[Build Backlinks Online] Finding and Building Citations Like an Agency

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Finding and Building Citations
Like an Agency'


Posted by Casey Meraz
This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it
provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are
entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

So you want to rank locally? If you have already worked hard to add a few
citations, complete your on-site local optimization, acquire customer reviews,
and build some locally relevant links, well, now it's time to shift your focus.
According to David Mihm, citations make-up roughly 25% of the overall local
ranking factors.

Why It's Time to Change Your Thinking...

I've mentioned before that it's time to stop chasing links, and for local SEO
it's time to stop chasing citations! What do I mean by that? If your whole
purpose for creating citations is to improve your local rankings, then you are
probably relying too much on Google. What would happen if those rankings were to
suddenly go away? Instead of viewing the process building your brand in the
local ecosystem as a laborious task that needs to get done so that you can rank,
then you aren't seeing the big picture.

Each of the citation sites that you're trying to get listed on were created
with goals far beyond just helping businesses rank for Google's local results.
In most cases, they were created to provide a good customer experience and send
potential shoppers to worthy vendors. Each of these sites gets their own
traffic, and setting up your business listing on them is another place for
potential customers to find you.

Below is a quick example from a fairly low traffic attorney site. In a one
month period, they are getting traffic from other websites where their citations
also reside.



It's time to change your mindset and get motivated to start building citations
for the right purpose. If you do that, the rankings you long for will come with
it. Now, here's how we find and get our business listed in these citations in an
organized and speedy fashion at my firm.

Make Sure Your Information (N.A.P.) is Accurate.

Having accurate information that correlates across your website, Google Plus
page, and local ecosystem citations is the most important part of building and
fixing your businesses citations. Your business Name, Address, and Phone Number
(referred to as N.A.P. format) is essential for local rankings. Make sure this
information is 100% consistent before moving forward!

Below is an example of the appropriate NAP format for a Law Firm:

The Reeves Law Group 515 S Flower St Los Angeles, CA 90071 (213) 271-9318

You will notice that most directories display information like the example
above. Some will allow you to add a link to your website, but some will not. In
this case, the link is not the important information. The accurate listing of
the business in the NAP format is.

We've established that having accurate and consistent listing information is
critical, so how do we do it?

The Easy Way May Not Be the Best Way

One easy way to get listed consistently on multiple directories is by using a
service like Yext. While that can be a great option, depending on your
situation, make sure you know what you are getting into. Yext, for example, will
easily publish to dozens directories with the information you submit. Some will
start showing instantly, and some will come up within a few days with very
little work. But at over $475 a year (yes, annually) for the retail version, you
might think twice about it.

If you are not looking to purchase services like Yext...

Here are Three Fundamental Steps to a Great Alternative Approach:



Prepare Your Information

I always like to start by creating a quick Google Doc with the client's NAP
information at the top. This allows me to easily copy and paste the fields if I
need them while I'm building citations. It also allows me to keep the data
consistent across the board. Typically, I ensure my Google Plus page is 100%
accurate with my business information, and then copy and paste the information
from Google Places. I will also use this same Google Doc for tracking my
citation sources in one easy to use place.

Feel free to download this free Local Citation Building Template.

In case you decide not to use the spreadsheet I created, you will see I have
fields for some of the most common information that citation sources ask for-
including:


Your Name - Your actual name or the name of business owner

Email Address - The Email Address that will be checked by the business

Company Name - The company's exact name as it appears correctly on Google Plus

Address - The company's exact address as it appears correctly on Google Plus

Suite or Floor Number - Only use if there is a Suite or Floor number

City - The company's exact city name as it appears correctly on Google Plus

State- The state the company resides in

Zip - The zip code of the company

Phone Number - The LOCAL phone number of the exact business location

Landing Page For Location - The landing page for that office or physical
location


I also added some advanced fields that I also see on some submission sites.
Here are some examples:


800 Number - The 800 Number of the Business

Logo URL - The URL of the company's logo hosted on your website

Facebook URL - The Facebook URL of the company

Twitter Handle - The company's Twitter Handle

Places Page Link - A Link to their G+ Local Page or Google Places Page


**Below is an example of the header from my Local Citation Building Template.



Citation Building Can Be a Bit Tedious, So Here's an Easier Way...



If you're like me and you have the attention span of a lemming, then you need
some reinforcements. But when dealing with something that's so important, how do
you prevent data corruption and ensure accuracy at the same time?

My answer is Roboform and it costs between $9.95 and $39.95. To be clear I am
not affiliated in any way shape or form, it's just the program that I found
works best for me. So, I will share how I use it.

Roboform allows me to input the information about a location and have it
autofill on many of the submission sites. It's not perfect and it requires a
manual review, but spending a couple of minutes setting this up is worth its
weight in gold. Not only will it ensure it outputs what you put into it, but it
will also store the information and you can share the data with your team. It
will also integrate into your browser where you can use a drop down and select
the auto fill information you want. Basically it just saves a ton of time.

How to use Roboform for Citation Building

Once you've downloaded the program from Roboform.com and installed it, you can
open it up and go to File > New > Identity to create a new identity. You
will end up creating and naming a new Identity for each different business
location you have. You can then click the edit button and spend a few minutes
and fill out all of the information you want to your heart's desire. If you're
just building citations through Roboform, then you can stick to the Person,
Business and Address sections and only fill out the fields I have listed in my
spreadsheet.

Start off with the Person section and fill out the following fields that are
circled below including:


First Name - The first name you want to display on the listing. Typically, it
is the same as the person registering the account.

Last Name - The last name you want to display on the listing. Typically, it is
the same as the person registering the account.

Phone - The Business Phone Number for that location (Your NAP)

Email - The mail address that is going to register the account and be the
contact email. Use this if they're going to be the same email.




Next Move On To the Business Section

On this page, I typically only use the company name and website. The company
name will be the actual company name in your NAP format and the website will be
the landing page of that physical location. Sometimes these are truncated to
just the domain, but it's always better to try and get the link you receive to
go to the actual landing page for that location.



Lastly, You Can Move onto the Address Section In this section you will add your
address from the NAP format.



And that takes care of that part!

Now you are setup to start finding citations and knocking them out! We will use
Roboform to auto fill the fields instead of typing them each time. They will
still require manual review but it will save a lot of time!

Now, Let's Get Listed on Some Local Directories, AKA: Build Some Citations

The goal of doing all of this citation is work is to make sure we end up with
good data. Check it to make sure you're not already listed before you add your
listing to each of these websites. Spamming the web is not cool; even if it is
unintentional. So follow this quick three step process called CHECK, FIX, ADD.


Check to see if the listing is there

If the listing is there, make sure the NAP is 100% accurate. If not, fix it!

If the listing does not exist, add it


If you are using the free Local Citation Building Template I created, you will
see a list where you can easily add the information along with notes about your
new citation sources. I highly suggest keeping track of this information.
Remember that you're not just doing this to impress the search engines. You want
to have access to this information in the future. What if you decide to move one
day and didn't have this?

A Screenshot from the spreadsheet:



At my company, I also give this information to our clients in the unlikely case
that they felt we were doing a bad job and wanted to fire us.

Make Sure You Have the Top Citations

Whether your business is brand new or old and established, I suggest you start
off by adding a new listing or correcting your incorrect listing at the Top
Citation Sources suggested by Getlisted.org. They worked hard to put together
this list of citation sources they believe carry the most weight in different
industries and geographic areas. They provide two great resources to act as a
starting point:

View the Top Citation Sources by City

View the Top Citation Sources by Category

Just like with every citation source you come across, make sure to add them to
your tracking spreadsheet.

Next, Don't Re-Invent The Wheel. Find Your Top Competitors

Do you already know who your top competition is? Check them out and see who
ranks consistently for the keywords you want to rank for.

Finding citations a year or two ago was a bit harder than it is today. These
days you have some easy and affordable options to see where your competing
businesses are listed. In this article I will discuss an easy way using
Whitespark's Local Citation Finder and another method for searching for them
manually through Google. As with any data collection, I always recommend using
multiple sources to ensure greater accuracy.

Method #1: Using Whitespark to find your competitors citations

Start by navigating to the "Your Projects" tab.

Step 1: Create a new project. To keep things organized, I will typically create
a new project by using the "+ Create new Project" button under the "Your
Project" tab. It will ask you for your business Name and Phone Number and hit
the Create Project button.



Step 2: Find Citation Sources by Keyword - Use the option to "Search By
Keyphrase" and enter the keyword information you want to rank for.



Step 3: Wait For the Results - After starting the search, wait for a few
minutes for it to compile the results. In my experience, it's typically pretty
fast. You will also get a confirmation email when the process is complete.



Step 4: See What Came Out and Start Getting Citations - After it's complete,
click back on the your "projects link" to see a list of your projects. Select
the pink Citation Sources link to see what results came up for your listing. One
of the best things about Whitespark is that they have also compiled site
submission URL's in their data.

For some listings, you can easily just click the link "Submit Your Business".
You can then just use the RoboForm drop down to autofill the information making
citation building simple! You may not want to bring Whitespark home to mom
because she's so easy.

Method #2: Conduct a NAP Search in Google

You can also conduct the searches you want in a search engine, and come up with
your top competitors. This is also a great way to do it because you can use the
compare option to see which competitors have.

To do this, simply pull up Google and enter your competitors NAP information.
Below I entered a company name, their address, and phone number that I found
from their Google Plus Local page.





With this information, I can now visit each one of these sources, and add my
business to the same sources if they allow a submission. You will find some
sites do not allow submissions, or are owned by the business themselves.
Whitespark has a cool option to mark these as useless which makes their data
very clean and accurate.

Be Very Careful If You Outsource Citation Building

If you don't have the time and are considering outsourcing citation building
please be careful, and have some serious QA. If your people are not being
meticulous with your data, you're going to have a lot of data confusion on your
hands, and spend twice the amount of time trying to fix it. On the other hand,
some companies like Whitespark offer these services a la carte as well.

Want to Learn More?

If you want to learn more advanced citation building after you have exhausted
these resources, I suggest you read my write up of some tips from David Mihm's
presentation from Local U Advanced Baltimore. Better yet, if you have a chance
make sure you attend the next Local U Advanced session.
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