Marketing & Sales

Citations & Business Directories

March 21, 2024

Outrank the competition with Citations.

You might have heard that building “citations” is good practice for local SEO but have not quite realised just how essential it is. This article will look at a recent case study of a business that used three citation campaigns over 9 months to reach multiple top three positions on Google in a major city.

Ok, so what is a citation?

A citation in the context of local SEO refers to any online mention of a business’s name, address, phone number (NAP), and sometimes a link to a website. Sounds straightforward, right?

Every time your business is “cited” on other websites & social media platforms, trust is built by validating the business’s information to Google & other search engines, improving your business search visibility via improved website rankings. In some cases, citations of your business on local directories such as Google, Bing & Yell.com will increase website visitors and deliver customer leads.

Is a citation the same as a backlink?

Building directory listings is different from paying “Dodgy Dave” on Fiver for backlinks! Check out last month’s article for more on SEO Cowboys. The difference is that “Directory websites” ask for name, address, phone number, website link, business description, photos, and business email address, commonly allowing visitors to leave reviews. They are selling you a placement of your business in front of their website visitors.

The “backlinks” dodgy Dave on Fiverr.com offers you for £38 are just links to your website, often from websites with low trust scores. We will cover “How to get good backlinks” in a future article.

Not all Citations are Equal

So now we know a big part of SEO is building trust & authority for your website. One of the first tasks you should do to improve your website’s ranking is to invest 3-4 hours completing your business details on the following directory websites. We have only listed the free ones here, so it will only cost you a few hours to complete these listings. Heads up, in most cases, you will be offered an upgraded listing, but you can stick to the free listings for now.

Top Tip. If you want to avoid your main email box being filled with spam, we suggest creating a separate email address to be used just for citation building. Something like admin / talk / hello / or hi@yourwebsite.co.uk

Next-level directory building

Ok, once you have done as many free directory listings as possible, leave the citation building for a month or so before moving on to the next level of directories requiring payment.

The paid directories that give you citations come in two types. There are directories that charge a one-time payment to be “listed”, such as ThompsonLocal.com, charging just £10+vat. Then there are the subscription directories, where you will pay a monthly or annual charge to be featured on those websites. Payment could be £3 per month or £100 annually.

To keep the cost of directory building affordable, I recommend that in the early stages of building your website, you focus on the free directories first, then move on to the one-time payment directories, followed by subscription directories if you live in a competitive city with a larger population. If you live in a small town, you possibly won’t need to subscribe to the recurring payment directories, as the competition is not as fierce.

First Case Study Overview

So, let’s get back to the case study. In the summer of 2022, I built a brand-new website to document how to rank a boiler-focused website in a major city. Nine months in, most of the pages sat around position 40 – 50 on Google, nowhere near the first page!

Then, from months 9 – 18, the only major work done for the website SEO was three directory-building campaigns. This was the first time I have documented implementing this strategy, so I was happy to take my time and not confuse the results by throwing the kitchen sink at it.

As you can see, it took 9 months, but the results are worth the wait.

Conclusion

Citation building through directory listings is more than just a box to tick in your local marketing strategy. You only have to be better than your local competition, and building citations on 25-100 directories might be enough to get to the top of Google in your town.

Digital Toolbag Directory Building Campaigns – Coming Soon!

For those who would rather outsource the directory building check back on this blog soon to replicate the same results.

Tom Lee-Zmuda

Hey buddy. My name is Tom, a former heating engineer turned marketing Jedi. My team and I specialise in helping local HVAC and Solar business owners dominate Google and sell their most profitable services. We are committed to building the best ROI through local SEO, kick-ass websites & sales communications that attract, sell and keep your best five-star customers.

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