Yell, Yelp, Facebook are a few business directories that everyone knows. There are hundreds more and they are important to build trust for your Google My Business profile even though they may not drive many visitors to your site.

Google’s mission is to serve your correct business data to its customers.  To do this, they need to verify that your business is real first by sending you a postcard with a validation code on it and checking the web for where your company is mentioned.  Google will use these listings to gain trust that your details are correct.  These are called Citations.

Citations

There are two things you need to do.  First, list your company on as many directory sites as possible, and secondly, make sure your listings have the same details.  If some of your listings have a landline number and some have a mobile number then Google will question what is the right phone number and lose trust in your listing.  The more Google trust you have the higher your ranking will be.

Looking for a Shortcut?

Let’s be honest, it can take 20 mins to find a listing site, set up an account, list your business and then verify your details.  You may need 20 – 30 listing sites to make a difference so this can be a long and boring slog.

There is a quicker way.  We recommend that you own your main listings – Google My Business, Bing Local and your Social sites and set these up yourself.  However, all the others can be done by a remote team. We have used LocalBright for all our client’s Citations and would highly recommend them.