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Finding and Building Citations Like an Agency

April 10, 2013 by Casey Meraz

Posted by Casey Meraz This post was originally in YouMoz , and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc. So you want to rank locally? If you have already worked hard to add a few citations, complete your on-site local optimization, acquire customer reviews, and build some locally relevant links, well, now it’s time to shift your focus. According to David Mihm , citations make-up roughly 25% of the overall local ranking factors. Why It’s Time to Change Your Thinking… I’ve mentioned before that it’s time to stop chasing links , and for local SEO it’s time to stop chasing citations! What do I mean by that? If your whole purpose for creating citations is to improve your local rankings, then you are probably relying too much on Google. What would happen if those rankings were to suddenly go away? Instead of viewing the process building your brand in the local ecosystem as a laborious task that needs to get done so that you can rank, then you aren’t seeing the big picture. Each of the citation sites that you’re trying to get listed on were created with goals far beyond just helping businesses rank for Google’s local results. In most cases, they were created to provide a good customer experience and send potential shoppers to worthy vendors. Each of these sites gets their own traffic, and setting up your business listing on them is another place for potential customers to find you. Below is a quick example from a fairly low traffic attorney site. In a one month period, they are getting traffic from other websites where their citations also reside. It’s time to change your mindset and get motivated to start building citations for the right purpose. If you do that, the rankings you long for will come with it. Now, here’s how we find and get our business listed in these citations in an organized and speedy fashion at my firm. Make Sure Your Information (N.A.P.) is Accurate. Having accurate information that correlates across your website, Google Plus page, and local ecosystem citations is the most important part of building and fixing your businesses citations. Your business Name, Address, and Phone Number (referred to as N.A.P. format) is essential for local rankings. Make sure this information is 100% consistent before moving forward! Below is an example of the appropriate NAP format for a Law Firm: The Reeves Law Group 515 S Flower St Los Angeles, CA 90071‎ (213) 271-9318 You will notice that most directories display information like the example above. Some will allow you to add a link to your website, but some will not. In this case, the link is not the important information. The accurate listing of the business in the NAP format is. We’ve established that having accurate and consistent listing information is critical, so how do we do it? The Easy Way May Not Be the Best Way One easy way to get listed consistently on multiple directories is by using a service like Yext . While that can be a great option, depending on your situation, make sure you know what you are getting into. Yext, for example, will easily publish to dozens directories with the information you submit. Some will start showing instantly, and some will come up within a few days with very little work. But at over $475 a year (yes, annually) for the retail version, you might think twice about it. If you are not looking to purchase services like Yext… Here are Three Fundamental Steps to a Great Alternative Approach: Prepare Your Information I always like to start by creating a quick Google Doc with the client’s NAP information at the top. This allows me to easily copy and paste the fields if I need them while I’m building citations. It also allows me to keep the data consistent across the board. Typically, I ensure my Google Plus page is 100% accurate with my business information, and then copy and paste the information from Google Places. I will also use this same Google Doc for tracking my citation sources in one easy to use place. Feel free to download this free Local Citation Building Template . In case you decide not to use the spreadsheet I created, you will see I have fields for some of the most common information that citation sources ask for- including: Your Name – Your actual name or the name of business owner Email Address – The Email Address that will be checked by the business Company Name – The company’s exact name as it appears correctly on Google Plus Address – The company’s exact address as it appears correctly on Google Plus Suite or Floor Number – Only use if there is a Suite or Floor number City – The company’s exact city name as it appears correctly on Google Plus State- The state the company resides in Zip – The zip code of the company Phone Number – The LOCAL phone number of the exact business location Landing Page For Location – The landing page for that office or physical location I also added some advanced fields that I also see on some submission sites. Here are some examples: 800 Number – The 800 Number of the Business Logo URL – The URL of the company’s logo hosted on your website Facebook URL – The Facebook URL of the company Twitter Handle – The company’s Twitter Handle Places Page Link – A Link to their G+ Local Page or Google Places Page **Below is an example of the header from my Local Citation Building Template . Citation Building Can Be a Bit Tedious, So Here’s an Easier Way… If you’re like me and you have the attention span of a lemming, then you need some reinforcements. But when dealing with something that’s so important, how do you prevent data corruption and ensure accuracy at the same time? My answer is Roboform and it costs between $9.95 and $39.95. To be clear I am not affiliated in any way shape or form, it’s just the program that I found works best for me. So, I will share how I use it. Roboform allows me to input the information about a location and have it autofill on many of the submission sites. It’s not perfect and it requires a manual review, but spending a couple of minutes setting this up is worth its weight in gold. Not only will it ensure it outputs what you put into it, but it will also store the information and you can share the data with your team. It will also integrate into your browser where you can use a drop down and select the auto fill information you want. Basically it just saves a ton of time. How to use Roboform for Citation Building Once you’ve downloaded the program from Roboform.com and installed it, you can open it up and go to File > New > Identity to create a new identity. You will end up creating and naming a new Identity for each different business location you have. You can then click the edit button and spend a few minutes and fill out all of the information you want to your heart’s desire. If you’re just building citations through Roboform, then you can stick to the Person, Business and Address sections and only fill out the fields I have listed in my spreadsheet. Start off with the Person section and fill out the following fields that are circled below including: First Name – The first name you want to display on the listing. Typically, it is the same as the person registering the account. Last Name – The last name you want to display on the listing. Typically, it is the same as the person registering the account. Phone – The Business Phone Number for that location (Your NAP) Email – The mail address that is going to register the account and be the contact email. Use this if they’re going to be the same email. Next Move On To the Business Section On this page, I typically only use the company name and website. The company name will be the actual company name in your NAP format and the website will be the landing page of that physical location. Sometimes these are truncated to just the domain, but it’s always better to try and get the link you receive to go to the actual landing page for that location. Lastly, You Can Move onto the Address Section In this section you will add your address from the NAP format. And that takes care of that part! Now you are setup to start finding citations and knocking them out! We will use Roboform to auto fill the fields instead of typing them each time. They will still require manual review but it will save a lot of time! Now, Let’s Get Listed on Some Local Directories, AKA: Build Some Citations The goal of doing all of this citation is work is to make sure we end up with good data. Check it to make sure you’re not already listed before you add your listing to each of these websites. Spamming the web is not cool; even if it is unintentional. So follow this quick three step process called CHECK, FIX, ADD. Check to see if the listing is there If the listing is there, make sure the NAP is 100% accurate. If not, fix it! If the listing does not exist, add it If you are using the free Local Citation Building Template I created, you will see a list where you can easily add the information along with notes about your new citation sources. I highly suggest keeping track of this information. Remember that you’re not just doing this to impress the search engines. You want to have access to this information in the future. What if you decide to move one day and didn’t have this? A Screenshot from the spreadsheet: At my company, I also give this information to our clients in the unlikely case that they felt we were doing a bad job and wanted to fire us. Make Sure You Have the Top Citations Whether your business is brand new or old and established, I suggest you start off by adding a new listing or correcting your incorrect listing at the Top Citation Sources suggested by Getlisted.org . They worked hard to put together this list of citation sources they believe carry the most weight in different industries and geographic areas. They provide two great resources to act as a starting point: View the Top Citation Sources by City View the Top Citation Sources by Category Just like with every citation source you come across, make sure to add them to your tracking spreadsheet. Next, Don’t Re-Invent The Wheel. Find Your Top Competitors Do you already know who your top competition is? Check them out and see who ranks consistently for the keywords you want to rank for. Finding citations a year or two ago was a bit harder than it is today. These days you have some easy and affordable options to see where your competing businesses are listed. In this article I will discuss an easy way using Whitespark’s Local Citation Finder and another method for searching for them manually through Google. As with any data collection, I always recommend using multiple sources to ensure greater accuracy. Method #1: Using Whitespark to find your competitors citations Start by navigating to the “Your Projects” tab. Step 1: Create a new project. To keep things organized, I will typically create a new project by using the “+ Create new Project” button under the “Your Project” tab. It will ask you for your business Name and Phone Number and hit the Create Project button. Step 2: Find Citation Sources by Keyword – Use the option to “Search By Keyphrase” and enter the keyword information you want to rank for. Step 3: Wait For the Results – After starting the search, wait for a few minutes for it to compile the results. In my experience, it’s typically pretty fast. You will also get a confirmation email when the process is complete. Step 4: See What Came Out and Start Getting Citations – After it’s complete, click back on the your “projects link” to see a list of your projects. Select the pink Citation Sources link to see what results came up for your listing. One of the best things about Whitespark is that they have also compiled site submission URL’s in their data. For some listings, you can easily just click the link “Submit Your Business”. You can then just use the RoboForm drop down to autofill the information making citation building simple! You may not want to bring Whitespark home to mom because she’s so easy. Method #2: Conduct a NAP Search in Google You can also conduct the searches you want in a search engine, and come up with your top competitors. This is also a great way to do it because you can use the compare option to see which competitors have. To do this, simply pull up Google and enter your competitors NAP information. Below I entered a company name, their address, and phone number that I found from their Google Plus Local page. With this information, I can now visit each one of these sources, and add my business to the same sources if they allow a submission. You will find some sites do not allow submissions, or are owned by the business themselves. Whitespark has a cool option to mark these as useless which makes their data very clean and accurate. Be Very Careful If You Outsource Citation Building If you don’t have the time and are considering outsourcing citation building please be careful, and have some serious QA. If your people are not being meticulous with your data, you’re going to have a lot of data confusion on your hands, and spend twice the amount of time trying to fix it. On the other hand, some companies like Whitespark offer these services a la carte as well. Want to Learn More? If you want to learn more advanced citation building after you have exhausted these resources, I suggest you read my write up of some tips from David Mihm’s presentation from Local U Advanced Baltimore. Better yet, if you have a chance make sure you attend the next Local U Advanced session. Sign up for The Moz Top 10 , a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

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Finding and Building Citations Like an Agency

Filed Under: Advertising, affiliate marketing, articles, Beginner, blogging, call tracking, conversion, conversions, email marketing, facebook, Featured, Google, Google Places, google plus, Google: Analytics, How To, In House, internet marketing, Interviews, keywords, Link Building, linkedin, local search, local seo, location, Marketing, marketing strategy, mindset, online marketing, Paid Search, phil internet marketing and social media and seo, research, Sales, sea, Search Marketing, seo, social media, success, Top News, traffic, twitter, Video, websites, Yahoo Local, Yelp Tagged With: answers, business, conversion, demographics, development, legal, social media, web-design

Evolution of the Local Algorithm – Whiteboard Friday

April 5, 2013 by David Mihm

Posted by David Mihm Remember the days when doing SEO for a local business was no different than doing SEO for any other business? We’ve come a long way since the early 2000′s, and local SEO has evolved tremendously since the beginning of online search. There are still many questions to be answered when it comes to the ever-changing landscape of local SEO: what are the factors Google is using to rank local businesses? Where should owners focus their energy? What’s the new hot thing for local rankings? Our local expert, David Mihm, is here to shed some light on all of your burning local SEO questions. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, David discusses what factors affect ranking of local businesses, and how local algorithms within Google have evolved throughout the years. Video Transcription “Hey everybody. David Mihm, the Director of Local Search Strategy for SEOmoz, here doing my very first Whiteboard Friday since joining the company, and for the very first one I thought I would start with one of the most common questions that I get asked about local search, which is: What are the factors Google is using to rank local businesses? Where should I be focusing my energy? And also kind of how has that changed over time? What’s the new hot thing for local rankings? So I thought I’d take you guys through kind of a brief history, from my perspective, of how the local algorithm has evolved at Google. So with the help of my handy dandy graph that I’ve sort of started to kick things off. Back in the late 1990′s, 2000-ish, when Google first came out, many of you who have been practicing SEO for that long kind of remember, hey back in those days doing SEO for a local business was no different than doing SEO for any other kind of business. Right? You needed title tags telling what you did, where you did it, where you were located, and you needed links pointing at your site with those keywords embedded in those links, preferably from locally relevant websites. But really at that time any link that had good anchor text with location or product and service information, that’s how you ranked in those 10 blue link type search results. Fast forward a little bit to January of 2008, many of you guys remember at that point Google introduced these 10 packs of local businesses right there in the main search results. So if you did a search for something like Portland injury lawyer, you’d see a map with 10 injuries lawyers’ business listings rather than website information. So that was really the first point at which we saw this concept of citation start to play a role in local rankings. So Google said, “Okay, well we know that there are 22 million businesses out there in the U.S. Less than half of them even have a website at this stage, so we have no way to gauge what the title tags are on a non-existent website, and it’s not possible to send a link to a business without a website.” Right? So Google introduced this concept of citations where they sort of tracked mentions of a business across the web. So just someone mentioning the business name with its address, with its phone number, somewhere out there on the web would count essentially as a vote for that business, just like the way links count for votes on websites. So we started to see that play a pretty big role in these rankings for 10 packs soon after they were introduced. Again, fast forward a little bit to March 2009. We started to see these 10 packs being introduced for generic queries, queries without geo-modifiers. So instead of typing in “Portland injury lawyer,” if you typed in something like “injury lawyer,” Google associated that as being a phrase with local intent. You were looking to hire somebody in your particular market, and they showed this for a ton of different phrases, things like restaurants, pizza, bakeries, things where they knew you were looking for a business in your area. It was really about at this time that we started to see reviews play a little bit larger role. So what people were saying about you on some of these primary websites that businesses were getting cited on, places like Yelp, City Search, Urban Spoon, these types of sites the reviews that users were leaving really seemed to start to play more of a role in rankings. And keep in mind that it’s not like all of a sudden the importance of title tags and links went away. It’s not like the importance of citations went away. But Google sort of layered on this additional ranking factor of user reviews, and not only user reviews at third party websites, like Yelp, City Search, the ones I mentioned, but also reviews left directly at Google Places. I’ll switch sides here for just a second. That really started to come in to importance in April 2011, when Google rolled its Hot Pot product right into Google Places. So Google launched this Hot Pot product, essentially a precursor of Google+, where Google would surface businesses that your friends had rated higher in the search results. They launched that in about November of 2010. Just about six months after that, they integrated it right into Google Places, and again this was when we started to see especially reviews left directly at Google Places really start to play a more important role. And then everybody remembers June 2012 or actually late May 2012, when Marissa Mayer announced Google+ Local prior to leaving to take the job at Yahoo. So right there in the search results we started to see Google+ information getting surface. So the number of circles that an author of a website was in and the number of circles that a local business had in its following, those types of things started to play a role. They still don’t seem to be quite as important as some of these other more traditional factors – title tags and links, user reviews, and citation information. But we do think going forward here I’ve got this sort of . . . to represent current time and some time in the future. We do think, most of us in the local search community, that Google will start to incorporate a few more of these Google+ signals into the local rankings. And just to speculate a little bit, because I love to speculate, going forward I also think we’re going to see Google potentially integrating some offline information into the local rankings. So what do I mean by that? As we get more and more comfortable, we as a society get more and more comfortable with things like Foursquare check-ins or Facebook check-ins, using our phones to make mobile payments, using Google Wallet, or companies like Square or LevelUp, these types of things, loyalty programs, Google has acquired a company several years ago that focused on digital loyalty cards, these types of offline signals about how we’re actually engaging with businesses in the real world, I think there’s no reason that they wouldn’t try to incorporate those into their local rankings going forward. So keep in mind through all of this Google’s goal has been to identify what the most popular businesses are in a given category, in a given community, and what better way to gauge popularity than the number of people actually buying something at a business or actually visiting a business and checking in. So that’s why I kind of speculate that we will start to see offline signals maybe playing a role in the future, but for right now I kind of see title tags and links, reviews, citation information, all being about equal in importance, and going forward again I think we’ll start to see Google+ play a little bit more of a role as well as potentially these offline signals. So that’s it for me from this week, and I hope you enjoyed this brief tour of the evolution of the local algorithm at Google.” Video transcription by Speechpad.com Sign up for The Moz Top 10 , a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

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Evolution of the Local Algorithm – Whiteboard Friday

Filed Under: Advertising, affiliate marketing, articles, Beginner, blogging, conversion, email marketing, facebook, Featured, Foursquare, Google, Google Places, Google: Analytics, Interviews, keywords, Link Building, linkedin, local search, local seo, location, Marketing, mobile search, online marketing, Paid Search, phil internet marketing and social media and seo, research, sea, Search Marketing, seo, social media, success, Top News, traffic, twitter, Video, websites, Yelp Tagged With: alternative, business, conversion, events, friends, management, marketing, web-design

Barnacle Reviews on Google+ Local

March 27, 2013 by David Mihm

Posted by David Mihm Since Google+ Local was released last May, it’s safe to say that everyone in the local search community — business owners and agencies alike — has been waiting with bated breath for the launch of Google’s rumored “Business Builder” dashboard . For whatever reason, it still isn’t out yet, but while you’re waiting, there’s no reason you can’t take advantage of the most underrated feature of Google+ : the ability to interact on Google+ as a business page. And in particular, to leave reviews of other businesses as your business page. Why leave reviews as a page? Business owners, if this concept doesn’t immediately make sense to you, think of it like this: you probably go to networking events with your local chamber of commerce, Rotary club, or your industry trade group all the time. When you go to these events, you’re likely wearing your “business owner” hat, rather than your “weekend warrior” or “soccer mom” hat. That’s essentially what this feature allows you to do: network socially with your “business owner” hat on, rather than your personal hat. Just like you would refer business to other business owners you trust and admire in these networking environments, the idea behind page-to-page recommendations on social networking sites works the same way. Facebook gave its page users this functionality years ago, and many of you are likely accustomed to leaving comments on other Facebook pages and generally interacting with their community as their page rather than an individual profile. You may not have known, though, that you can do the same thing on Google+. Why “Barnacle” reviews? As far as I know, Search Influence ‘s Will Scott was the pioneer of this concept in local search, which he defined as: “Attaching oneself to a large fixed object and waiting for the customers to float by in the current.” As most of you would probably admit, it’s hard work to optimize a local business website/Plus page/etc. So why not leverage pages that are already visible in your markets for your own visibility? That’s the idea behind Barnacle SEO. Will’s original concept applied to link building to prominent Internet Yellow Pages profiles like Yelp business pages or Yahoo Local listings to increase the rankings of those profiles. As Facebook became more popular, he also applied the idea to Facebook conversations on popular pages in a given community (such as the home of your local newspaper or major/minor league sports team). The problem is that with’s Facebook’s Timeline interface, comments and conversations drop “below the fold” awfully quickly, especially on popular pages with lots of conversations. The results on Google+ Local pages, when done well, can yield much “stickier” results. Getting started: using Google+ as your page This part is pretty easy. Simply go to http://plus.google.com and log in with the Google Account under which you claimed your page. At the top righthand side, you’ll see a dropdown that shows the pages on which you’re an admin. Simply select the name of your page. Google will then take you to that page, and when it does, you should see the icon of the page show up at the top righthand side (rather than your personal profile photo). You’re now using Google+ as your business! Getting your feet wet: reviewing friendly businesses Going back to the Rotary club analogy, you probably already have a network of existing businesses that you refer friends and clients to in the offline world — pay it forward and put your speech about why you would refer people to them out there for the entire Internet to see. Chances are, when they Google themselves, they’ll see your business’ review right at the top of the list and might even leave YOU a review once they notice it. Here’s an example of this in action with my friend Mike Ramsey’s business. You’ll see, because he doesn’t have that many reviews for his newspaper site, my face-for-radio shows up publicly right at the top of his list. Kicking it up a notch: finding popular businesses OK, that was simple enough. But most of your friends aren’t likely to run tremendously popular businesses that are getting a lot of traffic from search, let alone organic activity on Google+. You want to identify who the most popular businesses are in your market. You probably have some idea of what they are already, but here are some algorithmically-influenced ways to find them. 1) Perform a search for “things to do” in your market Google is showing more and more of these carousel-style results for these searches every day. The businesses and points of interest shown in this carousel tend to be the ones that get the most visibility on Google+. 2) See what businesses Google recommends at maps.google.com Visit http://maps.google.com and see who Google shows to the left of the map — both in text and image format. Again, these are likely to be popular businesses with lots of visibility on Google’s local products. 3) See where top reviewers are going Hat tip to my previously-mentioned friend Mike Ramsey of Nifty Marketing whose team authored this excellent piece earlier this week about how to find top reviewers on Google+ Local . Just follow the instructions in that post, and you’ll get a screen like this. Chances are, most of the places visited by top reviewers are pretty popular. 4) See what places are popular on Foursquare Visit foursquare.com and see what businesses are mentioned when you search for “best nearby.” These places are going to have a lot of visibility among techies–good for a variety of reasons that I won’t go into in this post. Finishing things off: reviewing those businesses So, the final step in the process is to leave a review of those top businesses. I don’t have any earth-shattering tips for best practices when it comes to actually leaving a review, but I will point out that the more effort you put into leaving a killer review, the more likely it is that effort will be rewarded. Why is that? Google+ sorts reviews by “Most Helpful” by default. This means that the better your review is, the more likely it is to have staying power over time — which is the whole point of this exercise. You want people to gain real value from your review and have a positive experience when they see your brand for the first time. Just like no one wants to talk to an incessant glad-hander or self-promoter at a networking event, no one wants to read reviews that talk about how great their own business is. Just imagine that you’re talking to people face-to-face at one of these events, except instead of a 1:1 interaction, it’s more like a 1:100 or a 1:1000 interaction. Note that my business’ review, though I left it over two weeks ago and haven’t asked anyone to mark it as helpful, is still ranking second out of all reviews. Imagine the permanent “stickiness” of a review marked as helpful by even a handful of Google+ users. Conclusion Obviously, this technique works best for retail- or hospitality industry businesses, who are probably referring their guests to top attractions anyway, and are most likely to get traffic from out-of-town guests in the process of planning their trips. But my guess is that (especially) in larger markets, even in-town residents are likely to do “recovery” searches on popular destinations — where Google is increasingly pushing searchers towards Knowledge Graph results and popular reviews from prominent Google+ users. Make sure your business (or your clients’ businesses) have a chance to gain this “barnacle” visibility. In the comments, I’d love to hear if anyone has used this technique on their own, or on behalf of their clients, and what the results have been! Sign up for The Moz Top 10 , a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

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Barnacle Reviews on Google+ Local

Filed Under: Advertising, affiliate marketing, articles, Beginner, blogging, conversion, email marketing, facebook, Featured, Foursquare, Google, google plus, Google: Analytics, How To, Interviews, Link Building, linkedin, local search, location, Marketing, Networking, online marketing, Paid Search, phil internet marketing and social media and seo, research, sea, Search Marketing, seo, social media, success, Top News, traffic, twitter, Video, Yahoo Local, Yelp Tagged With: business, development, friends, industry, internet, legal, marketing, personalization, search-engine, social media, web-design