What is citation building?

Simply put, citation building is any mention of your business on web pages and directories. The goal is to have lots of these mentions in order to increase your local SEO (Search Engine Optimization) traffic. Not only will your SEO increase, but search engines like Google and Bing will pick this up which will also improve your search ranking and search engine credibility. The best part? You don’t need to link your business website to any citation directory in order to be listed on them! 

Why use citation building?

Think of citation building as forming credibility on search engines for your business. You want to grow its popularity and have a great reputation. This way, Google or whatever search engine you decide to use, will trust that your business is stable and reputable. Trust is the keyword here. Some websites are formed around crappy, unuseful reviews and have only a main social media page for their private business.

This is great for today’s social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, but it’s not actually on any kind of search platform. Facebook and Twitter earn you comments and discussions which is great, but frankly, you can’t rely on a mention or “tag” of your business on social media. It’s just simply not enough!

How do i build my citations?

The easiest and quickest way to build citations is to find a good website like Whitespark or Brightlocal that will automate the process for you. All you do is plug in your business’s NAP (name, address and phone number), and answer a few category questions. You’ll have a well-generated list for citations that your business can be listed on. You’ll be entering all of your NAP’s on what are called business directories. This means you’ll be looking at websites like Yelp, Yellow Pages, and so on. These are quality sites, so you want to make sure that your NAP is consistent throughout the whole process so that search engines find your business to be credible.

If you’re already on directories, you can find out which ones by using Brightlocal (which we use), that lists all of the websites your business is listed on.