Unstructured citations
-
We all now how important citations are, structured and unstructured for local results. Oftentimes, as David Mihm said, they are the factor that could tilt the balance.
It is also true that the higher the authority of a website the more weight Google puts on a citation.My question is, how far should you go after those unstructured citations, would you get them from everywhere you can if the number and not the quality would be the difference between number 1 and number 2 spot in Google local?
-
Thanks David!
-
Hi Echo,
You're in a very competitive space, so I would say I'd focus more on getting quality unstructured citations. One or two from colleges and universities or government organizations could indeed tip the balance in your case. Have you thought about giving free rides from O'Hare and Midway to incoming guest speakers at various seminars / colloquia @ Univ of Chicago, Northwestern, etc, just as an example?
Taking a quick look (assuming this is you) -- I'd suggest trying a couple things first, though:
-
set your service radius much tighter (something like 30 miles)
-
get more reviews on TripAdvisor, WeddingWire, AngiesList, and Yelp. These seem to be the most prominent review portals in your space.
Hope that's helpful.
-
-
I am sorry if I wasn't clear enough. I was asking about the quality of unstructured citations and the places you get them from, not about reviews although, it is a very interesting piece to read.
-
My brother ranks in Yelp in #1 position. He has several bad reviews, but he still gets business. He responds with rebuttals for the reviews are always fresh.
Read this: http://searchengineland.com/bad-merchant-google-may-drop-your-rankings-151028
Matt Cutts is going to start hammering sites that have bad merchant reviews. Hopefully Matt Cutts doesn't wipe out my brother.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Does capitalization consistency matter in Local Citations?
In my research I have found multiple citations that were both lowercase and uppercase. Does this inconsistency effect ranking?
Image & Video Optimization | | jonnyholt0 -
Once you start fixing Local citations with correct NAP, is it normal for your rankings to plunge at first?
I strongly believe that I have received the most solid Local advice I could from these forums and have started (in just a few days) to make the needed corrections. At the same time I'm somewhat excited and optimistic that it will be a long journey but that it's a learning process. About 5 days ago, I set my website up with "City landing pages" and I started plundering through google, fixing and claiming and correcting as many citations as I could with correct NAP. The journey still continues today as I just got my Bing Local card in the mail and verified. I went to check my rankings on Google Maps, just to see if anything had changed and sure enough it had. My listing had been holding strong at page 10 (which drives me nuts) and now after 5 days of solid work its on page 18. I have to assume that because I'm stirring the dust perhaps Google is confused and maybe in a month or so things might start moving the other way? Thoughts?
Image & Video Optimization | | jonnyholt0 -
How businesses get local citations without submitting them?
How do some businesses get listed in directories like YellowBook, SuperPages, MerchantCircle, etc. without submitting their information. For example, my dad's company listed themselves in YellowPages and Google Places years ago, but also show up in the ones listed above without having submitted the information to them or having paid anyone else to do it...
Image & Video Optimization | | ChaseCameron0 -
Would listing an address on a location page for a franchise count as a citation?
If a small franchise with 15 locations implemented location pages for each location including address and phone then made them crawlable by the search engines and also accessible through a store locator, would this be counted as a citation for the location?
Image & Video Optimization | | JoshuaRich60 -
How many local citations directory listings are recommended to obtain a month?
Hi, I am interested to hear what others recommend for the amount of local references & citations to obtain a month. For example, have you found it is better to get listed in SEOMoz's top 50 Local Business Citation Directories over a 30 day period, or is it the same if you registered on all of them in 1-2 days. What about larger numbers, registering on 100 national local citation websites, 50 industry related websites, and 15 city related sites. Have you found any large negative ranking effects on registering on all of them for your clients in say a 10-20 period rather than stretching out the registration process over say 3 months.. Jeff
Image & Video Optimization | | WebBizIdeas0 -
Does position in local directories effect google detecting citations?
There are a lot of local directories that i have seen google pull citations from. Quite often i see people putting listings in these directories prefixed by several "A"s, so that they will appear on the first page of the list. Just how deep does google crawl through the pages of these lists? will google actually crawl through all the pages? Some of these directories offer paid listings that appear at the top of the directory. We have been considering purchasing some of these paid positions, so that google would be more likely to pickup our citations. In one case i have noticed a directory: shopincities.com do something that spiked my interest. Basically, if you start clicking through the different pages of a category, the site will block you after 3 or 4 pages in. It serves you an error saying that you are not human. In my mind this is to prevent google from fully crawling their whole list, so that the people who pay for the top positions are picked up, and the people who don't pay, even though their profiles are listed there, never get crawled by google. So would you pay for position on these directories? here are some examples: http://www.shopincities.com
Image & Video Optimization | | adriandg
http://www.411.ca
http://www.goldbook.com
http://www.n49.ca
http://torontodirect.com
http://www.yellowpages.com Or would you just throw a whole bunch of A's infront of your business name so you appear on the first page of listings? Or do you belive it doesn't matter how deep you are in the listings, and with enough time google will find it regardless and credit it as a citation?0 -
Will linking to my citation sources help google recognize them / credit my places account?
Or will those sources be discounted by google then similar to how google discounts link exchanges? I have noticed some pages, like mapquest, don't really have a directory, so google might not be aware of their content unless it is linked too??? In this type of a case, would it help to link to mapquest's search results? then the citation will get picked up by google? Example: http://www.mapquest.com/?hk=6-i30tP49i
Image & Video Optimization | | adriandg0 -
Canadian Local SEO gurus: What are the best citation sources?
I have been trying to gain some position in our local O-pack results and have used whitespark to hunt for citations and aquire as many as possible, but even after 4-5 months google has still not detected many of the citations we have added. What are you favourite citation sources? which ones really help? i.e. what are some quality canadian citation sources?
Image & Video Optimization | | adriandg0