A citation or NAP (Name, Address and Phone Number) on sites like Yelp is a way for Google to connect your name, address and phone number to your local business.

These citations are a key factor to Google and Bings ranking algorithm. The more of these citations a business has, the more likely it is to rank higher in a local search or the 7 pack.

Before you go out and start building these citations you need to follow a few steps…

1.Quality counts

Not every citation source is created equal. You need to add your listing to directories with high domain authority and that are well indexed. There is no point in creating the citation if it never shows up.

2.Do a citation audit

Having duplicate or incorrect citations will hurt you more than help you. You can use a service like Whitespark to run an audit to see what citations you have already created and to make sure they are all correct. This is not free but worth the investment, they have plans that start at $20/month. Also using their service will take care of steps 1 and 2.

3.Correct details

This is very important for building your local citations. If your NAP is not exactly the same as your Google business page it can cause Google to throw up a red flag. Make sure all the details are exact before you begin or fix the ones that are incorrect. I like to have all the details in a text file before I start.

4.Caution

When building your citations you might be tempted to outsource. This could be a good idea, as it is very time consuming and will take a lot of time away from your business. If you have an employee, you could have them do it. The one thing you don’t want to do is find a cheap source from overseas; more than likely it will be done with a program and may turn out worse than you plan. Fixing citations is more costly than doing it right the first time and should be done manually by hand.

Now you are all set to create these important citations and get those local rankings for your business.