As the search engines continue to evolve there is one element of search that continues to remain at the focal point of personalization, and that’s local. Now more than ever it’s crucial for small businesses to stand out amongst the local competition, but to get there you need to make sure the search engines know you belong. The first way to do this is to claim, optimize, and complete your local listings on the big 3.
The next step is to begin gaining local citations that not only work to help search engines identify where you are located, but also to help drive external reviews and ratings. To help get the ball rolling I have put together and essential list of nearly 100 local citations sites that you can begin submitting your small business to in order to give it a boost in it’s local citation profile. (download the entire list in a spreadsheet at the end of the post)
While this may seem overwhelming at first, it’s important to recognize that by no means should you complete all of these in one sitting. Like link building for SEO it’s good to build up slowly over time. After claiming your local listings on the big three, you can then branch out and do a handful of these at a time. I personally shoot for the big players in the local search ecosystem a month or so after claiming the core business listings. Then from there I do a handful more each month.
As you work through this list, or any list of local citations sites, it’s important to remember that keeping your NAP information consistent is crucial. I personally open the claimed Google Places listing for the business I am working with and work directly from that so as not to mess up any of the information associated with the business. The slightest deviation can be costly in that it may not count as a citation and in many instances may cause the search engines or other local portals to generate duplicate listings for your business.
The list of citations sources above is compromised of general local portals, as you work through this list be sure to integrate niche specific sites as well. For instance in the medical field some of the key players are sites like Vitals.com or HealthGrades.com. Once you’ve exhausted this list you can turn to tools like Whitespark‘s Local Citation finder or simply run queries like [“Your Street Address”Β -site:yourdomain] to find potential new opportunities to list your local business information.
Wow, nice going Mike! Great content as always. Time to put this to work π
Great list Mike. However it does seem to be a bit North America centred. Would be good if we could get similar lists for local citations in the UK and other European countries. Might have to compile one of those myself. π
That is the ultimate list alright. I’m sure my local seo clients will be happy.
Yea Barry, somebody mentioned that on FB as well. We’re deffo gonna have to get one together for the UK etc… For now, here’s a lead I was passed; http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/how-to-rank-higher-in-google-places-local-in-the-uk/
Great list as well Mike. I’m using it today. Thank you π
Barry, try adding your biz info to the data providers in your location. In example there is a link near the footer on http://www.localdatacompany.com/ that you you can use to add your biz.
Populating data providers is faster than pooring over long lists, many of which get their data from a common data provider anyhow.
Great stuff!
Don’t forget to grab Auto-complete extension or roboform type service to help speed submissions!
err..how do you get a “listing” on brightkite?
Does Dream Local actually have a directory? They appear to just be a social/local service
Whew! Great work compiling the exhaustive list. Nice to see a bunch of new ones I never knew existed…well, I’m off to set up some accounts now…
You can also use Local Search Toolkit to find more places to get citations – http://www.localsearchtoolkit.com/
Where is the UK list? now that would be cool!! π
Good list AND good advice on why its important to pay attention to detail when entering in NAP specs on each. I do the same thing as you, I make sure to copy EXACTLY the NAP data from an excel file when adding new Citations, albeit, my list was as robust as yours.
[quote name=”Alex Juel”]You can also use Local Search Toolkit to find more places to get citations – http://www.localsearchtoolkit.com/%5B/quote%5D
Would love if that were the case – been waiting on my last run for 6+ days : ( Seems to be the norm.
Yes to UK list. Once I get to about 50, the authority really starts to thin.
Thanks Mike!!
Or you could just drop 5 bucks and have someone at fiver get you highly targeted citations http://fiverr.com/whodoesdo/send-you-your-top-3-competitors-local-citations which I would think would be even better!
Sweet list Mike!
goo.gl/TNbiE is my Google Doc template and what I use to track my listings. You can copy it if you want. I love this post but it doesn’t include the links right to the sign up pages. Those can be hard to find. I’ve tried in include a few on my worksheet.
FYI: Geodelic doesn’t have a local directory
π
Company.com and Matchpoint is the same right? Also praized now rebuilt and now it is needium.com
Many thanks Mike for the list and also sighting the fact to build citations at a proper pace
Ultra handy data Mike! I’ll be using this all year long so cheers!
One more for the list http://www.bing.com/local/
[quote name=”Jeremy Rivera”]err..how do you get a “listing” on brightkite?[/quote]
Because of aggregates, most businesses are already listed on BrightKite, but in the event you’re not there is an option to tell BrightKite about the location when you search for it on the website.
Graet list, Thanks for the spreadsheet!!!
Great work, Mike. I found this list through the link in Search Engine people daily e-mail and just wanted to thank you for it. I recently have difficulty in getting better local search results for some of my clients, so I hope this list will be helpful.
Many of you had asked about a UK list, so I thought I would share a post over at Search Engine Land that was juts shared that has a list of 50 top UK citation sites http://searchengineland.com/top-50-citation-sources-for-uk-us-local-businesses-104938
And I also found this list. http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2011/12/19/top-uk-local-business-directories-aka-citation-sources/ Hope it helps some of the UK folks!
π I just wanted to say thanks for that exhaustive list of citation sites!
Doubly important after googles most recent update, researching anything has become hell (don’t know about you guys but I cant find anything with google at the moment, seems to have forgotten the difference between a $ and a ΓΒ£, an d every search seems to bring up google books now, no matter what I type in!
One more quick tip. You can search for the NAP of another company (like Pinkberry) and copy all the local citation sources they use.
Nice article on local SEO! I’m working with a client right now on local and this will come really handy, especially the spreadsheet. I always like an additional resource:-)
I used LocalCitationSupply.com they did an execlent job. Got 350 citations.
Local citations are great cause they actually provide traffic and SEO strength. Double whammy for leGoog.
Make sure all your local citations for SEO are all the same. If you spell Ave. then spell it that way with all of them. You want your data to match up perfectly across the web!
Awesome list of citation sites! I’ve got a lot saved in our XLS files, so getting it more up to date with some of these older sites will be helpful as we build out our database and keep getting clients’ citation created/submitted. Thanks for sharing even though I’m a little late to the game for seeing this post π
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