How to Build Citations for a Business

Have you ever wondered why some businesses rank at the top of the Google Map Pack and others don’t? Your answer is probably yes and here is my explanation: Local SEO. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that ranking in the top 3 of Google is a huge advantage for businesses. So how do you do it? You capitalize on the three main aspects of Local SEO: Google My Business optimization, Location Specific Website Pages, and Local SEO Citations. In this article I’m going to explain how to build citations for a business.

Why Build Citations for a Business?

Learning How to Build Citations for a Business is necessary to growing your Local SEO and ranking at the top of Google. Think of citations for a business like this: it’s the year 2000 and you’re in need of a local service so you head over to your stack of 3000 page phone books. One of the books is Yellow Pages, another one is DEX, there might even be a Pacific Bell Directory. Luckily, the business you’re looking for is listed in all three of these books. Now, fast forward 21 years to today; those phonebooks are now what we call Online Directories and those business listings are citations for a business. 

What Are Business Citations?

Citations are an online reference to a business that features things like business’ name, address, and phone number (NAP).

Typically, when an SEO refers to citations, they are talking about a group of individual business listings on various sites. From our research on citation building we reviewed key outlets like Search Engine Journal.

Why Are Citations for a Business So Important?

But why are they so important? Let’s go back to 2000 for a moment. What if you were choosing between two businesses and one of them was listed in all three phone books and the other one was only listed in one book? Which business would you choose? Probably the one listed three times. You get the idea? The more Online Directories your business is listed on and the more Local SEO Citations your business has, the more likely Google is to rank you #1 in the Google Map Pack search results. Just like we are below.

How Do You Get More Citations for Your Business?

Before you learn the trick to getting more citations, I recommend you perform a Local SEO Audit for your own business right here. Now, let’s get started. Here at Momentum Digital we like to use a tool called Bright Local to organize and track all of our citations. Essentially it’s a very simple five step process.

1. Set up and optimize your Google My Business listing
2. Sign Up with Bright Local right here
3. Import your Google My Business listing to Bright Local
4. Click “Citation Builder” in the left sidebar
5. Pay $75 to automatically update 25 key business citations (or pay more for more)
6. OR save money by following the process in the video above

Momentum Digital chooses to manually work through each key directory adding and correcting citations. This way we have the ability to add backlinks, remove duplicate listings, and spice up the profiles. In fact, we highly recommend working through the process manually so you can ensure everything is being done correctly. There have been numerous instances where on of our clients have used a paid-for Business Citations service like Yext and we’ve had to go back and fix EVERY citation. However, it’s a long and tedious process…that Momentum Digital would be more than happy to help with!

How to Get Your Business to Rank Locally

By now you know that the key to rank high in local search results on Google is to get as many citations for a business as possible. Assuming you have a Google My Business account, the next step is to set up an account with Bright Local. From there, you know what you have to do. Dig into those citations and get your business ranking higher! If you run into any trouble along the way, don’t hesitate to send us a message here.