People who know enough about local SEO to be dangerous don’t think twice about paying some poor soul to create 200 listings on glitzy big-name local-business directories like GoPickle, MyHuckleberry, and Sphinxaur.
They heard about these things called citations.
They heard citations matter to your local visibility.
They did basic work on 20-30 important listings, saw a little boost in visibility, and figured they’d squirt out 200 citations and really show ‘em.
It must seem puzzling when all those hours of work amount to nothing more than a monster spreadsheet of listings on local directories that nobody’s ever visited except to create a free listing.
One quickly hits a wall on citation-building. Citations are but one piece of the local-rankings puzzle. (I sure hope you also have a strategy for getting good links and reviews.)
But let’s say you want to wring the maximum benefit from citations, without going past the point of diminishing return. Having more listings on generic sites isn’t better. Having listings on relevant sites is better. In other words, you want niche local citations for your business.
What’s a “niche” local citation?
By that, I mean you’ve got your business’s name, address, phone number, and (usually) website listed on a site that’s either (1) focused on your industry or (2) focused on your city or local area, or both.
Examples of industry-specific citation sources include HealthGrades, Avvo, TripAdvisor, and DealerRater – but those are only the big names. There’s also at least one local-business directory for pretty much any field you can think of. Local newspapers, local Chambers of Commerce, downtown business associations, and local directories for a specific city/town are the kinds of “local” niche citation sources I’m talking about.
Anyway, local SEOs don’t talk about niche citations enough. I’ve got a few theories as to why that is:
- It takes research to find niche citation opportunities, and every client’s situation is a little different. That’s more work than using the exact-same list for every single client.
- You may need to know something about the client’s industry – or learn more about it – to find places worth being listed on.
- There aren’t as many niche citation opportunities as there are general local directories. You can’t promise to build 100+ listings, because there are probably about 10 good ones, and even fewer if the business itself is in a specialized field.
- Some niche listings are paid. Those are harder to justify baking into your pricing, or to browbeat your client into paying for.
- SEOs can’t spout the “This directory has a monthly reach of 7 million!” nonsense when they try to explain the value of their work. You get a good niche citation on a site with relatively fewer users, but more of them are users and not stumblers.
- It may never even occur to some SEOs to do anything beyond what other SEOs talk about. It often becomes a color-by-numbers deal.
- SEOs would have to explain the value of niche citations more than they would, say, an impressive-sounding but fluffed-up list of 100-200 sites.
Why you shouldn’t overlook niche local citations
Simply being listed on a niche site may help your local rankings to a degree, but how much it helps is anyone’s guess. Rather, I’d say the main benefits of getting niche citations are:
- They tend to rank well in Google for specific search terms – as opposed to terms that tire-kickers and other not-yet-serious customers might type in.
- They’re more likely to be places where you can get reviews.
- They’re more likely to offer a “follow” link (i.e. one that Google “counts”), especially if they are paid directories. (No, links from those sites won’t land you in Google’s doghouse, if they’re relevant to your field and if they’re not your only way to get links.)
- There’s a better chance they’ll yield an additional trickle of leads, to the extent the sites cater to a specific audience.
How can you find good niche citations?
Some resources:
Brightlocal’s Best Niche Citation Sites for 41 Business Categories
Whitespark’s Local Citation Finder (or just have them build the niche citations)
My list of citation sources (by the way, I need to prune this list)
Also, you can always just type in some of the search terms you’re trying to rank for, see what sites come up on the first couple pages of search results, and see how many of those sites you can list yourself on.
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Are there any benefits of niche citations I forgot to mention?
Do you find them using different methods?
Any questions?
Leave a comment!
AWESOME post and great resource links Phil – thanks you 🙂
that’s “thank you” with an added “s” 😉
I copy you loud and clear, Andy – thanks!
Thanks Phil!
When diving into the world of niche citations for cities we encounter awesome credible and widely used local directories that are NOT free. Can you speak to how you might determine whether paying for a listing is merely “buying a link” vs “advertising”. What is your experience and what would you recommend?
Great question, Jeffrey. I considered fleshing that out more in the post, but there’s such a “know it when I see it” aspect. If I had to distill it down to a few points: I’d go with these:
https://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2015/07/13/how-to-pick-the-best-barnacle-seo-sites-a-checklist/
“figured they’d squirt out 200 citations and really show ‘em.”
Haha – made me laugh, Phil. You’re right, niches don’t get enough love, and that’s likely because most Local SEOs work with a variety of industries and are simply too harassed to sit down and say, “These are for dentists, these are for landscapers, these are for businesses in Albuquerque,” etc. Good resources you’ve shared. Refreshing topic!
Thanks, Miriam. You’re more charitable than I am: My view is that most SEOs are just too lazy to develop good internal resources over time, and to make sure that every client gets some work that isn’t easy to scale.
Always a pretty solid idea to look at the first few pages of Google for the ‘keyword+geo’ that you want to rank on, and ask yourself for every single result you see “is there any way I can get a link from here?”
Competitors (blogs?), chambers, directories, review site etc… All prioritized right there for you by Google 🙂