Thread: Citations: Links for Local Businesses

Where To Find Citation Opportunities
Strategies for Accumulating Citations
Citations are one of those ranking factors for local businesses that can not be overlooked. There are plenty of tools to help you find citation opportunities online. So I won’t mention the services. It is better to simply find out which citations your competitors have and get the same plus more. Below is a comprehensive list of practical ways to gain the coveted citation. But first here are videos on how to build citations and why it is so important:









This is a list that I found while hunting down where and how to find them. You can see the original article here: Citation Building Strategies - The Complete List For Local Businesses written by Benjamin Beck.

Citations through Sponsoring
It is common for businesses to support and sponsor events, charities, and local organizations. The following are sponsorship ideas that will work for any industry.

Charities

There are a lot of great charities out there that could use business support. To find the right charity for your business check out Charity Navigator You can use the advanced search to find specific type of charities within your zipcode. Be sure to check out the charities websites to see if they cite their business sponsors, some of them do not. Resource: Charity Navigator.

Charity Event Profile

Along with sponsoring charities, if you have anyone in your company supporting a charity doing any kind of fund raising, be it for a 5K, bike race, etc. Check to see if they have a “help me raise money” page. If the fundraising domain allows you or your employee to drop in a citation why not give it a try?

Local Meetups

If you haven’t heard of Meetup.com, it is the world’s largest network of local groups. Meetup.com makes it easy for anyone to organize a local group or find one of the thousands already meeting face-to-face.

Sponsor a Student

Creating a scholarship is a great way to help students in your community & can gain your business citations from high schools & colleges. There is no set amount of what the scholarship has to be, but in my experience colleges do not really share scholarship opportunities that are less than $500.

Search for Sponsored Opportunities

There are literally hundreds of different sponsorship opportunities available in every community. Examples:
Sponsor a little league team.
Sponsor a pet shelter.
Sponsor a food kitchen.



Networking Relationships
As a business owner you already have lots of relationships that you can leverage to acquire citations for your business.

A lot of manufacturers have their own website where they list all of their vendor locations if you sell products. Make sure you are listed. If not, it’s easy to do:.

Make a list of all the products you carry.
Check the manufacturer sites for the opportunity to get listed.
If they list locations to buy, send them an email requesting your site to be added.
Enjoy the easy citations.
Office Building.

Is your business in a corporate park, strip mall, or an actual mall? Many of these places list the companies and full address for their tenants. Double check to make sure you are listed.

Testimonials & Reviews
As a business you naturally have connections with a lot of other businesses. For the connections that you rave about to your friends, why not check and see if you can give a testimonial or review for that connection in exchange for a business citation. There are lots of opportunities here, the following is a list of businesses you’ve possibly used and could get citations for leaving a testimonial or review.

Travel Agency.
Copywriter.
Designer.
Company Photographer.
IT Services.
Contractors (Plumbing, Remodel, A/C).
Office Cleaners.
Office Landscaping.
Happy Hour Restaurants.

Online Mentions

You likely have relationships that you don’t even know about. Find people who have mentioned or talked about your business and find ways to work with them.

Examples:.

Google Search– “Company Name” -site: yourdomain.com.
Check reference visits in your analytics.
Ahrefs– finds sites that are linking or recently mentioned your website.

Associations & Organizations

Are you apart of any local or industry organizations? Do these organizations have websites that list their members? Double check these sites to make sure you are listed.
Examples:.

Local Only– Chamber of Commerce.
Local & Industry
Industry Only

Employees

Your own employees can be a great way to gain citations for your business. Ask if they would include the business in their online bios.
Examples:.

Social network profiles (Linkedin, Facebook, Google+)
Organizations they work or support for
Speaking at events

Friends & Family

Make a list of colleagues or friends who would possibly cite your business online. Then reach out and nicely ask if they would cite you.

Name Address Phone

Relationships To Build
The internet is a BIG place! There are a lot of experts, niches, and communities that your business could connect and tailor too. Look at the following places to find niches for you to grow your business online.

Connect with the Media

Local newspapers, media, and news sites are always looking for news especially from people within the community. Research your local media reporters and connect with them to see what they are looking for. Often times you can connect & find with reporters on Twitter.

Give Quotes

Answer their questions to get a great citation is a win/win. Sign up for a free account and get emailed when someone is looking for an expert in your field.2) Watch Reporter Hashtags on Twitter– As mentioned earlier a lot of reporters are on Twitter and use it to find sources for articles to cite.
# URGHARO– HARO hashtag
# journorequest– Journalist request
# prrequest– PR Request

Find Local Bloggers

A great way to find local bloggers is to do a backlink analysis of local sites to see which bloggers cover them. Get a feeling and try of what topics they like to cover and if you think they would cover your business with the right pitch, then reach out and pitch them.

Examples:

Websites to check backlinks of:

local media
hospitals
local government
libraries
Resource: Ahrefs– To check backlinks of your competitors. Free & Paid Versions.

Support Bloggers

Research and find the best local and industry experts for your niche. This is a great way to get them to reciprocate and cover your business.

Build A Complimentary Business Group

A complimentary business group is when you connect with businesses that do not offer the same services or products, but have the same customers. You then refer your clients to them when they are need of their services, and they will do the same for you. You can take this online by getting listed on these websites as a “recommended vendor”.

Example: of a complimentary business group
Wedding Planner
Wedding Photographer
Food Caterer
Florist all work together

GLBT Friendly

If you have a business that tailors to or is friendly towards the GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual, Transgender) community there are websites and directories out there that you can be cited in.

Resource: GayFriendlyMarket.com

Pet Friendly

Pet owners love their pets! , if you are a pet friendly business there are websites and communities that will be happy to include your business for other pet lovers to find.. Resource: PetsWelcome.com– pet friendly hotels & properties.

Disability Friendly

There are several different organizations that help those who have limitations. If your company can help people with specific limitations connect and get cited in their network.

Resources:
Blind Resources
Deaf Resources
Wheel Chair accessible

Languages Spoken

Does your office speak several languages or focus on helping people from a specific country? Be sure to connect with the organizations around that country, language, and culture.

Example:
Language associations
Country associations
Media outlets for that language

Event Citations
Participating in events is a huge opportunity to get earn high value citations from those in your industry and local community. The great thing about event citation building is that, if done right, you get other people to build the citations for you! They spread the word on social networks, industry publications, and personal blogs.

Rent Out Your Space

If your business has a space large enough to hold an event it could be used for any of the following reasons:

Examples:

Blogger meetups
Industry parties
Support groups
Workshops / Seminars
Speed dating
Community cook off, garage sale, job fair
“Pop Up” stores for local based vendors & start ups
Hackathon

Become A Local Post

Running an event or hosting can take a lot of time or effort. You can also leverage gaining citations off of other peoples activities by becoming a “local post” for them. Allowing a local charity to use your office as a collection center for their food drive.

Examples:.

Food drive drop off
Pick up tickets for a fundraiser
Pick or sell up Girl Scout cookies
Use your parking lot for a car wash fundraiser

Leverage Other Peoples Space

If you do not have your own space to use, you can leverage somebody else’s! When you book it your event and business citation can go on their online event calendar, find a space to borrow or rent (usually for cheap) and. These are powerful citations that can boost your business listing and your competition usually won’t get.

Examples:.

Libraries
Schools & Colleges
Churches
Shared Work Spaces
Community Centers

Be An Event Resource

If you have a huge event coming to your town why not create a resource to get attention and citations to your business? This could be done by creating a map outlining the course route, a collection of helpful event links, or open your doors to attendees and offer to help them get around your city.

Examples:.

Chicago Marathon Map– route, viewing areas, and links to helpful soureces
Content Harmony– Mozcon Event Review

Capture Event Attendees

This kind of goes off of being an event resource but you can offer deals to event attendees to get them to talk and cite your business. Social Citation Building.



Social Media Citations
Social media can be important for connecting and gaining customers. It can also be a good way to gain citations for your local business.

Claim & set up your social profiles

Make sure to fill and claim out your social profiles. Especially if those profiles are popular with your target customer.

Resources:.

Google Local Page
Four Square

Reward your Online Fans

Integrate special badges or provide a local guide of places in Foursquare. Offering checkin deals at your locations in Foursquare can encourage interaction activity at your location, too.

Example:.

Flamingo Hotel– Las Vegas Tips
Best Gizmodo Perk Ever
Resource:

FourSquare– Setting up rewards



Employer/Employment Citations
If you are looking to hire new employees there are a lot of citation opportunities.

Job Boards

There are a lot of online job boards! Depending on your budget and the position you are trying to fill you might want to use national job board sites or industry specific job boards.

Resources:.

Job Board Site– CareerBuilder, Indeed, SimplyHired.
Industry Specific Job Board- Inbound Marketing Jobs, Startup Jobs.

Free Online Classifieds

If you don’t have a budget there are some free online marketing advertising.. But they are free because they are free may have some disadvantages.

Resources.

Kijiji– Free Canada Classifieds
Craigslist– Free Job Listing
Local Newspaper Classifieds

Get in touch with your local newspaper classifieds. Often you can get a cheap online ad for next to nothing.

Offer Student Internships

A lot of colleges have internship & job board sites. Connect with the schools and let them know that you are looking for interns.

Discounts For Citations
People love getting discounts and entire websites are dedicated to finding and aggregating them. This section we’ll be going over how to use discounts to gain citations for you business.

Student Discounts

If you have a special discount for students this can often get your business cited on the schools website.

Examples:.

Free dessert for good report cards
Discount pricing for students

Senior Discounts

If you have any kind of incentives for this group you can get listed in those directories, seniors discounts are a popular niche that.

Resources:.

SeniorDiscounts.com
Brad Deals– 100+ Senior Discounts

Coupon Sites

People love using coupons and getting deals on products. There are entire websites dedicated to finding and aggregating coupons. If your site offers any kind of coupon be sure to get them listed here on these sites.

Resources:.

RetailMeNot.com
SwagGrabber.com
MyCoupons.com

Local Business Coupons

You can create a digital coupon as an image and then share the embed code with other local businesses so they can easily put it on their site. The embed code can include a link and citation to your business.

Resource: Embed Generator Tool

Freebies

It is crazy what people will do to get something for free! If your business has something that they can give away for free it’s a good strategy to get a lot of citations. Resources:.

Hunt4Freebies. com
Frugal-Freebies. com
Guide2Free. com



Creative Citation Building
I tried to think of every kind of strategy to get your business more citations. Here are some of the more creative strategies.

Tell the History

Is your business located in an old building? See if you can create official documentation to have the building declared a historically significant place and then submit your location to historic place registers, state tour, and industry specific tour websites. Once your address is listed on these sites, other sites will pick up the data and refer to your place by address, improving your business profile. This strategy alone could gain you hundreds of address citations!

Resources.

National Register of Historic Places
Register of Historic Places by State
Weird Places to visit by state

Install a Webcam

Install a webcam at your place of business so customers can check things like weather, lines, or live events. Having a webcam can get you listed in a number of local and national webcam directories which will cite your business as the source of the webcam.

Examples:.

Las Vegas Chapel Weddings
Watch Whisky Mature
Puppy Cam

Photos

Find images about your business like the company sign, pictures of your food, or images of your models or products. Reach out to those people that are using your images and ask them to cite your business.

Resource:.

Google Image Search

Share your WiFi

Provide free Wi-Fi service at your business. As a free Wi-Fi hotspot, it qualifies to be listed in a number of hotspot location directories. Be sure to include that your business provides free wifi when submitting to business directories because those directories optimize for those search terms.

Resources:

Open Wifi Spots
Cafe Wifi Spots

Geo Caching

Geo Caching is the recreational activity of hunting and finding hidden objects by the means of GPS coordinates posted on a website. You can simply create a geo cache at your business and then get the citations from these sites. Geo Cachers can come any day at anytime so don’t put it somewhere that won’t work off hours.

Resources:.

Geo Caching 101 Guide
Video about createive Geo Caches

Kickstart your Ideas

Are you expecting on launching a new product, business, or idea? You might want to use a crowdsourcing to try and get other people to fund your idea. These sites also can be a good citation for your company. I suggest finding the best crowdsourcing platform for you and then use it. I would not suggest “launching” your project on all of the different platforms.

Resources:

Kick Starter
Indiegogo
Rocket Hub

3rd Party Vendors

Do you have 3rd party vendors or items at your business? You should try to get cited on the vendors website and also look for directories for that specific niche.

Examples & Resources:

ATM’s
Vending Machines
Cell Towers



Getting Competitors Citations
The best way to find what is working in your industry is to find what is working for your competitors. You can use a company called Whitespark to do some of the work for you and they even have a tool that you can use explained here:



Finding Competitors Citations

Check the backlinks & NAP of your competition for citation opportunities.

Examples: You can simply use Google and the following search queries to find competitors citations:.

Cityname + Competitor name.
Competitor Address -site: competitordomain.com.
Competitor Telephone -site: competitordomain.com.
Ahrefs– finds sites that are linking or recently mentioned your competitors website.

Competitors Images

Another way to find competitors citations is from people using their images. Could be their logo, badge they created, or coupon. Use the following resources to see where the competition was citied and see if your business could be cited as well.

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You have shared many good shares. This seems to be one of them. Do you have case study of any rankings or like generations?

Showing up in local search results might be one of the greatest opportunities for a business to gain organic traffic.
Google has successfully blended local and global results, to a point where sometimes there is more of the former and less of the latter in SERPs.

Another highly valuable share from MarkUpshaw; thank you very much and keep it going.

great post you have shared.

thank u buddy