Google My Business Action Plan
Building Citations
Citations are mentions of your company’s information (Mainly the Name, Address and Phone) on major website directories.
Here is an example of a business’s citation on the Better Business Bureau Website:
The accuracy and quality of these citations are a big factor in the visibility of your listing.
Google looks to cross verify your NAP (Name, Address and Phone) on these top directories. If it finds inconsistencies…it can hurt your rankings.
Use the process that best suits you and your organization below.
Finding Your Current Citations
Notes:
This is one of those areas that changes a lot. Currently the best free source for checking your citations is The Hoth. https://www.thehoth.com/local-seo-tool/
Enter your information EXACTLY as it appears on GMB or you website.
After it scans, you will see the following results about the inaccurate listings it has found.
Inaccurate Listings Percentage:
- This is a quick overview of your listings and the inconsistencies found on them.
- 33% is not bad for this example listing. You really want to have this number around 20-30%. Lower the better.
Citations List:
- Go through the listings and first look for “Listing Not Found”
- Click on the arrow (>) and it will give you the link to add your site.
- Next, scroll through and look for any listings that have a red X next to the Name, Address and Phone.
- If the listing is completely wrong, click the arrow (>) to go to that site and correct it.
- If the listing is slightly wrong, for example:
Boulevard vs Blvd
St. vs Saint
Unit vs Suite
Don’t worry about it, Google knows the similarities and will not penalize you.Most citation scanners will flag this stuff, basically to get you to hire them to fix…but its unnecessary.
Citation Building Yourself
Note:
To make this as easy as possible, I’ve created a list of the top tier 1 citations below.
They are listed from the most important down.
Conditions
- Enter your business information exactly as you did in for your Google My Business listing.
- Many websites will request that you create an account in order to add your citation.
Additionally, you might want to create a spreadsheet that records all the logins for you. - As you build citations, you will start receive some junk calls and emails.
If you can use an email account associated with your domain like marketing@yourdomain. com it will definitely help filter out the spam.
Note:
To make this as streamlined as possible, the following is a list of all the Tier 1 Citations we use at SiteDesignZ.
If you can get an account in at least 90% of these , it will have a BIG impact on your GMB rankings.
Outsourcing Citation Building
I’ve built thousands citations over the years, the truth is, its pretty easy to do. But it take quite a bit of time to do it.
Nowadays, the citations building community has definitely matured and become more cost effective then doing it yourself.
So I recommend simply outsourcing your citation building.
Below is currently the best source for outsourcing your citations.
Note:
BrightLocal is the company that I personally recommend. This is the same vendor I use – and that many other agencies use. ( BTW, Im not affiliated with BrightLocal)
The cost is now only $2-3 per (Manually built) Citations.
You can simply pick and choose which ones you need based on your initial citations can from the about section.
Here is a comparison of the outsourcing citation market.
Not only is BrightLocal very cost efficient, but their quality of work has been consistently strong.
ADDITIONALLY (BONUS):
I also seriously recommend using their Data Aggregation submission service in addition to your manual citations.
https://www.brightlocal.com/citation-builder/local-data-aggregators/
This service will compliment your citations by adding your listing to the top 4 Aggregators
Which in turn submit your listing to thousands of directories, mobile apps, and maps around the world!
Factual, Neustar Localeze, Foursquare and Infogroup
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