Now that you know what a local citation is, how do you actually get them?
First things, first – if you’ve already setup a Facebook, Google+, FourSquare, Yelp, or any other number of social media profiles – you’ll want to start with those. Make sure that your NAP (name, address, phone number) is used consistently throughout all of the listings that you already have.
Pro Tip: Make sure that you’re using your local phone number, and not a toll free number, in these profiles.
You can also use services like BrightLocal and WhiteSpark to see what other listings you have out there.?If there are any inconsistencies in your preexisting citations, you’ll want to correct those first.
Next, you’ll want to make sure that you’re listed in the major local business?aggregators – sites like?Acxiom, Infogroup, Localeze, and?Factual. Many smaller directories get?their data from these big guys, so there’s a chance that if you add your business to these directories, you’ll also be added to a number of small directories as well.
Now that we’ve got that taken care of, how do we create new citations?
You can start with a bit of competitive analysis. For example, let’s assume that you’re a florist?located Atlanta, GA. We would start by doing a simple search in Google for “florist.” We would likely see something like this:
For this search, it appears that Gresham’s Florist of Atlanta?is doing pretty well for themselves, having claimed the top local listing. If we want to try and emulate their success, one of the things we need to do is find out where their business is listed. To do that, we’ll perform another search – this time, searching specifically for?a combination of their business name and their local phone number.
Pro Tip: Because we’re only interested in seeing external websites that their company is listed on, make sure you add
-domain.com to your query.
Here’s what we get:
This list provides us with a starting point – a list of both structured and unstructured citations. We can now review each of the listings that appear for Gresham’s Florist (our competitor) and work towards getting our own business added to those same websites. From there, it’s about compiling a list of your “targets” and reaching out to them – sometimes it’s as simple as filling out form and creating the listing yourself but for others, you may need to do some digging to find out who runs the site, and reach out to them personally.
Hopefully this helps you get started! If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below or drop us a line.
