Local citations
Local citation building and cleanup
Your business details, consistent everywhere they appear — across the aggregators, the general directories, and the industry-specific sites your customers and Google both check.
What we usually find
Citation problems are almost never about volume
They are about the listings you already have disagreeing with each other.
- 01
Your listings disagree with each other
A suite number on one directory, none on the next. An old phone number from before you ported it. A name with LLC on some and not others. Search engines reconcile those differences, and inconsistency is the most common reason a business that should rank locally does not.
The same business, five ways Agreed record
- Name
- Northside Plumbing LLC
- Address
- 412 W Oak St, Suite 210
- Phone
- (970) 555-0148
Google Business Profile
matches
- Name
- Northside Plumbing LLC
- Address
- 412 W Oak St, Suite 210
- Phone
- (970) 555-0148
Yelp
2 differ
- Name
- Northside Plumbing (differs from the agreed record)
- Address
- 412 W Oak Street Ste 210 (differs from the agreed record)
- Phone
- (970) 555-0148
Angi
2 differ
- Name
- Northside Plumbing LLC
- Address
- 412 W Oak St (differs from the agreed record)
- Phone
- (970) 555-0199 (differs from the agreed record)
Data aggregator
2 differ
- Name
- Northside Plumbing Co (differs from the agreed record)
- Address
- 412 West Oak St #210 (differs from the agreed record)
- Phone
- (970) 555-0148
Bing Places
matches
- Name
- Northside Plumbing LLC
- Address
- 412 W Oak St, Suite 210
- Phone
- (970) 555-0148
One business as it appears across five directories, with every field that differs from the agreed record marked. Where Name Address Phone Agreed record Northside Plumbing LLC 412 W Oak St, Suite 210 (970) 555-0148 Google Business Profile Northside Plumbing LLC 412 W Oak St, Suite 210 (970) 555-0148 Yelp Northside Plumbing (differs from the agreed record) 412 W Oak Street Ste 210 (differs from the agreed record) (970) 555-0148 Angi Northside Plumbing LLC 412 W Oak St (differs from the agreed record) (970) 555-0199 (differs from the agreed record) Data aggregator Northside Plumbing Co (differs from the agreed record) 412 West Oak St #210 (differs from the agreed record) (970) 555-0148 Bing Places Northside Plumbing LLC 412 W Oak St, Suite 210 (970) 555-0148 An illustration, not a client. Four of these five listings disagree with the agreed record — a dropped suite number, a spelled-out street, a missing LLC, and a phone number from before the business ported it.
- 02
Listings exist that you never created
Data aggregators generate listings automatically from public records and old data. Most businesses have listings they have never seen, carrying information that was accurate years ago.
How a listing you never created comes to exist You are nowhere in this chain, which is how a listing can be wrong without anyone having done anything wrong. It is also the dashed arrow: correcting a directory does not correct the aggregator's copy, and the aggregator pushes its copy back. That is the mechanical reason this work is maintained rather than finished.
- 03
Duplicates split your signal
Two listings for the same business on the same directory divide reviews, confuse the crawler, and are often the reason one competitor outranks you on nothing but tidiness.
What a duplicate costs One listing, twelve reviews
12 reviews
A duplicate, and the same twelve reviews
7 + 5 reviews
An illustration. The business earned twelve reviews either way; the duplicate is the only reason no listing can show more than seven, and the seven-review listing is the one a competitor has to beat.
- 04
The directories that matter differ by industry
A law firm needs Avvo, Justia, and FindLaw. A restaurant needs Yelp, TripAdvisor, and OpenTable. A contractor needs Angi, HomeAdvisor, and BuildZoom. Generic 100-directory packages spend most of their effort on sites nobody in your field is judged on.
Whose directories are whose Everyone needs these
- Google Business Profile
- Apple Maps
- Bing Places
Law firm
- Avvo
- Justia
- FindLaw
Restaurant
- Yelp
- TripAdvisor
- OpenTable
Contractor
- Angi
- HomeAdvisor
- BuildZoom
Three trades share the top row and nothing below it. A hundred-directory package sells the shared tier — which takes an afternoon — and ninety-odd sites nobody in your field is judged on.
How we work
What the work actually involves
Audit first, always
We find what already exists before creating anything new — including the listings you did not know about and the ones with a phone number you stopped using.
One canonical NAP
We agree the exact name, address, and phone format — down to whether it is Suite or Ste — and everything is built to match it.
The directories your industry is judged on
Core aggregators and the general directories, then the vertical-specific sites that actually carry weight in your field. Which sites those are is researched per industry rather than taken from a standard list.
Duplicates merged, wrong listings corrected
Claiming, merging, and chasing the directories that make it difficult. This is the slow part, and it is usually where the ranking gain is.
A record you keep
Every listing, its login, and its status in one document that belongs to you — so this never has to be rediscovered from scratch, by us or anyone else.
Why the industry-specific part matters
Which directories carry weight, which review platforms customers actually check, and which listings are simply noise all differ by trade. That is the difference between eighty submissions and thirty that count.
See our wider local SEO workTerms
What you are actually buying
We wrote the guide telling you what to demand of a citation provider — a clear pricing model, real maintenance, manual submission, no surprise fees for corrections. It would be poor form to make you guess at our own answers.
One price to fix it, a small one to keep it
The build and the cleanup are quoted once, from what the audit finds. After that it is $59 a month, or $590 a year, because directories change their records and aggregators repopulate old data whether or not anyone is watching. The big number is the repair; the small one is not letting it happen again.
Corrections are included, not billed
Finding a listing that has reverted and putting it back is what the $59 covers. So is a new phone number, a move, or a change of hours. Watch for anyone who charges per correction or per directory update — that pricing rewards them when your listings go wrong.
Submitted by hand
Every listing on a directory that matters is claimed and verified manually. Bulk automated submission is faster and cheaper, and it is why so many businesses have profiles full of junk entries nobody can claim or correct later.
Two prices, and the audit tells you which
A business with forty messy listings needs different work than one starting from nothing, so there is a clean-start price and a repair price. The free audit is what decides between them, which is why it comes before any number is quoted.
Structured listings — mentions and PR are separate
This work covers structured directory listings: name, address, phone, in a database. Unstructured citations — unlinked mentions, local press, sponsorships — genuinely help, but they are different work and we quote them separately rather than folding a vague promise into this.
You can reach the person doing it
The same number that reaches the owner everywhere else on this site reaches him about your listings. There is no account manager relaying questions to somebody you never speak to.
Proof
What clients say about the search work
SEO & Content
“Blake helps me with SEO for my drafting business. It has been by far the most valuable investment I have made to promote my business. I get far more business through my website now than I ever did through lead services.”
Web Design & Local SEO
“Blake was personable, responsive, efficient, and effective at updating my website in a timely manner. He offered a curious mind to learn more about my profession and helped ensure my updated webpage messaging was clear and fit web performance requirements. I offer my highest recommendation to hire Blake his services.”
We have not published a citation case study yet. The work is recent enough that the honest version is “ask us and we will show you the audit” rather than a number we cannot stand behind.
Price
What it costs
The repair is the big number and it happens once. Keeping it right afterwards should not cost like an agency, because it is not agency work.
The audit
Free
no obligation
We find what exists, show you which listings disagree, and tell you which of the two prices below applies — or that neither does.
Clean start
$800
once
A new or recently moved business with little to untangle. The canonical record agreed, then the listings built by hand where they matter.
Audit and repair
Most common$1,500
once
The common case: an existing profile with duplicates to merge, wrong data to correct, and listings nobody created on purpose. A genuinely tangled profile is quoted from the audit rather than forced into this.
Then, to keep it
$59/month
or $590 a year
A verification sweep every quarter, corrections whenever a listing drifts, and updates when you move or change your number — all of it included rather than billed per fix. Stop any time and your listings stay exactly as they are: they were built by hand in accounts that belong to you, so there is nothing to withdraw.
Fit
Who this is for
Citation work pays for some businesses and is close to wasted on others. It is cheaper for both of us to sort that out now.
A good fit
You serve customers from a place
A physical address or a defined service area. Citations describe where a business is and what it does; if neither is anchored anywhere, there is nothing for them to corroborate.
A good fit
Something changed and the internet did not notice
You moved, rebranded, ported a number, or dropped the LLC from your name. This is where the real mess accumulates, and it is the version of this work with the clearest payoff.
A good fit
A competitor outranks you for no visible reason
Similar reviews, similar site, similar everything — and they sit above you. Tidiness is often the whole difference, and it is checkable before you spend anything.
Not a fit
You sell online, to anyone, from anywhere
A pure ecommerce brand with no local footprint gets very little from citations. The money belongs in product pages and search ads instead, and we will say so.
Not a fit
You have a handful of listings and a free afternoon
If there are ten listings and they are broadly right, this is genuinely a DIY job. Run the free checker, fix what it finds, and keep the money.
Comparing providers?
Reasonable. We wrote up what the options actually cost — DIY tools, per-citation building, and done-for-you management — including when paying nobody is the right answer.
Citation companies comparedQuestions we get asked
Ours is $800 for a clean start, or $1,500 to audit and repair an existing profile, and then $59 a month — $590 a year — to keep it verified. A genuinely tangled profile is quoted from the audit rather than squeezed into a tier. For context, automated top-20 packages run about $400 and do not clean up duplicates, citation finder tools are $14 to $40 a month and tell you what is wrong without fixing it, and agencies fold citations into local SEO retainers of $500 to $5,000 a month.
Fewer than most packages sell you. Consistency across the sites that matter in your industry beats volume across sites nobody uses — a business with 30 accurate, industry-relevant listings usually outperforms one with 200 inconsistent ones. We wrote a longer answer to this in the guide linked below.
Yes, and for some businesses that is the right call. The work is not complicated, it is repetitive and slow — the audit, the exact-match formatting, and chasing directories that make corrections difficult. If you have more time than budget, our guide walks through the whole process for free. Most people hire it out at the point where they find the duplicates.
Directories update on their own schedules, and aggregator data can take weeks to propagate. Expect corrections to appear over several weeks and any ranking effect to follow after that. Anyone promising a specific ranking on a specific date is guessing.
They matter less as a growth lever than they did a decade ago and just as much as a hygiene factor. Inconsistent or duplicate listings still actively hold businesses back, which is why the cleanup half of this work is usually worth more than the building half.
Both, deliberately. The work of fixing the profile is a one-time price, because it is a finite job with an end. Keeping it right is $59 a month, because directories change their records and aggregators repopulate old data whether or not anyone is watching. Paying a full retainer forever for a job that finished in March never made sense to us.
No. Corrections are what the $59 a month is for, along with updates when you move, change your number, or change your hours. Watch for providers who charge per correction or per directory update — that pricing model rewards them for the listings going wrong.
By hand on the directories that matter, including claiming and verification. Bulk automated submission is faster and cheaper, and it is why so many businesses end up with profiles full of junk entries nobody can claim or correct later.
Your listings stay exactly as they are. They were built by hand in accounts that belong to you, so there is nothing for us to withdraw — which is not true of syndication services, where the listings are published from a subscription and can revert when it lapses. You also keep the record: every listing, its login, and its status, in one document. The maintenance fee buys attention, not custody.
Your exact legal business name, address, and phone number as you want them to appear everywhere, plus access to your Google Business Profile. If you have logins for existing directory listings, those help; if you do not, finding and claiming them is part of the job.
We have written the long-form answers to most of these. Start with the citation sites guide, or whether paying for this is worth it.
Last reviewed
No cost, no obligation
Start with the audit
We will find the listings you already have, show you which ones disagree with each other, and tell you whether this is worth paying for in your case.