP code you’re using for your citations corresponds to the correct city (i.e. the one you’re located in).<\/p>\n

    19)<\/strong> Never submit a listing to a site before thoroughly<\/em> checking to make sure you’re not already listed there.\u00a0 If you’re listed and the listing isn’t correct, claim and fix it.<\/p>\n

    20)<\/strong> Don’t forget to search for your fax number when you’re hunting for incorrect citations.\u00a0\u00a0 There’s a chance you’ve got some duplicate listings that use your fax number as the main phone number. This may also happen with your toll-free number if you have one.<\/p>\n

    21)<\/strong> Many businesses have an official corporation name with “INC”, “LLC,” or some other suffix that isn’t part of their less-official DBA. \u00a0Make sure you know what your official \/ legal name is and that you also search for listings under that name.<\/p>\n

    22)<\/strong> Search for your business name in Google MapMaker<\/a>. This can often reveal duplicates. Search MapMaker for your phone number(s), too.<\/p>\n

    \"google-mapmaker-search\"<\/a><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    23)<\/strong> When you’re checking a site to see if you’re listed, don’t necessarily enter your full business name into the search box.\u00a0 If you do this and if the site’s search feature isn’t very robust, you might not find listings where the name isn’t 100% correct (which are precisely the ones you’ll want to uncover).\u00a0 For example, if your business is “Acme Dynamite Co.,” you should generally search for “Acme Dynamite” or “Acme” or even just “Dynamite,” so that you know you’re finding all the variations on your name.<\/p>\n

    24)<\/strong> Don’t rely solely on the built-in search feature on each site.\u00a0 Especially if you have more than one DBA floating around, you’ll want to check a given site for your listing(s) by Googling your DBA + the name of the directory site.\u00a0 That can turn up listings that the built-in search feature on some sites didn’t pick up. Using a Google “site:” search (AKA an advanced operator<\/a>) for a portion of your business name or for your phone number can sometimes uncover listings that the on-site search didn’t reveal.<\/p>\n

    \"advanced-operator-search\"<\/a><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    25)<\/strong> Google your phone number.\u00a0 Are there any search results that come up for businesses other than<\/em> yours?\u00a0 Do the same for your business name, and for your address (if your business is the only one located at that address).\u00a0 You may find citations that need fixing.<\/p>\n

    26)<\/strong> Be as consistent as possible in entering your NAPW (name \/ address \/ phone \/ website) info, but don’t worry about minor formatting inconsistencies from site to site (like “Ave” vs. “Avenue”).\u00a0 They’re unavoidable, and they won’t hurt your Google rankings.\u00a0 Just be consistent in what you feed the sites, but realize they may spit it out in slightly different ways – and that’s OK.<\/p>\n

    27)<\/strong> Start off with the data-aggregators or main data-providers<\/a> (depends on what country you’re in).\u00a0 In general, start your citation-building campaign with the bigger, more-important sites<\/a>, and work your way down to the dinky sites 99% of humanity hasn’t heard of.<\/p>\n

    28)<\/strong> Speaking of data-aggregators, Factual<\/a> is growing in importance. Make sure<\/a> you’re listed there. It’s also a great place to check for citation inconsistencies because it will show you the sources of your incorrect listings.<\/p>\n

    29)<\/strong> Try to claim \/ owner-verify your listings whenever possible.\u00a0 Not because the mere act of doing so will help your rankings – it won’t.\u00a0 Rather, you’ll want to claim your listings because you can often add additional info to your listing, and because it’s just easier to make changes, especially later on.<\/p>\n

    30)<\/strong> Take your time with picking out categories. Don’t skimp. \u00a0Always select as many relevant<\/em> categories as you can on each site.\u00a0 This will not only help your visibility on those sites, but it can also help your Google+ Local rankings (perhaps more so than ever before, now that Google has done away with “custom” categories<\/a>).<\/p>\n

    \"iyp-categories\"<\/a><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    31)<\/strong> Don’t use a forwarding URL.\u00a0 It’s allowed on most directory sites, but it’s not allowed in Google+ Local.\u00a0 You don’t want inconsistency between the URL you use for your Google listing and the URL you use with your citations.<\/p>\n

    32)<\/strong> Don’t skimp on the “extra details” (e.g. “services,” keywords,” photos, etc.).\u00a0 Google looks at this third-party info when trying to figure out exactly what your business is and what you offer and how to rank you.\u00a0 Also, you need to remember that every site where you have a citation – no matter how runty the site seems – can represent a little trickle of potential customers.\u00a0 Take a few extra minutes to make those citations really count.<\/p>\n

    33)<\/strong> Use an autofill tool, but still double-check your info to make sure it’s been entered correctly. (Chrome Autofill<\/a>, RoboForm<\/a>, or LastPass<\/a>, are good form-filling applications.)<\/p>\n

    34)<\/strong> What should you do if you have a bunch of listings on one site and none<\/em> of them has completely accurate NAPW info?\u00a0 Start by claiming one of the listings.\u00a0 Try to claim the one that has the most<\/em>-accurate NAPW info.\u00a0 If they’re all in equally bad shape, pick the one that has the most reviews, or that comes up highest in the site’s search results when you search for your business by name.\u00a0 Fix that listing up 100%.\u00a0 Then try to get the others removed.<\/p>\n

    35)<\/strong> Be paranoid about typos – even if you use an autofill tool.\u00a0 After you enter your info into a site, read over and double-check your basic info.<\/p>\n

    36)<\/strong> Have all<\/em> your passwords contain an upper-case letter and at least one number.\u00a0 Do this even for sites that don’t require that you do so.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because this will allow you to use the same password on every site.\u00a0 So use a password in the format “ABCxyz123,” rather than “abcxyz” or “abcxyz123.”\u00a0 8 characters is a good length; some sites don’t even allow longer passwords.\u00a0 Obviously, you’ll still want to guard your password carefully, but at least you won’t be making it unnecessarily difficult for you<\/em> to remember.<\/p>\n

    \"secure-pw\"<\/a><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    37)<\/strong> If the NAPW info that shows publicly your Google Places\/Plus page is formatted slightly differently from the info you entered into the “dashboard” of your Google listing, do NOT go changing around all of your citations to match Google’s formatting.\u00a0 For instance, let’s say you put “123 Main St.” into your Google Places\/Plus dashboard, but the way Google shows it publicly on your listing is “123 Main Street<\/em>.”\u00a0 You don’t need to change your citations to read “Street” instead of “St.”\u00a0 Not that you’d be able to anyway; each site has different formatting rules.\u00a0 Also, as I’ve mentioned, Google is “smart” enough<\/a> to be able to know that “St.” and “Street” mean the same thing.\u00a0 The same is true of phone numbers: Some sites want dashes, others want parentheses.<\/p>\n

    38)<\/strong> It’s OK to specify “alternate” phone numbers and fax numbers on sites that provide you with such fields.\u00a0 It won’t mess up your NAPW consistency.<\/p>\n

    Pro tip from Mike Blumenthal<\/a>:<\/em>\u00a0Add that alternate number to the Dashboard (and\/or Mapmaker) in Google so\u00a0that if there are any issues with the alternate number “leaking”\u00a0elsewhere it will not fracture your cluster.<\/p>\n

    39)<\/strong> If you’re located at a suite #, be consistent in how you enter the address when you’re given two “address” fields and when you’re only given one line to specify the address.<\/p>\n

    40)<\/strong> Don’t try to do all the citations at once.\u00a0 Either do them in waves, or work on a few every day.\u00a0 It takes time<\/a> – usually at least<\/em> a month or two – to get listed on all the sites that matter, or to fix listings on those sites.<\/p>\n

    41)<\/strong> On the other hand, don’t worry about how quickly you build citations.\u00a0 It’s fine if you do a bunch at once, and it’s fine if you nibble at them over time.\u00a0 It won’t make a difference to your rankings.<\/p>\n

    42)<\/strong> Monitor your citations, and your competitors’.\u00a0 Oh, and wouldn’t you know it, Whitespark includes a handy citation monitoring service<\/a> with\u00a0their Local Citation Finder.<\/p>\n

    43)<\/strong> Never let more than a few months go by without doing an audit of your citations – so you know which ones are OK and which still need fixing .\u00a0 You might be surprised at what you’ll find, even after you’ve put in a ton of work and followed these best-practices.\u00a0 Don’t rely solely on “free scan” tools, either.\u00a0 They don’t always uncover the issues you might want to fix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Building citations is the hardest part of getting your business visible in the local search results. Doing it right will take you a few hours.\u00a0Doing it wrong will take many hours (and possibly a lot of money). Worst of all, ineffective citation-building or ignoring citations altogether can mean fewer customers for you.\u00a0 You’re unlikely to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3078,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"classification":[],"class_list":["post-3067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3067"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5139,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3067\/revisions\/5139"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3067"},{"taxonomy":"classification","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/classification?post=3067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}