Top 50 Citations Every SMB Should Have
and then some
Not all citations are equal. When it comes to citations the local algorithm is factoring quality and quantity. The purpose of the algorithm calculating or weighing citations is to measure which businesses are more credible and/or trustworthy.
Name, address, and phone (NAP) need to be listed uniformly across all mediums. Mismatching information can cause trust issues and can negatively effect your search rankings for terms that generate local results. I will cover this in detail in The 10 Commandments of Local Search.
I like to do an inventory to find out where the business is already listed and to get a baseline at the beginning of a LSO project. It is very common for new business or new locations for a business to have a very limited number of citations. Businesses that are more seasoned will often have thousands of citations. Overtime a seasoned business will naturally acquire more citations because data aggregators, search engines, data providers, and many digital portals all sharing information and all using spiders to index data.
In your Google browser type “business name” + “business city” + “business phone” and select “search” You can see below that Redfearn Dental has 9,050 citations or mentions about the business in various sites around the web. If your bored you can visit each and every one.
The first LSO step for all small businesses is to acquire the right citations. Over the next 30-60 days I will be adding step by step tutorials for listing, claiming, and verifying your business listing with each of these important citation sources.
I will also cover other tips like deleting duplicates. For some citations the entire process can be completed online via business centers, for others you may need to make phone calls or fax authorizations to clean up/delete data. Most citations are free however there is a small group that you will have to pay to play, in some cases one time, others monthly, others a small PPC budget.
Drum roll please……
- State Registry (Utah.gov for example)
- Local Chamber of Commerce
- Acxiom
- Localeze
- Infogroup
- Google Places
- Yahoo Local
- Bing Local
- Yelp.com
- SuperPages.com
- YellowPages.com
- Foursquare.com
- YellowBook.com
- JustClickLocal.com
- MerchantCircle.com
- Yellowbot.com
- Manta.com
- ShowMeLocal.com
- Yellowee.com
- Local.com
- iBegin.com
- Shopcity.com
- MagicYellow.com
- DexKnows.com
- RateMD.com
- HealthGrades.com
- Dun & Bradstreet
- Better Business Bureau
- Judy’s Book
- Angie’s List
- CitySearch.com
- CityGridMedia
- InsiderPages.com
- Kudzu.com
- Best of the Web
- DirectoryCentral.com
- BrownBook.com
- MojoPages.com
- EZLocal.com
- HotFrog.com
- Travigo
- Priceline
- Booking.com
- upcoming.yahoo.com
- myhotelvideo.com
- hotel-ami.us
- hotel.info
- theuseexplorer.com
- restaurant-ami.de
- wcities.com
- yellowpages.aol.com
- sfgate.com
- boorah.com
- city-data.com
- yell.com
- realpageslive.com
- servicemagic.com
- gatheringguide.com
- eventbrite.com
- asklocalpages.com
- openwifispots.com
- pubcrawler.com
- findlaw.com
- hopspot.com
- timeout.com
- hotels.com
- partypop.com
- CitySquares
- Google +
- MySpace
- TripAdvisor.com
- DicoverOurTown.com
- Zidster.com
- GetFave.com
- Askcity
- Bolevards.com
- Matchbin.com
- YellowUSA.com
- WhitePages.com
- MapQuest.com
- OpenList.com
- Ubl.org
- Wellness.com
- Amazon.com
- Edmunds.com
- Addresses.com
- UrbanSpoon.com
- Experian.com
- LocalMatters.com
- Praized.com
- Telenav.com
- Tellme.com
- DAPlus.us
- SwitchBoard
- Centerd.com
- CityVoter.com
- SeekitLocal.com
- AmericanTowns.com
- HelloMetro.com
- Addresses.com
- LittleEngine.com
- MyCity.com
- GenieKnows.com
- Advertise.com
- AllPages.com
- B2BYellowPages.com
- MetroBot
- Hotbot.com
- Infospace.com
- LocalSearch.com
- LookSmart.com
- MyCity.com
- MyLocalHeadlines.com
- SearchBug.com
- SwitchBoard.com
- TrafficEngine.net
- GoMyLocal.com
- Verizon.com
- ZoomInfo.com
- v-enable.com
- YellowPageCity.com
- Tyloon.com
- Tupalo.com
- TrueLocal.com
- Inter800.com
- deepdata.com
- 411.com
- AnyWho.com
- USCity. net
- MacraesBlueBook.com
- Zipcodez.com
- Jigsaw.com
- DogPile.com
- WebCrawler.com
- MetaCrawler.com
- webfetch.com
Check out Myles Anderson’s Top 50 Citation Sources for the UK.
Related Articles:
The 10 Commandments of Local Search
Listing your Business with Acxiom
Listing your Business with Localeze
Listing your Business with Infogroup
Insiders Guide to Google Places
About Cody Baird
In 2011, I founded milkmen.com, a firm specializing in local search marketing and local brand strategy. Local SEO, search marketing, SEO, conversion optimization, local brand development and messaging.
My role as President involves recruiting and managing our marketing and sales teams. Leading the product/strategic vision and evangelizing local search, local brand strategy, search marketing, and milkmen.com.
To relax I read on a variety of subjects, go golfing, hiking, running, & anything outdoors.
I love the look of your website. I recently built mine and I was looking for some ideas for my site and you gave me a few. Can I ask you whether you developed the website by youself?
Hilario,
Thanks for the compliment. Grant Judkins is our head developer and the designer of our site.
Our site is illustration based. Our concept was to use illustration and to tell a story. I like the story telling concept in an industry that can be very drab and complicated. The site is new but we plan to do many more short, story based videos about the various topics and services that we cater to.
We use a software called parallax that is flash based for the homepage banner. Flash is only used on the homepage banner. Flash can be a nightmare when is comes to SEO objectives so it must be used sparingly and with caution.
Do you mind if I quote a few of your posts as long as I provide credit and sources back to your webpage? My website is in the very same area of interest as yours and my visitors would certainly benefit from some of the information you present here. Please let me know if this alright with you. Thank you!
Benjamin,
No problem. I hope that your users find the information helpful.
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Thanks Leigh,
Very kind of you. I saw your site. Interesting. So you built a directory for all things K9? I’d love to talk more about the path of building a directory if you’re interested. I have a lot of questions for you or any other reader with experience designing, building, creating a directory.
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