What Are Local SEO Citations? 

Local citations are a reference of a local business from a webpage or website online. This can include many variations but the standard citation is considered a NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) These references are usually found on websites, local directories, navigation maps websites, and web 2.0’s. 

How Do Local SEO Citations Help Me Get Ranked On Maps? 

A consistent citation pattern found throughout the internet will help search bots such as Google, and Google Maps bots trust your business is located at the city and address as it’s listed in the Google My Business Listing or Bing Maps. If there are inconsistencies within your NAP (name address phone number) then this could indicate to the search engine that your business information is incorrect and could lower the quality score of your map listing which then lowers your ranking ability for competitive search terms. 

How Do I Get Local Citations? 

There are many ways to get local citations. You can manually create them yourself by creating new accounts with the most popular online directories such as Google My Business, Bing.com, Yelp.com, Manta, Yellowpages, etc. or you can purchase a service from a local seo agency or you can also purchase some citations from networks that are already synced with dozens of online directories. 2 of these large networks are Yext and Moz Local  

How Many Local Citations Do I Need To Rank On The Maps? 

It all depends on the search term and location you’re trying to rank on top of maps. Using some reverse engineering of the current businesses that are ranking for specific terms in your city will help get you closer to the top. There are tools & software online that can help you reverse engineer your competition. Some of these tools are Whitespark.ca & brightlocal.com. They also have done-for-you services as well although it’s more of a cookie cutter type service and for highly competitive and long term results you should hire an expert that can create these with unique, dynamic ad copy for each business description for each of the directories in order to ensure these are indexed into Google’s index. If they’re not indexed then they don’t get crawled by the bots. If they don’t get crawled by the bots then you won’t get credit from these citations. 

Can I Copy & Paste The Business Information? 

I suggest you copy and paste the NAP (name address & phone number) to each of the new business profiles you create. You want everything as Exact as possible. If your business is listed as 1000 W. Nowhere Rd. suite 4F NE, Anywhere, CA 92101 then make sure you add the period in the correct place, Use hashtag if the Google listing uses a hashtag, use suite if the listing is typed with suite, Capitalized in the rights spots. Everything is as exact as possible other wise Google’s bot could get confused and find the information different and either not count it towards your local SEO ranking score or get a poor quality ranking which is basically way below the top of the search results. 

My Business Information is Incorrect On Some Citations What Do I Do?

This happens a lot, some of these citations could have been created without you even knowing about it from the directory bots scraping information from the internet or your business may have moved recently or in the past. There are ways to fix this. Some local citation directories will allow you to claim your business listing and make the necessary edits. Some you may have to pay for and others may be for free. This can take time to fix and it’s part of the Local SEO ranking methods. If you don’t want to deal with the hassle and tediousness of claiming each individual listing you can contact us and we’ll be glad to help. We’ll even scan and deliver a report of all your major citations for free.