Happily, it’s not quite as resource draining as link building. In fact, building and managing local citations is easy to get to grips with, if not execute. While it’s not complex the actual time taken to build citations can be a barrier, which is where listing management tools can help.

A citation is a mention of your business information shared online. Creating a more robust profile is simply another way of producing more of those mentions. 

The best kinds of mentions include your business name, address, and phone number (NAP), along with any supplementary information that may be relevant. This could be your opening hours, web address, or email, depending on where the mention is going to exist online. 

You could have built local citations without even realizing it, such as through:

• Social media profiles 
• Directory listings
• Event listings
• Review profiles 
• Articles 
• Aggregators or booking websites 

Of course, you can also purposefully set out to grow your current profile by searching for local directories, niche industry sites, social media platforms, and so on, to share your business details.

How many should you aim to build?  

As with links, there’s no magic number that you should target. It’s more often helpful to focus instead on consistently building as many good quality, accurate citations as possible.

The bigger your pool of good quality, accurate and consistent mentions, the better it is for your search visibility and consumer discovery.

Another helpful tip is to benchmark your count against your competitors. We know citations are a top-five local search ranking factor, so you should aim for as many local citations — if not more — as your biggest competitor. We’ve studied several industries and calculated average citation counts to get you started. 

How do you build local citations to boost local SEO? 

There are three core ways to build local citations to boost your local SEO results: 

1. By making manual submissions to directory and niche industry sites
2. Via a data aggregator
3. Using an API

Many local businesses will begin with manual submissions as it’s easy to do, requires no special tools to get started, and can be more accurate than automating the process, providing the person creating the listings has an eye for detail.

What to Do Before Making Manual Submissions 

Before you can start to create listings, you’ll first need to perform an audit to identify and record existing citations for your business. Doing this beforehand means you won’t waste time accidentally creating duplicate listings. It also allows you to identify outdated or incorrect citations and perform vital remedial work before new listings are added to the mix.

Any incorrect information, including inconsistencies in your business name, address, and phone number (NAP), should be updated as a priority. This is an essential task because incorrect information is a known source of irritation for local consumers.

A factually incorrect citation could see you miss out on more than half of available sales opportunities. 68% of consumers say they would stop using a local business if they came across an incorrect directory listing. Additionally, almost a quarter report of consumers that an incorrect address found online led them to visit the wrong business location within the last 12 months. 

No small business can afford to have inaccurate information online, confusing consumers and causing them to distrust your business. Inconsistent NAP data can also lead Google to question what it knows about your business and lower your search visibility. So don’t be tempted to skip this step when manually building local listings. 

If you’re struggling to find your NAP mentions using Google, try a tool such as Citation Tracker or the Local Listings Health Scanner. 

Build a List of Target Sites  

A key stage in the manual submission process is identifying the directory sites and other platforms where you’d like your business information to appear. 

Research shows that domain authority, industry relevance and local relevance are the top three most important factors when choosing which citation sites to submit to. Whether or not a site displays user reviews and audience size are also vital considerations. 

Performing quality control to weed out inferior or irrelevant sites that won’t enhance your local search visibility or drive traffic to your site can save you time in the long run. Doing so also ensures that the time you invest creating listings is focused entirely on the areas that provide the best return for your efforts. 

Assess Competitor NAP Profiles

You can turn to your competitors to discover good-quality citation targets. The advantage of this method is that you can piggyback off the work your rivals have already done by comparing their citation profile with yours. Begin by looking for sites they’ve identified that you don’t have a presence on. Focus on pinpointing niche and local outlets, as these listings are likely giving your competitors an advantage over you in the local search results.

Assessing a rival’s local business listing profile can be automated if you’re using a tool such as Citation Tracker. If you don’t have access to a tool, you can do this manually with Google research. Record your findings on a spreadsheet to keep track of the information.

Use Google to Identify Good Quality, Niche Sites

You can also Google to identify gaps in your current citation profile and further build out your list of targets for manual citation building. For example, searching your business type and industry niche should bring up several directory sites. If there are any major platforms — such as Yelp or the Better Business Bureau — that you haven’t already ticked off, they’ll need to be added to your list. 

Look for directories that are specific to your local area, along with platforms focused on your industry. This may include trade bodies, industry organizations, local networking associations, and nearby Chambers of Commerce. The best quality sites will be found within the first few pages of the search results. 

There may also be other opportunities to build unstructured citations, such as by connecting with local news outlets, government databases and blogs. 

Measure Domain Authority with the Moz Toolbar 

The Moz toolbar is helpful for anyone learning to build manual citations. Free to download, it shows the page authority, domain authority, and spam score for any page open in your browser. This makes it easier to identify whether your target directories and industry sites meet the quality threshold necessary to create a beneficial citation. 

Use Online Resources

Online resources that compile lists of directory sites relevant to your area or niche can be invaluable when building local citations. This is because much of the research has already been done for you.  

This resource lists the best places for business listings for more than 40 industries. It also shares the domain authority of each and indicates whether the listing is free or not. 

If you’re based in the USA, Canada, UK, or Australia, this compilation of the top 50 sites for each country also logs domain authority and provides a direct link to each site. 

Make Manual Submissions 

With your list of target sites in hand, you can now start the process of making manual submissions. 

Working your way through your list from top to bottom, go to each site and enter your business name in the search bar to verify if there’s already an entry.

If a listing is already present, review each piece of information, including your business NAP, opening hours, URL, and email information to verify accuracy. If they’re correct, go ahead and claim the listing.

If the information isn’t accurate, you’ll need to claim the listing to correct any issues. The process of claiming the listing will vary from platform to platform but will generally require you to prove your connection to the business. This could be by entering a code sent via postcard to your brick-and-mortar location, or via a telephone call or email. In the case of email, your email address will need to match the business’ domain name for a verification link to be provided.

If there’s no current listing, you can go ahead and start to build your manual citations. You’ll often see an ”add business” option on the directory site, which will present you with a form to complete. Ensure that you enter your NAP in the same format each time.

Remember that you may need to go back and update your business information in the future. Maintain a spreadsheet of manual submissions with a link to each directory site and the usernames and passwords for each. You’ll need these to log in and update your citations when any information changes.

Alternatively, you can go ahead and lean on a listings management tool for any updates you may need to make. 

There’s no right or wrong way, however, for those with large or complex local SEO strategies and multiple physical locations, there’s no doubt that local data aggregators offer an efficient solution.

Because citations include essential business details, such as name, address, and phone number (NAP), they’re incredibly useful for both search engine users and search engine crawlers.

In our most recent Expert Local Citation Survey, 90% of experts agreed that citations are important to local search rankings. Our panel was unanimous in requiring the business phone number, city, zip code, and URL to be identical across citation sources for local search success. The 22 local search experts sitting on our survey panel also believe that a mix of different citations from a range of industry and niche sites is preferential.

For those charged with creating those citations, there are a couple of clear issues:

• Building citations – we estimate that manually building citations takes around 20 minutes per listing. It’s easy to see how much time is required to build citations at volume for multiple physical locations.
• Accuracy – changing how the city and state are formatted from one submission to another, or how the phone number is written, means citations aren’t an exact match. If you’re manually building dozens of citations (without the necessary training to handle all the different citation types), accuracy can falter.

So, what’s the solution? Data aggregators, or local data aggregators as they are sometimes known, offer accuracy and a wide reach. The relatively simple submission procedure can reduce the time needed to submit the volume of citations necessary for local SEO improvement. This efficiency can lead to the all-important broad coverage and value paying off sooner.

What is a local data aggregator?

A local data aggregator (LDA) is an organization that gathers information about other businesses and then passes that data on to other sources.

Think of the function of LDAs as similar to that of old-school Yellow Pages. LDAs bring information — such as NAP data — together, but on a much larger scale. Unlike Yellow Pages, the data gathered by a data aggregator is funneled to lots of other services for use in a range of ways, such as in mobile apps, on maps, to populate business directories, and to be used on citation sites.

Any business can sign up to use a data aggregator. Simply create an account, input your business information, and then that LDA takes steps to verify your information. Once verified, you’re added to its database along with thousands of other companies. Your business information is subsequently fed to many of the websites and services that use business data from that aggregator.

Aggregators diffuse information using systems such as RSS technology, so they can push information from thousands of businesses to thousands of sources. It’s this process that makes data aggregators such a useful tool for citation building. Just create an account with an LDA, submit your information, and wait as it gets blasted out to multiple sites.

Compare the ease of that process with the prospect of having to submit your information to every citation site one-by-one, and painstakingly typing out your business details each time!

Who are the main local data aggregators to be aware of?

We’ve seen that data aggregators make citation building easier by sending your business information to multiple sites automatically. There’s further good news too; there are less than a handful of data aggregator services in the USA. This means it’s not too much of a task to submit your business information to all of them.

Foursquare

Foursquare has emerged as a key player in the data aggregator market, having merged with Factual in 2020, which was one of the longest-standing data aggregators.

Most people recognize Foursquare for being “that app that you used to check in at your local coffee store to let your friends know how much of a caffeine nut you are.”

But Foursquare has since pivoted to focus on providing accurate location data to a wide range of different apps and publishers. Today, it powers location data for the likes of Uber, Snapchat, Apple Maps, and Bixby (Samsung’s Voice Assistant).

Foursquare now has one of the largest location data sets in the world, spanning more than 500 million devices, a panel of 25 million opted-in, always-on users, and more than 14 billion user-confirmed check-ins.

Data Axle

Data Axle says it is “the leading provider of business data to the top search engines, navigation systems, mobile apps, marketing information programs, and location-based apps. Our data powers the top search engines, because we provide the most accurate, continually-verified collection of real-time business data available, delivered through powerful technology.”

Data Axle accepts business data submissions via its Data Axle Local Listings and BulkUpdate engines.

The process is simple: simply search Data Axle Local Listings for your business listing and verify the information is correct. Any anomalies can be corrected and updates can be made in the future as circumstances change. As a bonus, the first ten locations are completely free!

Data Axle conducts a phone verification and then makes that data available to its partners, which it says include the leading in-car navigation systems, 85% of the largest public libraries, and the leading search engines, which account for 98% of all internet searches in the US.

The BulkUpdate works in a similar manner but is for those with ten or more listings to submit, such as brands with multiple physical locations.

Neustar Localeze

Neustar Localeze is a data aggregator for small businesses. Its local search solutions for small businesses are built around True Identity, its proprietary platform which offers listing management with full control over business data.

It says, “Our True Identity service enables businesses to update their local listing information with over 100 local search platforms, mobile applications, navigation systems, and directories at one time – from one place.

“Localeze publishes your listing information to the largest authorized local search platform network in the industry.”

Businesses must take out a subscription to use True Identity – this is currently $79 per year, for 1-24 locations with unlimited updates. Data is subject to ongoing verification and validation to ensure complete accuracy and a completeness score is assigned to data, demonstrating how much additional information is required to assure trust in business information.

Adding a specialist tool to your marketing toolkit can free up that time and automate much of the process, removing the potential for human error and inconsistencies. However, not all tools are created equal.

When choosing which local citation management tool to use, you’ll need to consider a few crucial elements. Doing so will enable you to select a solution with the features and functionality you need to take the guesswork out of local listings management.

Listing Variety 

Does your shortlisted tool allow for a variety of listings to be created? This is an important consideration because a good citation profile includes mentions of your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) on both general and industry-specific sites. 

When deciding which tool to use, it’s well worth finding out how much control you have over site selection. Find out if you can choose industry-specific directory sites and if you can select which directories your business information is submitted to. 

Some tools won’t allow user input and will make the site selections on your behalf. You may also need to factor in some manual citation building to build a presence on niche platforms if that’s the case. 

Duplication Management 

Detecting and suppressing duplicate local listings on directory sites is difficult to manage manually, so automating the process of sniffing them out and removing the surplus listings can be advantageous.

Not all management tools will have this feature. However, for those that do, take the time to understand how easy this process is and what level of accuracy you can expect. 

Citation Tracking 

Given the foundational role that local citations play in building visibility for your local business, you must have a system for tracking your overall listing profile. Tracking your listings means regularly reviewing each one to ensure that it remains active and the NAP is correct. 

When considering a tool, it’s helpful to know what tracking features are available to you, how accurate each tool is, and whether they can be connected to any tracking tools you’re already using. 

Cost 

The cost of local listing tools can vary considerably, but the fee you pay will likely be a deal-breaker when making a final decision. Comparing and contrasting features offered by different tools at different price points can help you get an idea of what a fair price looks like.

To avoid unexpected costs further down the line, always check what the base subscription fee includes and if there’s any additional charges. 

Behind the scenes, the API standardizes the transfer of information and acts as the messenger between point A and point B. As they are so efficient, APIs are used to complete a wide range of tasks — from data sharing to integrations — often without the end user being aware of their existence.

Numerous APIs are available to submit citations, with each providing business information to its own network of sites. Some sites may accept data from one specific API only, while others may get data fed into them from several different sources. 

Why use an API to build citations? 

The main advantage of this method of citation building is speed. The automatic nature of the process allows for listings to be built quicker than is possible with a manual approach alone.

An API versus human-led input can also improve accuracy and NAP consistency. The fact that a large number of listings can be built in a short time frame also provides a visibility boost. 

Is there more than one type of API? 

When it comes to local citation building, there are two types of APIs available to you. 

The first type submits your business information directly into the database of the listing site. It will continually push that data through so the recipient site knows the information is correct. This doesn’t necessarily mean that your listing will be permanent, however. If you stop using the API, your listing may be removed. 

The second type works as a data layer, with the business paying the API to have its data placed on an existing web page. If you use this solution, your listing will remain active as long as you’re paying for it.

Is this option right for you? 

Not every method of building citations will be suitable for all business types. An API is often better suited to large and multi-location businesses that can’t realistically keep their business information up to date manually.

Other methods may be more suitable for smaller organizations that don’t expect to make changes continually. 

This article is broken down as follows:

1. The importance of staying organized
2. Multi-location citation auditing
3. Identifying citation opportunities across multiple locations (new citations / fixing incorrect citations / updating location information / locating duplicates)
4. Acting on your opportunities

Keep Your Location Information Organized

Being Organized is Like Being in Control

As someone who deals with several multi-location businesses, I know the importance of being organized and keeping all your information in one centralized document. The online ecosystem can move fast — always remember that! Uploading the wrong information can cause big problems for your business, and very quickly if unnoticed for too long.

Over the years, spreadsheets have become my best friend. I find that the most effective way to stay organized is to keep an up-to-date spreadsheet handy. Your client, business partner, colleagues, etc. should all have access to this document. It should act as a living, breathing data source.

When business location information changes, your spreadsheet should reflect the change. Here’s a location information spreadsheet template you can use — this is what I use to stay on top of all location changes made within a business. Listing management tools can help with this too.

The more organized you are, the easier it becomes to find citation opportunities.

Brand Beacon Report 2024

Benchmarking Local Marketing Excellence for Multi-location Brands

Unlock Insights

Audit Citations for Multiple Locations

Always Assess the Current Situation

Now that you’re organized, you can start the first step in scaling citations for multi-location businesses. You’ve surely heard the saying, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” That’s exactly what you want to avoid in this step. Assessing all your locations allows you to see how a business is doing across the online ecosystem.

So how do you assess the state of several locations, fast and effectively? Citation audits, of course.

You’ve probably performed a citation audit for a single location, so let’s talk about how we can perform citation audits for 50+ locations.

Upload Your Locations to a Platform of Your Choice

Most platforms supply a template so that you have all the necessary information to audit, build, and fix your location data across the web. This ensures that you have everything required to successfully upload your locations to the platform. A great example is BrightLocal’s citation-auditing template.

Here are some citation-building platforms you can use:

• BrightLocal
• Moz Local
• Whitespark
• Loganix

The citation audit process detailed below talks about other uploading options that you may want to test and try out. Everyone has their own preference, and everyone has their own pros and cons for each method. Depending on how many locations you’re working with, you can decide for yourself which upload method best suits your needs.

Citation Audit Process

Citation audits will return useful data, including duplicate listings, incorrect NAP, missing NAP, and opportunities to build new citations. The first step is to add all your locations to the platform you’ll be using for your citations. Typically you have three options:

1. Single location uploading: This option is probably the longest and most tedious. I wouldn’t recommend this option if you’re servicing 50+ locations, but I thought I would add it anyway. Here’s a quick tutorial on how to add single locations to BrightLocal.
2. Syncing your Google Business Profile with your citation platform: This is a great way to add your locations. Assuming your Google Business Profile (GBP) listings are accurate — which they should be — this ensures consistency across the web.
3. Bulk uploading location information via CSV.

Since BrightLocal is my preference, I’ll be showing examples from some of its reports. Below is a screenshot of the uploading options within BrightLocal.

Once you’ve uploaded your location data, you can run your citation reports. But remember that organization is key, so having these reports in one place will make your task much easier.

So what can we do? If you’re using BrightLocal, the best solution is to filter by client in Locations Overview. If you’re not using BrightLocal, then you could create a roll-up report if the tool you’re using allows this. 

Once you’ve filtered by client or created your roll-up report, you can see the overview and breakdown (see BrightLocal example below) and access those individual location reports at any time.

This is your high-level overview. In this summary, we can see initial opportunities and findings, but don’t forget that consistency is super important!

We need to make sure we’re also looking at individual location reports. These reports give us that granular information that we require to scale out citations. Below is how this looks at a single-location level in BrightLocal.

Now that we know our current situation, we can start to identify opportunities.

Identify Citation Opportunities Across Multiple Locations

How to Scale Citations

For this section, we’ll take a look at identifying citation opportunities for multiple locations.

1. No Listing Found. Just as it sounds. This means your business is not listed on a site.
2. Listing Found But With NAP Errors. This means your listing is present on a site but it contains errors. In more simple terms, the information you provided does not match the information displayed on a site.
3. Duplicate Listing Found. This means that there are two listings present on a site.

So, how do you evaluate the importance of the three opportunities above?

Citations help build your brand’s prominence across the web. This means that the more brand mentions you have out there (in the form of citations) the more credibility your business or locations have.

If there is ‘No Listing Found’, then that’s an opportunity to build a fresh citation or increase the frequency and quantity of the citations you have. Your citation audit will highlight the value of each citation opportunity, which will allow you to prioritize them. Check out this Top Local Citations resource to help you better understand the value and importance of certain citations.

The other aspect of prominence is consistency across the web. If there’s a ‘Listing Found But With NAP Errors’, there’s an opportunity to clean up inconsistencies. When search engines like Google crawl the internet, they use your NAP data to build your brand’s prominence and credibility. Having incorrect and inconsistent data in the ecosystem can hurt your brand a lot. This is a great opportunity to ensure your information is consistent wherever it’s present.

The last issue here is a duplicate listing. Despite what some may initially think, having more than one mention of a location on a platform isn’t a good thing. Your citation audit will tell you if there are any duplicates, and it will also tell you which mention is the primary listing and which is considered the duplicate.

By removing duplicate listings, you ensure that users are finding the correct listing with your correct data. This will impact rankings in a positive way and make sure that anyone visiting your business or website from a citation will have the right information.

How to Create a Priority List of Citations for You and Your Team

It’s good practice to build citations for your locations steadily over time. First, focus on websites that deliver high value. You can export a CSV per location and prioritize based on authority and value (see BrightLocal screenshot below).

If you’re looking to do this step for 50+ locations, it’s worth reaching out to your platform’s support for guidance or help with this. Forming a strong relationship with a support team member will be very beneficial if you have questions or concerns in the future, and they’ll certainly appreciate the size and complexity of what you’re dealing with.

Sometimes I’ll identify opportunities on my own as it gives me different insights and allows me to learn which citations move the needle the most per industry. Here’s the spreadsheet I use when prioritizing opportunities. Feel free to use it yourself!

Once we know the situation of all our locations, and we’ve uncovered the opportunities at hand, we can move on to acting on these opportunities.

Act on Found Opportunities

Scaling Out Citations for Multiple Locations

Effective citation building (especially for multi-location businesses) requires ongoing submissions. This ensures that your citations are built in the most natural way.

Determine a schedule that’ll allow you to scale out local citation building or fixing for all of your locations. This way, you’ll see the results you seek the fastest. When I do ongoing citation building, I’ll build 10-15 citations every other month, though some people like to do this monthly (it depends on the size of the opportunity per location).

Most platforms will work with you to achieve your goal. If you have 50+ locations that you want to build/fix citations for every month, support teams will most often help. They will show you how to prioritize your opportunities and get you on your way!

If you’re doing this on your own (without the help of support), you’ll want to make your way to the campaign portion of your platform. Below is a screenshot of how you can get there quickly in BrightLocal. See the ‘Create Citation Builder Campaign’ button in the screenshot below.

My rule of thumb is to always start with data aggregators. Since they feed the ecosystem, they’ll give you a jump-start! Most platforms will allow you to go through and select which citations you’d like (since you’re doing this without the help of support). To do this, utilize the CSV you put together in the previous section.

Prioritize accordingly:

1. Fix existing citations / remove duplicate listings
2. Ensure you have correct data on aggregators
3. Acquire new citations based on value

This process can be repeated for all of your locations, but this may not be feasible if you have 50+ locations. Use your chosen citation platform’s support team and build a relationship so that you have someone to contact when you want to start campaigns, ask questions, or address any concerns.

Don’t be afraid to build citations for multi-location businesses. At first, the job may seem intimidating and overwhelming, but I hope this article will help make the job easier.

Always remember that no matter what platform you choose, support teams are always there for you. Use their services and insights as they’ll make your tasks way easier. I’ll just leave you with a reminder of these two notes:

“ Being organized is like being in control.”

and

“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”