Local citation building for small businesses.
One business. One set of details.
A citation is your name, address and phone turning up somewhere else online. When two of them disagree, Google trusts your listing a little less.
Google checks your details against everywhere else they appear. If three directories disagree about your phone number, that doubt lands on your map listing.
Citations · The floor everything else stands onYour details, everywhere else on the web.
A citation is a mention of your business name, address and phone number on a site that is not yours. Yelp, Bing Places, Apple Maps, the BBB, the directory for your trade, the chamber page you were added to years ago. Google reads all of them.
It uses them to check three things: that you are real, that you are still trading, and that you are where you say you are. The more sources agree, the more confident it gets, and that confidence is what buys you a place on the map.
How the map pack is decided →Both count, and they are not the same thing.
A strong citation profile has both halves. Most businesses have some of the first and none of the second, which is a gap that costs nothing to close.
Structured
A formal listing on a directory, where your name, address and phone sit in set fields in a set order. Yelp, the BBB, Angi, the directory for your trade. These are the ones people picture when they hear the word citation, and they are the ones we submit, claim and maintain.
Unstructured
A mention with no fields at all: a news story, a blog post, an event page, a chamber write up, a sponsor list. Google still reads them and still counts them. We create the reasons for these to happen through local outreach and content.
Fix what is wrong, then build what is missing.
Audit first
Before anything new gets built we pull your existing listings across the major directories, the data aggregators and your trade platforms. We are looking for old phone numbers, previous addresses, misspelled names and duplicate entries.
Clean the record
Every wrong listing gets corrected. Every duplicate gets merged or removed. The goal is one version of your business details, reading the same way everywhere it appears.
Build where it counts
New listings on the general directories that carry weight and on the ones specific to your trade. A roofer belongs on roofing directories. A dentist belongs on dental ones. A generic submission list is not the same piece of work.
Feed the aggregators
Data aggregators push your details out to hundreds of smaller directories and apps. Submitting at the source spreads the correct information faster and more accurately than filling in the same form site by site.
Watch it afterwards
Directories change, feeds overwrite listings and new platforms launch. We check the profile every month and fix whatever has drifted since the last pass.
These move together.
Before you book the call.
Do citations still matter?
Yes, but not the way they get sold. Citations on their own will not put you in the map pack. Inconsistent ones will keep you out of it. Treat them as the floor, not the ceiling.
What happens if I moved?
Your old address is almost certainly still live on directories you have never heard of. That is one of the first things the audit looks for and one of the fastest things to fix.
How many listings do I need?
Fewer than most packages sell you. A clean set on the platforms Google actually reads beats a long list of sites nobody visits, and a long list is easier to sell than it is to defend.
Can I not just do this myself?
You can. It is slow rather than hard. What catches people out is the duplicates you cannot see, the listings you never created, and the data feeds that quietly overwrite your work a month later.
Is this a one off job?
No. Feeds overwrite listings and directories change hands. We recheck the profile every month, which is the only reason it stays clean.
Find out what
is wrong now.
Book a call and we will show you how many listings you have, where they disagree with each other, and which directories your competitors are on that you are missing from.
Not ready to talk? Send the form and we will come back to you by email.