Transcripts
1. WELCOME To Your Citations Success Journey!: Okay. Hey, there. Welcome to Local Listing
Mastery Power hour. Now, are you ready to
unlock the secret sauce to local search and watching new customers find
you faster than ever? Okay. Hey, everyone. I'm Trisha. You guide on this journey to local
listing Mastery. Now, just like with your Google business profiles,
local listings, otherwise known as citations can be a powerful
marketing tool. We're working for you 2047. With over 25 years of
marketing experience, I've seen the
incredible effect that citations could have on upping local SEO results and
attracting local customers. I'll equip you with the
knowledge and strategies to supercharge your
local search visibility. That translates to
more website traffic, more local customers
walking through your door, and ultimately, more
success for your business. By the end of the course,
you're going to be a local listing P.
But don't worry. This isn't just basic stuff. We'll be diving into
Insider secrets, only the savviest
marketers know to give you the edge you need to stand
out from the competition. So get ready because
we're about to cover. The power of citations and how they can supercharge
your local SEO, boost your visibility and
increase your traffic. Proven strategies to
claim and optimize your existing listings
for maximum impact. Powerful techniques defined as secure new citations across
high value directories. How you can stay ahead of the competition and
local search and attract and convert more
customers to your business, and we're going to
cover so much more. Now, all you need to do is
show up to these lessons. By to learn and be to put
what you learn into action. This course is
about supercharging your results and
getting more customers, and I'll be there cheering
you on every step of the way. So are you ready to
unlock the power of local listings and increase
your local visibility? If so, let's dive in and dominate your local
search game together.
2. Why I Created This Course & Why Local Listings Matter: Do you know that
frustration of crickets tripping when you should be
hearing your phone ringing? Well, you're not alone. I spent years trying to get my customers to rank on
the first page of Google. I'm talking about
countless hours on trying to optimize
articles for SEO, doing competitor research, doing keyword research, and more. So I really wish after all that I could tell you
that I cracked the code. But the truth is that
ranking on Google nowadays takes a lot
more work than ever. Now, before I scare you off, what I did learn was
a simpler process. Today, especially
with the power of AI, I created a set of mini
courses that you can learn in only a few minutes that would make the biggest impact
on your Google ranking. I mean, simple things that in only a few minutes
a day could really make the difference
in bringing in real or virtual customers
to your business. Because I can tell
you right now that there are people looking
for your business and who do want to work with you if they only knew you existed. Along with many years of hands
on marketing experience, and my number one
best selling course on Google Maps,
Google My Business, I've been able to help
hundreds of customers unlock the strategies to
ranking higher on Google. But my students wanted more, and there's so much more
I could teach you about how to rank higher on
Local Google results. That's what the set of mini
courses is designed to do to get you real results with only
a few minutes of learning. I decided to begin at all with the course
you're on right now, and that's what the power
of citation building. Nail citations will help
customers find you, and that means an
automatic boost to your business online visibility. Plus, as you soon will find out, the work to build and list your citations will be easy
when you follow my model. So get ready because you're
a book to take a big step needed to show up more on local searches and attract
more local customers.
3. What Are Citations?: What exactly is the citation? Well, a citation is a listing of your business on
the Internet that includes details
of your business, such as your business name, your business address, and
your business phone number, otherwise known as Nap it typically also includes
your website URL. So this could be, for
example, like when you created your
Facebook business page, and he had to list
information about your business or your
Google business profile, and you had to list information
about your business. Or let's say you created something on event bright
or another event listing, where they asked you
information about your business or if you've already done some local directories on your own. So if you've listed on yellow
pages or Yelp already, those are all examples
of you putting your business information out
there in the online world.
4. The Benefits of Citations: Now, citations are an incredibly
important starting point if you want to increase
your online visibility, but also if you want to
increase your online authority. Citations are also a very
crucial part of local SEO, and they work
especially well if you work to keep your
business information consistent across all
directories and if you work to consistently build the number of
citations you have. And A though citation
signals will not influence your local Google ranking as much as something like
Link Building Well, they definitely will still
influence your ranking. And one of the easiest
ways to increase your local visibility
while getting your eyeballs from
different online sources. So let me show you
one big way on how citations can really
help your local business. So let's say for example,
that you're an electrician. A typical search,
if you're looking for an electrician and let's
say you lived in Toronto, you would just go into
Google and you would type in electrician Toronto. So what you notice, of course, is the Google Maps three
pack which is up here. This is the sponsored
ad at the top, and then you've got the
wonderful three pack which you want to aim to be on if you're optimizing your Google
business profile. You could be listed up there. But what I want to
show you, you've scrolled down a little bit more. Hometars that's a place that
you can add a citation. I believe that's a company. That's a company company
Yelp. That's another place. You could list a citation. Company company bar com It's another place
that you could list your company citation. Company company, yellow pages. That's another place you
could list your citation. So there's home stars again. Let's imagine, for example, that you did some work on your local SEO and you also listed on multiple
citation sites. Theoretically, people
could see you in the Google three
pack if you optimize your Google business.
Then they could see you. If they click on some of
these citation sites, they could see you as one
of the options in those. Then if you do a really
good job of SEO, you could also
have your business appearing on the first page. If you're on four or five of these different directories
that people are finding, on the first page of Google that they're looking
at if they want to find a reputable electrician, then you're coming up
in the three pack, and then you're also coming up as one of the businesses
on the first page. Maybe you're even
running a Google Lad, which means you
will run up here. So That would mean
that if somebody is looking for an electrician in Toronto and they're
seeing your name, not once, not twice, but a few times, just imagine how
powerful that would be. Even if you don't
run those paid ads, coming up organically, look how many times
you could show up from someone doing a search and just looking at items on the
first page of Google. One example of how
powerful citations can be. And when your
business is listed on trustworthy sites like these, it really helps build those
trust signals with Google, and it helps Google
authenticate your business. Plus, another big
bonus for you is a lot of these sites allow
customers to leave reviews. And you know how
powerful reviews can be for your business and
your online reputation.
5. Your 5-Step Local Citation Process: So, welcome back. So in this section and
the one following, I'm going to show you my
easy five step process for building citations. So in this section, what we're going to go
over is all the prep work. I suggest you do before you actually start
building citations. And then in the next section, we're actually going to start
building those citations. Now, to help you
out even further, down below this video, I've included two
worksheets for you. In the first worksheet, it's basically going to be your master
business worksheet. So what I suggest in it, you put your NAP, you put in your description, you put in any promotions
you want to ever list. What type of photos
logo location, all of that stuff
goes into the sheet. Now, sound very
basic, but trust me. Over time, you might forget what you originally listed somewhere and listed differently
somewhere else. And remember, I said, it's super important that when you
do citations that it remains consistent because
the consistency is going to help with your trust signals to Google and it's all going
to help you rank better. So very, very important to just print it out right now
and just begin using it. So that worksheet is
really going to help you. The second worksheet
I included below is going to help you keep track
of your actual citations. So you're going to list
where you put the citation, the URL, your login information, Anything that's basically going
to help keep you on track with where your
citations are and help you remember what you
actually listed on it. I also added a place for note. So you could listing,
for example, if you have a citation pending because sometimes they don't
get approved right away, so that will remind you
to go ahead and follow up and also to double
check when it is up, and you just want to make sure that whatever
you submitted, is exactly what it looks like. So very, very good to keep that tracking
sheet active as well. So go ahead and print
those two sheets now, and then let's get started. No.
6. Building Your NAP (Step 1): Now, your business name,
address and phone number are all important parts of your
online business identity. As mentioned, it's
really important to keep these consistent because consistency is what tells the search engines that your business is
real and reliable. So now, before we move ahead, I want to show you
how not to do this. So there was a local
business that I started working with
who sold burritos. Now, he complained
to me that he just wasn't getting as much
business as he used to. So after a little digging, which I'll show you how
to do in just a moment, I found out that not only was his address not
consistent everywhere, but he had a new
order phone number, and he forgot to update it on the most important
online listings. His address was four 80
Main Street Unit two, but sometimes he would list it as just four 80 Mainstreet, or sometimes he would put
number 2480 Mainstreet. Now, that likely didn't make
too much of a difference, but it's still important
to keep it consistent. But what was really hurting his business was not having
that phone number correct. So imagine how many
frustrated customers there were out there
that were hungry, really wanted a burrito, went into their favorite
online directory. Called and had the
wrong phone number. Don't let that be you. Make sure that your
information is always correct across all your
online directories. But Google does understand many abbreviations and
slight variations as well. For example, Street versus
ST Avenue versus AVE, Lane versus Lane, and so on, or even shortcuts
in your province. I'm in Ontario, if
I listed as ON, Google will still
understand what that means. Are you a business
that works from home or for whatever reason, wherever you work,
you want to keep that address hidden.
That's okay. You can still build citations, and I'm going to show you
how in less than three. Once you run AP is just
the way you want it, you're going to
come back here to your master citation
worksheet and add it in here.
7. Crafting a Powerful Master Description (Step 2): Now, in this video, I'm going to show
you how to create a very powerful
business description. So first, let's have a look
at the winning formula for converting viewers
into action takers. A captivating
headline that grabs attention and highlights a
unique selling proposition. Bullet points
highlighting what you offer and the
results you deliver. A call to action that encourages the viewer to contact you
or visit your business. For even more in depth tips, be sure that you download the master business
description tip sheet included below this video. Now before we build
a description, I want to know what
type of person you are. Are you the type of person who wants to build your description, copy and paste and use it the
exact same way everywhere, just to make your life
a heck of a lot easier. T, that would be me. Or are you the type of person
who loves being original? And you want to
create a description, but you want to just change
it up every once in a while, just keep things interesting. Okay, good for you
for doing that, but I can tell you
that's going to take a heck of a lot of time. Here's what I recommend. Do both. I did promise I would
make this easy for you. What I'm going to
recommend is you create a master business description and then use it as a template. It's what I did
for my customers. It just made my life and
their lives so much easier, but it gives you the flexibility to be a little bit original. I'll show you what that means. The master description
will cover everything from the
winning formula that we just went over. And a few new things to make your description
even more powerful. Then once you have your
master description, you want to slightly adapt it for the different
platforms that you list on. So for example, if you're marketing agency
and you're listing on a social media directory, then you're going to
focus on talking about social media services
that you offer, as opposed to let's say video
services that you offer. Or if a platform allows
for longer descriptions, take advantage of the
opportunity and use some additional details to highlight what makes you unique. You might also want to
change your call to action depending on what
platform you're on and what they will
allow you to do. For example, a platform
allows a form. You might want to
add a booking form, so people could book
appointments directly with you. So to make this process
even easier for you, I created an amazing AI prompt which you could find below. The AI prompt is
designed to give you a very powerful description
that's going to help convert viewers into
customers for you. All right. So this is your first page of the AI powered Master
description generator and success formula that
I made for you guys. Basically, the
first part is just letting you know that you could
also refer to a document, another document I created called putting together a
master business description, which basically gives you
a whole bunch of tips. I highly suggest you look
at that one as well. Here on this sheet, I just put some very general tips that
you should keep in mind. The length of what you need for your description will vary based on the platform
you're using, and also just a reminder to
make sure that your p is consistent across all
your listing sites and to use short sentences, use bullet points, and
review it regularly. And here is one more big tip. If you're using a
platform that's a high traffic platform, here are some extra things
that you might want to do. You can have a look at that. The AI prompt starts on H two. The most important thing
that I want to draw your attention to
is this part here. We're highlighted in yellow, and I indicate that
you should replace all information highlighted in yellow and that are in brackets. AI prompt starts here
and if you scroll down, you'll see that there are a
lot of these areas where it allows you to put in information that is true for you
and your business. What you're going to
do is highlight and replace these areas.
I'll show you. Let's just work on this
together so you could have a really quick example
of what this would look like. Just once again, the AI prompt starts up here where
it says craft. You could read this over, but just leave it as it is. But where it says
here are my details, that's restart entering
your information. All you would do is highlight
the entire section, that's in yellow
and in brackets, delete it, and then type in your information.
My business name. And there we go. And then
you just keep going. You primary local keyword. That would be your
main umbrella keyword, your main overall keyword. Then you would just
scroll down here it ask for other keywords
if you know them. If you've done your keyword
research and you know some other keywords
that'll make you stand out in your specific industry and area, you would
just add it in here. Okay. And then for here, it's a city or area serve. Just make this your main
area, the bigger area. If I'm in Toronto, I
would just list Toronto. Then you'll have a chance
lower down to put down the specific areas within that city that you
offer your services in. Here a main list of
services offered. I gave you some examples. If you're a plumber,
you could put down something like
drain cleaning. If you're a massage surpus
could specifically, you do pregnancy massage, or if you're an accountant, you could put down
that you specifically work on business
taxes and so on. Just put what's true
for your industry. Under target neighborhoods,
this is where you get more specific about the areas
that you serve us. For example, if
you're in Toronto, I would put down
something like this. Liberty Village, Queen West. Then if I want to go a
little bit further north, I would put down Ronsonsville, Parkdale, Trinity Bellwood. Then I would cover a
bigger geographic area within the Toronto area
if I was located there, and if that's the area
I indeed serviced. Now, based on your area,
if you're in a small town, perhaps you look after
your small town, but some surrounding areas or some other small towns
around your small town. But if you're in a bigger city, it's just much better
to really talk to the local community within
that specific area. Then we come to unique
selling points. These are the things that
really set you apart and make you different
and make you unique. I put some examples. If you offer service, if that's important
in your industry or to your customers, do you offer 2047
emergency services if you like an electrician or in
some home based business, where they might need
your services right away or pest control or
something like that. If you're family owned business, if you're in an area that's
very family oriented, and that's important to them. I'll just give you an example. In my industry,
regular reporting and communication is very important because a
lot of people use marketers and then they don't
hear from the marketers. I know that's really
important to my customers. Then I also put ROY Previn work, which is really important
because I could show customers that
I could actually prove that the work I did actually made a difference
in their lives. Then I also put down that I'm proud supporter
of the meeting place, which in the Liberty
Village area of Toronto is center for homeless
people to drop in Okay, very important to that
community, and then again, it shows that I'm really part of my local community and
supporting my local community. Then there's a spot for
your customer pain points. Really think about
your customers. What challenges do your
specific customers face? I gave you some more examples. In my industry, for example, people are struggling
to get found online, for example, people are
struggling to get traffic. That sort of thing. If
you again pest control, people want to relocate a
squirrels, that's in neurotic. Okay. Or people need to
stop a water leak if you're a plumber or people are late in getting their taxes done if they're business or
something like that. So what are the pain points that your customers need solved right away that would
make you stand out. Okay. For my customer
pain points, I put struggling to
get found online, they're struggling
to get traffic, and they're struggling
to get conversions, even if they get traffic? Other differentiators are
other things that you want to mention that
are unique to you. What else makes you stand out? This is just to really get you thinking about everything
that makes you different. There's definitely
going to be something. For example, do you have
mentions in the media? Do you have some
really great reviews that you want to highlight. Do you have awards from within the community?
That sort of thing. Okay, for myself,
I put down that I have 25 years of
marketing experience. My online courses have
over 40,000 students, like, whatever, things that my competitors won't
be able to say. Okay. So under power words, again, I gave you some example. Again, are these the words that resonate with
your customers. When you talk to your customers, what kind of words do they
usually say about you? Are they saying that
you're trending? Are they saying
that you're fine? Are they saying that you're reliable and they
can count on you? Basically, what are
they saying about you and even what you
would say about yourself? If this was for me, I would
put down the word experience, just because of the years of
experience I do have that I offer guaranteed work and that I offer high
performing content. Under special offers, it's
really great when people see for the first time if you grab them with something
that you're offering. I put an example in for you. If you're not quite
sure what to offer, you could put in something
like 10% off for new customers or 10% off if you say
you saw it on here, and then you know where
they came in from. So I just put down
that I'm doing a limited time offer
because it's nice to put that sense of urgency
behind your offers. So I have a limited time offer where people buy a
20 hour package, then I'm going to give
them five 3 hours. And it's really beneficial
for me as it is probably for you to get longer term customers and it's just easier to manage, and then you've got, you know, obviously regular income and
something stay coming in. So if they book a
minimum of 20 hours, then, you know, I want to
give them some type of incentive in order to
encourage them to do so. Let me come to
customer benefits. Customer benefits are things again that are important
to your customers. It's fast service important
to them, the guaranteed work. I know some of the
stuff is repetitive, but it's just to give
you different examples to get your brain working
in different ways to pull different things that
are going to be the most important to
or I should say, potential customers seeing
you for the first time. If any of these areas
you're not quite sure of, it's okay before you fill this out to just basically
work with your AI. Feed into AI, what
your business is, what you're offering and the area you serve and you
can say things like, I need some customer benefits or what is some benefits that potential customers might be attracted to if I
say I offer them, or what kind benefits
do customers usually look for in
this type of service. Something like that,
and then you'll have some information to
start adding in here. Let me just show you what
I put I know just from my industry and working with customers that turnaround time is one of the most
important things because when people
need marketing, they need marketing done fast, they need those results fast. I also put down that I
offer customized work because I know for a
fact that my competitors do not and they just use copy paste templates,
which I do not. I customize my work
to the customers, so that again helps me
stand out in my industry. What helps you stand
out in your industry? Then I added some other
things like I get more qualified leads
visiting their website, not just people coming
to the websites, but qualified people coming to their websites for people
greater visibility, and I help make people a trusted authority
in their field. So that's just for me, you could definitely take and
borrow some of that and use some of those other
examples I gave you just to jump start
and get you started. Then for the very
important call to action. I gave you a lot of
examples that you could use like
request a free quote. Visit our website to learn more, follow us on, and then you
put the URL for free tips. Join our community at, and then you put the
link to your community. Let's talk strategy. All of these things are
fabulous call to actions. You could even offer freebies. Get this free thing, click here, and then they click on
the button and it goes to Apaga captures your e mail
address, which of course, I love as a marketer because it's one of those things that we do a lot of So I put down schedule a
free consultation call because that will help me determine if they're a good fit for me and I'm a
good fit for them. If you're in an industry where people just need a
quote really quickly, it'd just be call us
for a free quote today. Or just something. So
they're making that contact, whether you want them to
contact you by e mail or visit your website
where you've got something on the website
that's going to take them to an action that they
need to do right away, like filling out a form, for example, whatever it is, just tell them where
they're going, tell them what
they're going to get, and maybe give them
a reason to do it. Because just remember if they read all this
wonderful stuff on you and they know you're
different and they're really curious to
know if you could help them, give them a call to action and tell them what to do
with that information. Now that you've got
their attention, you definitely want to
take them somewhere else. And then when you're done, what you're going to do is basically just keep your
cursor at the bottom, scroll up to the very very top. Very start of the prompt, hold down your shift
key like that and click again and
that automatically will highlight the
entire area for you. Or, of course, you
could just use the scrolling methods
to start at the top, scroll Skoll scroll down to the bottom and then right
click and click on Copy. If that works better for
you, just do it that way. But basically what you want to do is to select everything, and that's what you're
going to feed into your AI. The entire thing, all
the answers you put in, and all the instructions
for the AI. And what I want to say is
that this is very thorough, as you can tell, very thorough. But that's because
this is your template. You want this to be
really, really solid. Then once you AI, spits it out for you and
gives you your result. What what you can do is then if you want
to make it even better, you could always
feed that entire, the entire result back into the AI and just tell it
what to do with that. Just say, this is great, but could you make
it a little bit more high converting
or could you give me some more action
words or recommend something or recommend
improvements for me, whatever you just keep
working with your AI to massage it and get it as
best as it possibly can be. Now, the other thing
I want to show you is this area right here. Basically, what I
instructed the AI to do is to give you a result and then give
you three versions of it. The reason is because as you're
in different directories, Some directories will only
let you put in a few words. So directories will let you
put in a longer description. This way, you have three
options based on what the directory character length is of what they're
allowing for you. If they give you a
little bit more room, make sure you add
a little bit more. It's free advertising space
to totally take advantage of that so you're aware that you're going to get
three different variations. You're going to get
three different outputs with those different
character lengths, and then you can
go ahead and grab them and you can
start using them. So once your
master's description is just the way you want it, you're going to take it and you're going to
be sure to add it to your master business
citation worksheet. So now that you've got
all that figured out. There's one other very
important step to take, and that is to find your
existing citations. Where exactly are you
already listed online? I'm able to show you
in the next lesson.
8. Finding & Claiming Your Existing Listings (Step 3): Did you know that
other people can list your business
listings for you? Now, there are hundreds
of online directories. So chances are your business might already be in one of them. So L's go find
where your business is already listed online. Otherwise, known as
doing a citation audit. You're going to want
to do is use quotes because whatever you put inside of quotes in
a Google search, we'll tell Google to search what's inside of the
quotes, exactly. Otherwise, what Google does is it finds similar
types of things, and that's what it brings
up and search results. So let's say I'm hungry. So let's do pizza pizza. That's a popular
pizza place here. So we'll do pizza pizza.
So if I own pizza pizza, I would put that in quotes like that to see everywhere
I'm listed. Okay. And all I would do is scroll down and
just start looking. I got a citation from
Facebook from Instagram, Wikipedia, D, Ubers,
Trip Advisor. These are all fabulous places
to get citations from. Basically, you get the idea. Globe and Mail, there's
a media citation, the Apple store or Apple App. Apps are great places
to get citations. So social media, the media, the apps, the directories,
online listings, places like Yelp as well, directory So Von pizza pizza, these are some of the places
where my business is sited. And if I scroll up to the top, I could look at the results. And, you know, with the
exact phrase pizza pizza, there are a heck of
a lot of results. So obviously, if you're a
larger company like that, this would be just
a super quick way to do it for your company. But if you're a huge
corporation like that, you'll definitely want to use other methods to make it easier. But I like to do this as a quick search just
for my business, and you might want to do
it for your business too, where you could have just a
really quick indication of where your exact
business name is showing up online or
where it's been cited. The second way is
to use a tool that will find your existing
listings for you. Lucky that there are
software and tools that allow you to do this and
most of them are free. In order to use a
free tool that will go out and find your
citations for you, which will save
you a lot of time. I suggest coming over to Google Search and
just using this, just typing in free tool to find my existing
business citations. Basically, it's
going to come up. Here's one local search fuel. There's M, SEMrush, white spark, in actually is 12 local
citation software tools. So many ways you
could tell local. These are all
fabulous trust names. Because I put in the
magic word of free, then hopefully everything
listed on this page is going to be an actual
tool that I could use without having to
pay any money for. And what I find is that some of these tools will
give you just a snippet. So they're not going
to give you all of your citations that it finds, it's going to give you just
a few to get you started. And some of them
aren't that accurate, I find, but some are. So use some of the
more reputable ones to start, play around with it. See what it comes up with. But basically, what you want to do is really start getting an idea of everywhere that you already listed online so you can start
working with those. So now that you
know some ways to find your existing citations, just note that there are also handy tools that will not only find your
existing citations, but also identify
any errors on them. For this lesson, why
don't we go ahead and check out what the
audit by S Rush can do. I also listed the link
for you down below. Okay, so this is the SEM Rush local
citation finding tool. And basically, I'm just
going to scroll down, scroll down, scroll down. Here in this area here, check your local
listings for free. So let's pretend you
own a gym, for example. So let's do good life fitness.
That's a popular gym. Good, fitness, the search key, and there's all the different
locations that come up. Let me just randomly
pick one in Oakville. So basically, as you
can tell it's working and what it's doing
is going out and finding all of the places that good like fitness in
Oakville has already listed, and then it's going to pull
up some errors that it found. So basically, it's going to
give you an overall score. So this scored bad
because it found 41 out of the 47 the
stings need to be fixed. And that's surprising because
it's a very popular gym, so I'm very surprised
that there's only that they only have 47 the stings and that 41
of them need to be fixed. So at least the star
rating is not too bad. 4.2 out of five. Okay. So if you were a marketing
agency or if you were just offering local listings as an additional service to
help your customers out. Then this is something that you could definitely do really quickly and take to
the customer and say, you're losing a lot
of business online. There's a lot of errors. Would you like me to fix
them for you, for example, and then you could pick up some extra business that way, right? But if this were your business, you would want to be all over this and you would want
to see exactly what the errors are and exactly
where the errors are located. So let's just have a
look. Okay. So Facebook, wrong business phone number, being wrong business name, even on Facebook, wrong phone
number, wrong phone number. But sometimes it's not entirely accurate because you could
list your phone number with brackets and then
list it without brackets and it
could still pick it up that it potentially could be an error when in fact is not. So you just have to
be mindful of that and check to see what
it's saying the error is. So for example here, it's listed as Rebecca Street when it's missing
the t at the end. That could be one of the things that triggered that
there was an error. When in fact, It's not
really too much of an error, but I said it's really
important to keep consistent. So that's just a
quick thing that they might want to go
in and fix, right? And then if you look at
something like this on a very popular
listing site yelp, they're listed as
South Oakville Center and their address
isn't even appearing. So they would definitely
want to hop on that and change it to
their business address because not everybody
is going to know where the South Oakville center is if they're looking for that
particular business. And then, basically, if you scroll to the
bottom and it says, show all directories, if
you want to see more, just go ahead and
click that, and I'll show you the rest of them. So now you've got a really great starter
list of everywhere, if this was your company, everywhere that you're listed
or you're cited online, and exactly if there are any errors that
have been found, okay? And here it's even showing
some missed opportunities, some places that
you might want to be listed that you're
not already listed, which is really, really handy. So this is a fabulous place to start and not
exactly SEMRush, but like I said, there
are other options. So just pick the option
that's best for you. And again, not all
options are going to be available in all locations. So once you find a directory
that has your listing, the first thing you're
going to want to do is claim your own listing. Unfortunately, it can
be a little bit of a process depending on what
online directory you're on. But it's worth the
time it takes. Then you also, of course,
want to make sure that your business information
is correct and up to date, and you want to
make sure that it has a really great description, which I'm going to show
you how to do coming up. So here's a special note. If your home based business, or you don't see customers
at your place of business, so you prefer that
your actual place of business remain hidden. What you really want to do is when you find yourself online, you want to check
if that directory allows you to hide your address. If not, you might want to remove yourself from
that directory. Because whether you
realize it or not, your personal address might be listed as a business address
somewhere out there. So my last tip to you is after you find everywhere
you're listed online, you want to come back and
do this exercise regularly. Because, first of all, you
want to make sure that your citations are always
cleaned up and accurate, and like I said, consistent
across everything, so your information is
completely up to date. But also, you want to make sure that you don't have
duplicate listings, because let's say you create
a listing for your business, and then maybe you're working with someone and they create a citation for you in the
same online directory, or maybe a customer creates a citation for you in
that directory as well. So then you've got duplicate listings
or tricate listings, and that's not good, either. So you want to
make sure that you delete all of those
extra listings and that you create and just keep the one that you
have full control over.
9. Taking Your Local Listings to the Next Level: (Steps 4 & 5): Now it's time to expand your online presence by
building new listings. But before we get too
far into this lesson, a special note for
those of you who want to hide your
business address. Like I said, if you're
a home based business or just don't see customers at your place of business
and prefer to keep it hidden, that's totally okay. But it's going to be a
little bit more work because you're going
to have to find the business directories
that actually allow you to hide your
business address. A lot of these directories
make it really easy as well. You simply just check a
little tiny box that says that you prefer that your
address not be displayed. Some of these places
that allow you to hide your address include things like your Google business profile, also being Yelp, Yahoo, p.com and Hot frog. So that help you guys. I
found this really great link. I'm going to include it
down below and click on it. And basically, it's just
going to give you a list of places where you could
cite your business, add those citations without listing your business address, or where we can list
the business area that you service instead. Now, I want to bring your
attention to something called no follow links because a lot of the listing directories and online listing sites
that you go on will intentionally add
code that lets Google know not to associate that
link with their website. That mean that they
don't help build your domain authority
as much with Google, but they still help. So here are some reasons why. Citation links will not only boost your
visibility online, but because they come from some of the most popular sites, they can be a great way to
drive traffic to your site, while also boosting
your rankings. Just not as much as
do follow Linkwood, but you still get some benefit. Also links from places
like social media, you're still going to get
those social signals. Even though they're
no follow signals, they are still going to help. The more links overall
that get back coming into your website from
social media accounts and social media posts, you're really helping your SEO through something
called social signals. And like I mentioned
in an earlier lesson, a lot of these really
big huge directories, Google really trusts them. So they're going to
dominate page one. So just imagine if you could
get your business on page one and also appear on all of those directories that
are showing up on page one, and customers can
find you there. Just think about how much
more powerful that can be to get people back
to your business, especially if they're seeing
your name a few times.
10. Finding & Manually Submitting To High-Value Directories (Step 4): There are many
directories out there, but don't get overwhelmed. Just focus on the high
impact directories first or the ones with
the most authority, and then gradually build your
online presence from there. What you also want
to do is mix up the places where you're
listing your citations. So that means citations come from different
types of categories. I made a list of various categories of places
where you can start listing your citations
just to get you started. The first place is your
Google business profile. If you're in this course,
chances are you've already completed your Google
business profile, but if not, get started because your
Google business profile is the foundation for
your local visibility. The next category is industry
specific directories. You're going to
target directories relevant to what your
business offers. For example, if
you're a plumber, you could focus in on plumbing directories or things like home services directories. If you're a massage therapist, you can focus on massage
directories or things like natural health directories or even alternative
health directories. Location specific
business directories. These are popular
places that focus on specific locations like Yelp or Yellow Pages
or Angie's list. These directories
drive local traffic. You could even try places like your local chamber
or Board of Trade, which are also amazing places
to get locally listed. Next, you could try general
directories like being places or Yahoo business or Apple maps and other
places like that. You also want to list your
business on social media. Places like your
Facebook business page, for example, we ask for
your business information, your business name,
your business address, and your business phone number, and your hours and
different things like that. Another great category to
get your citations from is local newspapers
or local media. You also want to try out
some industry associations. Any professional or
business associations that you need to
belong to can possibly offer listing opportunities
and you should take advantage of those Event listings. So if you participate in a local event or you
list like let's say you're doing a webinar or something and you're
listed in one of the local event places or
something like event bright, then those are fabulous places where you can get a
citation of your business. Also try out some
review platforms. List your business on places
like Yelp or four square, and these are fabulous places for people to start
leaving reviews. Likewise, you could try
to get your business on online review aggregators or encourage your customers to
leave your review on those. Those would be places
like for example, like G two is becoming really, really popular or Trust pit. So if customers leave
a review there for you and other people read it
is really, really powerful, but not only that,
fabulous places to get your citations listed on and links coming back
to your website. These all can work really
powerfully to build your online visibility and also amplify your
online presence. So finding these lists
doesn't have to be hard. You could, for example, let's say your business
was in Toronto. So you would go into Google
and you could type something in like free business
directories, Toronto Ontario, or you can type in free business listings
Toronto Ontario. So let's have a look
at what happens when we type those
types of searches in. So you're going to do is
come over to Google Search, and you're going to type in
free business directories or free business listings, and then you're going
to add in your city. So I'm going to say free
business directories, and I'm just going
to type in Toronto or Toronto, Ontario. And then just hit
enter, and let's have a look at what kind
of directories come up. So the first one's
an ad for Zoom Info, and Zoom Info says it's the largest business directory,
and I'm like, great. So if I'm going to
start and I may as well start in the
largest business directory. So that's a consideration. Then there's something called the local Toronto business dot. And I know just by the
fact that they're being listed on page one
and at the top, that they have really good
domain authority with Google. So these are all fabulous
choices to be listed on. So the Toronto
business directory, I'm definitely going
to check that one out, Old Town Toronto. So if I'm located specifically in that specific
area of Toronto, then they have their
own business directory, and I'll definitely
want to show up there. Then the library is coming
up just listing that they have a copy of
Scott's directory. The Small Business directory. Again, Small Business Ontario,
small business directory, fabulous place to be listed on, and then I would just keep going the chamber, yellow pages. And there's so much more that you definitely
want to look into. Then you have things
like this which will list the top 100 free back
link directories in Canada, so I could also click
on these types of lists and see what comes up and see what
they're recommending. And then you've got
directories like this, which also show the domain
authority of the directory. This is a really
great combination of building citations and
also building links, especially if you can find
those do follow links. To overall give your online
business a big boost by having all these
high authority links coming back to your website. As far as you can tell,
there are many ways to get a list of directories that
you can start listing on. But I found one that I think is really going to
help you wrote, and that I really like. So I listed the link down below. But let me go ahead
and show you. Okay, so here is the site
by Bright Local and what I love about it is it's a very
fast way to get started. So I'll show you what I mean. So if you look on
the left hand side, so first thing you've
got as an option is the top 50 general
business directories. It also has international
business directories. So that, again, is another
way just to round out your general list of categories that you're
putting your citations in. And of course, if
it applies to you if you do have an
international market. And then they've
actually even listed places cylist citations with D follow and no follow links. So the do follow
links will give you just a little bit more bank for your buck there and a little bit more powerful on those links. So great. It's just amazing that they took the time to build this amazing
resource for everybody. Then they've got top
business directories if you're a service
area business, which I know most of you are
so you can start off there. Then they even have
by your country. Remember I said it's really
important to be able to get directories within
your specific countries. This is a fabulous
place to get started. Then they've taken
a step further and you can get listings of citation sites by your
specific industry as well. This is just so wonderful and a really quick way
to get started. The other thing I
like So, for example, if I wanted to start at the top and I wanted
to start with the top 50 general
business directories, and I only wanted to
start with a few. If you scroll down, what they do is they split
it up by domain authority. So I will start with
a citation site with the most authority and basically just work my
way down from there. So, of course, Google
business profile, 100% domain authority,
no surprise there. And then Apple business Connect. So how many of you
knew that you could actually list in Google, but also list in
Apple Connect as well in order to
build a citation. Then, of course, your
Facebook business page, Bing place is Yelp
four square and a lot of these other places
that we talked about, but really quick
way to get started. And what I also like
is they add whether or not the site is free
or paid or both. And that way, you
know ahead of time, if it's something
like to be on Ways, you actually have to
pay for the listing, so you could choose to just do all the free ones to start and then do the paid ones later. But especially if
your business is a brick and mortar type
business, you know, it's probably definitely
going to be worth your while to pay ways and make sure that you're
listed on ways because a lot of people use that app. So there we go. Just
one more website. You can add to your
tool belt to help you make your local citation
building a breeze. So as you have time, you're
just going to go through and pick a few to complete with your business information. So this is called the manual
method of citation building, and it's very, very important
to understand how to do. So use that sample
spreadsheet I made for you to make it easier for you to keep track
of where you listed. So on the sheet, again, you're going to
put down where you listed The status
of your listing, if it got listed right away, or if you have to
wait for approval, link to the listing site, your login information, whether or not you
included a promotion. And if you did
include a promotion, a reminder to yourself, and
when to remove the promotion, that sort of thing, just
to start getting into the habit of keeping track if everywhere
you're listed online. And of course, this will make
your job a heck of a lot easier if you ever
change your information, and you need to remember
where to update it. So now that you know
how to do that, don't get too far ahead
because in the next lesson, you're about to learn the automated method
of building citations.
11. Leveraging Citation Building Services (Step 5): Now I want to show you
the automated method of citation building. There are a number of
tools and services that will send your business
information to a number of directories at once
while also ensuring that your information remains consistent across
all directories. Now these are paid tools, but luckily that don't
cost for you much, especially when you compare
it to the amount of time it'll save you from
doing the work manually. What's most important
is they will update all your information at once if you ever need to
make a change to your business address
or your phone number, and they'll do this
and always make sure that your information
remains consistent. Now, before getting all
excited and jumping off this call and calling a citation Building Service right away, it's really important
to first understand how the citation building service will distribute
your information. For example, some services
will build your citations manually while others
will use automated tools. If they do it manually, they'll be able to give
you the specific login for every single directory, which puts you in control. Now, if they do your
listings by automation, your information might always
be tied to their systems, which basically means that
if you stop paying them, that all your
information or some of your information
might disappear. Okay. Also, in future, if
you want to make your own updates to
some directories, you might not be able to. That's why it's really important
to ask those questions. My job as a trainer is to give you enough information
so you know exactly what to ask for to
meet your business goals. Let me explain a little bit more about how these
services work. In the US and Canada anyway, and many other countries, there are three main ways that your information
will be distributed. Direct to the directory sites
that their company uses, which is also called
direct to site submission. Or they'll submit
your information to third party directories who will then redistribute
your information to a wide list of directories. These are called
data aggregators. The third way is by
API submissions, but that's more relevant to large corporations who have many locations that
they have to manage. Choosing a citation
building service can be a little bit
scary and intimidating. But don't worry.
I've got your back. What I did is I developed this wonderful sheet
for you and in it, it's going to equip you with the questions that you
need to be asking. When using the
checklist, though, I want you to remember that what a citation building service can offer will really vary
depending on your location. Also, be very cautious
of any service promising any
unrealistic number of listings in a very
short amount of time or for a very low price when you compare them
to other services. There are many listing providers
you could choose from. Here are just a few of
the most popular ones. Mac SMR, et, whitespar
brightal Okay. But there are many, many others
really worth considering. I just want to get you started, but I really want you
to do your homework, use that checklist
and figure out which is going to be the
best for your business. The other thing you
could do is just a simple Google search where you can look up things that will compare
the services for you. So for example, you could type in things like comparison of citation building services in and then you would add in
your state or province, or you would type in your
city region or area, citation building
service reviews, or you could type in best
citation building services in and then your
country or your city. Or you could say compare
citation building services for, and then you'll put
in your industry in your specific country
or province or state, or you could type in review of citation building
services in your country. So the reason I gave you
different options is because depending on where you live
or what industry you're in, you are going to get
different types of results. So try these different options to see what works best for you, so you can get those
comparison charts that are already done that compares the citation
service providers in your area so that
way you can easily compare which service
provider is going to give you the best visibility and the best online exposure to
get you more local business. And that way, you'll
be able to get some really nice
comparison charts, that will really
save you some time. You can decide to manually
do your listings, which I suggest you at
the very least try, I want you to become
familiar with what's included and the type of
information you can include. Then of course, you can
use automated services. But I suggest doing a
little bit of both. That way on your own,
you could target directories or places
where you could do citations that
your listing service might not necessarily target. For example, media
sites or Again, very specific niche sites or very specific community sites or newspapers that you want
to add your information to get people clicking
back to your website. All of those places
to do your citations could really help you
ramp up local business. That way, when you add on a
citation service provider, you're really able to extend
your reach and extend the different types
of categories that your business is
going to be appearing in. No matter what method
you choose, so, I really encourage you to
get started right away. I mean, today, right now, but not until you've
watched Lesson four. So I'll see you there.
12. FAQs: Don’t Get Stumped! Find Your Answers Here: So so far we've covered how to prepare before listing
your citations, how to find your
existing citations, and how to use a service to
help you build citations. Now, before you
proceed any further, I really want you
to have answers to these very typical
questions that come up. What if a directory listing
is asking for payment? Many directories offer
a free basic listing, but we'll give you the
option to upgrade to premium features to
enhance your visibility. You don't have to
upgrade, though. My suggestion is to focus
on the free listings first. Once you see that a free
listing is performing well, such as bringing you in
leads for your business, or if the directory
is ranking on page one of search result
for your industry, then I definitely suggest
upgrading to give yourself an extra boost and to get even more customers
from those listings. How much time will it take to build my citations manually? While the master
citations sheet you started will help make
the process easier. Building citations manually
can be very time consuming. Just start with a few high
impact directories, first, focus on a few every
other week or so and then gradually build
your presence over time. Once you upload your
information to directory, it could get approved in a few days or it could
take up to two weeks or longer if the
directory is popular or if they have a really
extensive verification process. Knowing that it could take a
little while for approval, even more reason to get started
sooner rather than later. How much time will
it take to build my citations using
a citation service? The turnaround time for a
citation building service can vary depending
on several factors. Generally, though, most of
those services can complete the initial build
of your citations within one to four weeks. This involves submitting
your business information to various directories and possibly some of those data aggregators
that we talked about. There are several factors
that are going to affect the turnaround
time though, such as the number of directories that
are being targeted, how long some of those
directories take to verify your
information and approve the submission and whether
the listing service is doing direct manual submissions
or automated submissions. Also, the number of clients they have already in Q
and so on. Okay. How do I build my citations if I have more
than one location? For multiple locations,
you will want to create unique citations
for each of the locations, each with its own
specific address and specific phone number. This will ensure
accurate search results for each of your locations. So what's the difference
between citations and links? Citations or online mentions
of your business name, address, and phone number. Links, on the other hand, are clickable word sentences
or images that will direct user from one
website to your website. Both citations and links are really important part
of your local SEO. But citations specifically help you build your online
local presence. How long will it
take to see results? Once your citations are up and approved in the
directories you targeted, you can see results
within days to just a few weeks on
popular directories, especially if you have
positive reviews. The more consistent and accurate your citations are
across all platforms, the more they will help with your local search ranking and increase your
local visibility. Remember, consistency is key. By dedicating a small amount of time each week or
every other week, you can greatly improve
your local search ranking and online visibility.
13. Congratulations on Mastering Local Listings!: Congratulations.
You've just taken a giant step towards
local search domination. By implementing the strategies you just learned in
this mini course, you're going to attract
more local customers, boost your online presence, and finally see
your phone ringing. So here's a quick recap
of what we covered. You learned how to build your p, otherwise known as
your business name, address and phone number, and ensure that it's consistent. And this is your
online fingerprint. So make sure it's
the same everywhere. Then you've also learned
how to claim and optimize your existing listings, which is very important because this could be
free advertising for you. Then you also learned
how to expand your local presence
with new listings. This is where you're
going to target new directories to reach even more customers
looking for your services. Finally, we learned
how to create strong business
descriptions that are designed to convert. This is your chance to tell your business story and highlight what makes you
different and unique. Plus, of course, very
important call to action. Now, to stay on top
of search result, you should also
maintain your listings. Schedule regular reviews of your existing citations and keep your map information
and description up to date with any changes
such as if you move or have a new phone
number or even add on new services or new products
that you can offer. You're also going to regularly monitor for duplicate
listings and remove those because
duplicate listings can confuse the search engines. So use some of the tools recommended to locate
them and to delete them. Okay. And finally, we briefly touched on getting
more customer reviews, but I know you
already know this. Positive reviews are
golden for local SEO. So go ahead and ask
those happy customers to leave your review on your
Google business profile, but also on those other
important directories that you're getting
business from. I'm so happy to be your guide today on this very
important mini course. So please don't delay. Don't wait a second longer. Take action right now. So Intrica from my local
business to yours, I'm wishing you a ton of
online business success.
Tricia Belmonte, Internet Marketing Results Maker
