Written by Trevor Mauch 
Trying to improve your site’s rankings? In addition to on-page SEO and creating helpful content, you’ll also want to spend some time on off-site SEO, starting by building citations for your business.
Citations are business listings for your site to build your credibility in the eyes of both search engines and your potential clients and customers. One of the main citations you’ll want to create is your Google Business Profile.
NAP consistency is key!
Citations typically consist of the business name, address, and phone number (NAP) with a short sentence and maybe a few images describing what you do.
Be sure that all details match on every site! It’s crucial to have accurate and consistent information about your business across all citations.
Learn more:
Citation Sites:
Below, you’ll find a list of sites you can use for citations, regardless of your industry or location. Each one will have its own process for how to get a listing so you’ll want to follow their directions to do so.
Our recommendation is a minimum of 50 citations. This list will get you started on your business listings:
Some directories and business listing sites are industry specific. Here are a few resources to find more citation sites that may be relevant for your business:
- Citation Sites by Industry, via BrightLocal
- The Best Citations by Category, via Whitespark
We encourage you to also find local directories specific to your area. For example, you might join your local Chamber of Commerce or other local business organizations to get listed in their website directories.
Ensuring Citations are Indexed
Don’t lose any SEO juice from your citations. Linking back to a few of your most important citations can help Google discover them and it can help build trust with your website’s visitors.
You can add links to your Carrot site’s footer that point back to your citation listings in two steps:
Add a footer widget
Go to Dashboard ➡ Design ➡ Widgets. Choose Footer Left or Footer Right
Insert citation listing links
Click Add a Widget and select a Text Widget. Add a title like “Find us on the web” and insert your citations below:
- list your citation sources
- link each citation source with the url for that listing
- click the Publish button on the top left
Learn more:
- How To Build Local Real Estate Citations
- Strategies to Rank Your Google Business Profile
- Citations & Local SEO: The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide, via Search Engine Journal
