Citation plays a crucial role in local rankings. Getting it right may sound easy but if you do not implement it the right way, you’ll end up losing your leads. The core idea is to create as many consistent local listings you can on as many local business listing sites you can. According to the 2016 Local Citation Survey by BrightLocal, accurate citations are very important for rankings. Your business listing is your online business card.
“Regardless if a brand has 10 or 10,000 locations, the local listings need to be accurate and monitored ongoing for discrepancies, ensuring users are able to successfully contact and visit the business”.
– Nick Neels, Location3
Want to download the list of 87 Top Citation Websites right away?
Here are the three basic requirements to build a local listing:
- A local business
- A local phone number
- A dedicated local address
You can find the guidelines for representing your business on Google here.
Managing your citations
Once your citations are up, you have to make sure you maintain them. You have to keep your NAP consistent and accurate across the web. You’re ranking is highly dependent on how accurate your listings are. A duplicate listing on the same website can hurt you as well.
People follow different techniques to manage their citations. Here at TechWyse, we use the Whitespark Local Citation Finder to crawl all instances of a citation across the web. There are also tools like Vendasta which help you manage and repair your listings.
The idea is to make all the instances of your listing accurate and precise. All these accurate citations act like a positive sign for ranking during local search, just like how links are for ranking in an organic search.
If you are not using any tools for managing your citations, make sure you look for the following:
- Incorrect NAP
- Duplicates on the same website
- Incomplete Citations
Getting Reviews
Reviews are an essential part of building your brand's reputation, and having a healthy set of reviews will definitely give you a leg up on the competition. Some niches will find it harder than others to get a review — for example, a realtor or a dentist may be able to inspire a positive review from satisfied clients more easily than a plumbing company, simply because of the nature of the work and the longevity of the client relationship. Even if a series of positive reviews feel beyond your reach, it's important to have at least a few because a negative review on the listing can seriously affect your local Google rankings.
It’s always up to the customer to leave a review. Here are a few methods you can use to get reviews:
- Give rewards/discounts for customers who leave reviews
- Let your customers know where to post the review through print materials with clear instructions
- Link to your citations from your website (to show the reviews)
- Feel free to request a review after a service
- Always follow guidelines of the platform you use
- Keep your customers happy!
Getting positive reviews on a continuous basis will help your business grow. It will not only help you rank higher but also generate more leads.
Getting your strategies right
There are several brands competing for a spot in the local search and if you don’t have a strong strategy in place, you will lose your spot to your competition. Local citation is important in different ways in each industry. From a lawyer's perspective, a listing will help her customers know about her location whereas for a restaurant, a listing can provide information about their working hours. You can also create location targeted landing pages and blog posts. This can come in handy if you are looking to rank for different services in different locations. Having a web page with all the locations is always recommended.
Some platforms only list business that fall under a specific industry. A platform like Zomato will only display details about restaurants and eateries in your area. There are also platforms like Yelp which will have listings in multiple categories. You will also come across platforms which are exclusive to a particular country or a region. If you are out of strategies, you can always keep track of what your competitors are doing. Get your business up in places where all your competitors are already present. All you have to do is get yourself up there.
You can use these creative ways to increase your brand awareness:
- Host an event.
- Support a cause.
- Provide free Wifi.
- Run social competitions.
- Get media mentions.
- Build relationships with manufacturers and organizations.
- Sponsor an event.
I’ve placed a download link to an Ebook created by our go-to local SEO guy Nithin.
Here’s a small preview of the Ebook.
DA: 93
DA: 83
DA: 58
Submit Listing Here
DA: 49
Submit Listing Here
The Ebook has 87 citation websites with a direct link to the submission page. It’s time to get your citations live and skyrocket your local rankings.
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Your blog so nice I appreciate you for the great job
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Wonderful collection of business listing sites. I really like it
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Very useful local business listing sites. These all are so useful for local seo.
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Thanks you for sharing great article that actually makes sense and not a space filler.
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Very Informative Blog.These Blog Commenting Sites Would Be very Helpful to the seo marketers who wants to improve their website ranking on search results page.Worth visiting as well as worth sharing.Thanks to you.keep posting
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It is wonderful info thanks for sharig.
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Wonderful collection of business listing sites. I really like it. It will be very helpful for me to rank my website
Thanks for sharing, keep it up the good work.
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Great job you did by sharing high PR site. Thanks for sharing this
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thanks for sharing helpful information to create quality backlinks and increase the website ranking.
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Nice list of blog commenting sites. I think, it’s time of getting the back link from niche relevant blog post.
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Helpful post you wrote, I would appreciate for this valuable article and info. Thanks for sharing the article with us.
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The business listing sites were really very helpfull for submissions.
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I was looking out for some good business listing sites, your post saved me a huge amount of time. Thank you so much for sharing. Also, you’ve mentioned some pretty good points in getting the strategies right, those are some points that many startups overlook upon an then wonder why nothing is really working out.
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Regards,
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Thanks for sharing great list of local business directories. I was searching for best directories for my restaurant business from so long. This list help my business to grow. I personally want to add one more restaurant business directory that is Restaurant Guru. They have huge database for best restaurants in all over the world.
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Great introduction article, You will have to keep in mind a lot of factor to rank your business on top of Google search result it’s really important to place business information into local listings,Thanks for sharing with us
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Thankyou… useful information.
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Hi Pranoy,
Thanks for sharing… From the last 2 weeks, I searching for a site list but unable to get useful information. And Through your blog, I got information that I want.. Thanks again and keep it up.
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THANKS FOR SHARING YOUR BLOG… !
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Thanks for the best sites
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Thanks a lot to help out the people around the world through your business listing sites website collection. Additionally I would like to recommend you all guys only listing your business data on those sites is not enough to boost your sale. You will have to keep in mind a lot of factor to rank your business on top of Google search result. You can find blog BusiTips where you can find a deep explanation of how to list your business with proper optimization for search engine.
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Thanks for sharing your valuable information.
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Thanks for sharing wonderful list Pranoy! it’s really important to place business information into local listings! Then only you will improve your local business!
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Thank you for sharing the useful list. It helped me a lot.
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thanks for sharing this
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This is a very helpful site list. Directory submission is the best way for your business to get recognized in the market.
Thanks a lot
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Top business listing website for almost every industry. Very effective for my footwear business. Thank you so much for sharing with us.
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Great collection of business listing website. they will definitely help me in listing my business. Thank You so much for taking an effort to collect this website for us. thank you.
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This is nice website for the local listing website good direction for the all business
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Thanks for sharing this with us
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Thanks for sharing business listing list . Its really help me to improve my site seo
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Its quite helpful article, thanx for sharing amazing information.
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Hello,
Thanks for sharing the information. That is very helpful for increasing my knowledge in this field
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really amazing Article with plenty of useful information.
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thanks for sharing
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Hi Pranoy thanks for your valuable information do you have more option like for local business listing
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Thanks a lot for sharing the websites.
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SEO blog is a more important part of finding rank on search engine. by the blog, you can explain everything about your business that is best according to the user.
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Thanks for sharing. 🙂 🙂
It saved my time
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great and informative article thank you.
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Best and well maintained list of local business listing sites. Thanks for sharing with us!
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Very good information for business listing sites. Thank for share.
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Thank You For Sharing Such A Great Local Business Listing Sites with Us. It’s Really Helpful for us..