What Are Citations?

Citations are mentions of your business (including name, address and phone number) on other websites – even if there is not a clickable link to your site.  An example would be an online yellow pages directory that has your business listed but is not linked to it.  Other examples are members pages on local chamber of commerce, or a local trade association that you belong to.

Citations are a critical component in ranking algorithms of Google, Bing and Yahoo.  With all other factors equal, a business with a higher number of citations will rank better than a business with less citations.

How Do They Work?

Citations from established and authoritative sites like Yellowpages.com help search engines see that you are a real business with established presence online.  Search engines see them as a validation that your business is a part of a local community.  For example, membership in the local chamber of commerce, listing in business services directories, and local online directories all show serious business intent.

Citations and links from these types of websites dramatically improve local search engine results.

If search engines see your business information on varios local websites and directories, they can be confident that your company offers services in these locations.  This ensures that Google and other search engines are a lot more likely to show your business listing when somebody does a search for the types of  services you provide.

What Are Types Of Citations?

• General business directories
• Industry – specific directories
• Local newspaper and press websites
• Popular local websites (especially if they are related to your industry)
• Local themed blogs
• Social Profiles (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, FourSquare)

What Makes A Good Citation?

The most important factors accuracy and completeness.

I will follow up this post with Part 2 where I will list important factors when creating citations.

How Do I Know Where I’m Listed?

If you would like to see your presence across major directories, just put in your business name and zip code in the form below.

The results will appear in new window so don’t worry about losing your spot here.  It takes couple minutes to run the check so put your info in now and continue to read this post while it’s working.

What Are The Top Citations For Event Businesses?

We have been helping business owners build local citations for many years.  Over the years, the sources of citations change and fluctuate.  Some directories go out of business and new ones appear.

We keep a list of the most useful sources that have good volume of traffic, high domain authority and solid presence online.

Below are the top 50 citation sources for US based businesses.

Tip: download our “Citation Building Template” below that includes links to 100+ most important directories, a list of event industry niched directories, and a spreadsheet to keep track of your progress.

Get The List

To help you create your online citations, we have put together a template that has:

• 100+ local directories that we currently use for our clients
• Lists of niche-specific directories (such as wedding planners or party rentals)
• Links to each directory
• Guide on creating and fully optimizing the listings

Get Help

If you are overwhelmed by the number of places where you need to list your business, don’t worry.  We are here to help.

We offer a local citation building service where we will manually create the number of citations that you would like us to.  It is very affordable and will save you a tremendous amount of time.