Comparison of The Top Local Citation Building Tools & Services

If you’ve been working in local SEO or plan on expanding your business services by providing local SEO, you’re likely wanting to rank business websites in search engine’s local pack. And if you’re not familiar, that’s how they refer to the business listings that are shown above organic search results in Google and Bing.What Are Citations?But what exactly are citations? Citations are online mentions of a business that include what is commonly refered to as NAP information. That is: Name – Address – Phone number. Sometimes the business’ website URL is also included (NAP-W). Citations lend credibility to you business by showing major search engines that you should be considered to be included on their search results. This means building citations is vital for local businesses but there are a couple of problems.

1. It’s tedious work. Visiting site after site, creating an account, entering the business information and completing the profile over and over and over again is boring.
2. Making any mistakes can cause more harm then good. It is extremely important for the NAP information to be consistent from site to site.
3. It’s time consuming. Your time is often much better spent working on other areas of SEO, working in your business and finding new clients.

Why Build Citations?Think of a citation as a vote of confidence for your business. A citation is like a recommendation that tells search engines that your business is legitimate and that it should be included in their search results.Citations also reinforce your brand, your business name, as well as your business’ geographic location, which are factors that all improve search engine visibility. In a nutshell, the more citations your business has, the more likely it will rank at the top of the local pack.Citation SourcesIt’s important to understand the types of citation sources available and that the service providers may use. This will help you know what to look for and understand the service they actually provide.In reality, a citation is anywhere NAP information is mentioned online. More specifically, there are both structured and unstructured citation sources. Structured citation sources are the sources that are set-up for citations like directories (such as Yelp, Yellow Pages and many others).Unstructured citations refer to non-traditional sources like listing NAP information with images, videos or other non-citation websites. A common strategy is to acquire major citation sources (Yelp, Facebook, Yellow Pages, etc. – varies depending on the country) and then go after local citations, industry specific citations and non-citation sources. This means you’ll end up with a diverse citation portfolio including online directories, social mentions, suppliers, distributors, partner websites, and many more.One of the reasons why online directories are so popular is because they tend to be easy to acquire, especially if it uses a good platform. However, online directories may not be the best option, the most appropriate, and the most valuable for certain types of businesses and business owners.You also have to keep in mind that there are already hundreds of local online directories in the U.S. alone, and sifting through all of those and identifying which ones are the most accurate and will best fit your needs and budget will take a lot of time.Options for Building CitationsThere are two options when it comes to building online citations:

1. Do-it-yourself
2. Use a citation submission service

As the name implies, doing it yourself is a manual process. There are a number of excellent tools you can use to help you with building citations and get the job done. The advantage of this option is that you can immediately verify your business listings and you will have complete control of where your citations will come from.Hiring a citation submission service on the other hand, means all the research and citation building will be done for you. They will do a thorough review of your business, niche and possible citation listings, research citation sites that will best fit your needs and goals, and submit your business details to these sites accordingly. This option can save you a lot of time but can also be more expensive.Do-It-Yourself Citation Building OptionsIf you’d like to build citations yourself, here we’ll explore the best tools you can use to help you with searching for the best citation sources and tracking your efforts.WhiteSpark’s Local Citation FinderWhiteSpark’s Local Citation Finder is one of the best tools for identifying possible citation sources to rank your business. Aside from helping you find business directories you can register at, the tool can also research citations of business competitors, even asses your own citation listings and provide you with monthly automated citation reports so you can continue citation building. This saves you hours and hours of manual research time.The Whitespark platform currently supports 10 countries including United States, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Ireland, Germany, Holland, Singapore and South Africa.How to use the WhiteSpark Local Citation Finder

1. Sign up for Whitespark’s Local Citation Finder here.
2. Log-in to you account and you will be redirected to a page that looks like this:
3. On the “Keyphrase” tab, select the country where your business is situated and enter your city and/or state on the Location text box.
4. On the “Enter your keyphrase” text box, enter the specific keywords and keyphrases you want to rank your business for. For example on the image above, the user types in “Spandex Tailors” because that’s the business’ niche.
5. Click the pink “Manage Your Projects” link, which will open a pop-up window where you can enter your project’s details. See the sample of the pop-up window below. This is a very useful feature because it allows you to group all the research you are doing for a particular task or business.
6. Enter your business name, enter your business’ phone number, select your country, enter your location (city and/or state), and tick the “Enable monthly citation monitoring” checkbox if you prefer Whitespark to e-mail you a monthly digest that outlines linking and citation opportunities relevant to your business and keyphrase criteria.
7. Click the pink “Create Project” button and you will be redirected back to the “Keyphrase Search” tab.
8. At the bottom of the “Keyphrase Search” tab, click the “Search” button. This will start the research process and after a few minutes the tool will generate a report that looks like this:

How to Use The WhiteSpark Local Citation Finder Report

1. The top most part of the report contains the top four websites that ranked highest for your selected keyword or keyphrase.
2. Below the four websites is a list of recommended websites and platforms where you can manually submit your links and citations. The list is arranged from the most powerful and probably most useful for your niche and business.
3. On the right most corner of the list is a section that shows you websites that already have your links and citations. This section also allows you to mark off websites that you might deem useless to your business.
4. The third column from the right is titled “DA.” This means Domain Authority. Whitespark measures each site’s authority based on Google and other search engines view of them. The Domain Authority is ranked using points from 0 to 100, with 0 being the lowest and 100 being the highest. You should focus your efforts on building citations on websites that have high domain authority scores.

Try WhiteSpark Local Citation Finder for Free Here

Bright Local’s Citation TrackerAs the tool’s name implies, Bright Local’s Citation Tracker tracks all your current citations to give you a complete and comprehensive audit of your business. You can also use it to track how competitors are doing and the tool also helps you identify websites and platforms you can use to create and build new citations.Bright Local’s tools, including the Citation Tracker, currently supports 10 counties including Australia, Canada, Ireland, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

How to Use The Bright Local Citation Tracker

1. Sign up at Bright Local here.
2. Log in to your account and you will be redirected to the platform’s dashboard.
3. On the dashboard, click the “Citation Tracker” tab.
4. Click the green “Create New Report” button.
5. Enter your business name, address and phone number. The platform will search through Google and other search engines to look for any existing citations your business already have and generate a corresponding report.
6. The report will be divided into four parts: Active Citations, Pending Citations, Potential Citations, and the View All Citations section.

How to use your Citation Tracker report

1. The “Active Citations” tab contains a list of citations that you business already has and are already seen on search engine results. This list also allows you to see if there are any duplicate citations or listings of your business. This is important because you do not want any duplicate business information housed in the same domain or website because search engines might tag them as spamming.
2. The “Pending Citations” tab lists websites and domains you have already submitted citations to but are still awaiting for approval.
3. The “Potential Citations” tab, on the other hand, lists websites and domains where your business has no citations yet, but should be considered because of their reputation, authority, and search engine ranking.
4. Looking closely at the “Potential Citations” section, at the rightmost column is the website or domain. Next to that is the “Status” which tells you if you already have a citation on that domain or not yet. The third column is titled “Competitors with Citations” which lists how many citations your competitor/s has/have on that particular website or domain.

The 4th and 5th columns contain the Domain Authority which is scored between 0 to 100 and the Citation Value which tells you if the domain is valuable and is worth pursuing. Next to that is the “Type of Site” which tells you what kind of platform the website is if it’s a general or local directory, a social network, a blog, etc. The next column tells you if the domain is a free or paid listing. The last column is “Actions” which lets you do specific actions like getting citations, updating your status, and removing certain domains from your list.LoganixLoganix is a detailed citation building service. Unlike some providers that submit to the same directories for all of their clients, they spend a couple of hours at minimum analyzing the site’s location, industry and the unique business before the citation building process begins. During this time they analyze the website’s competition, keyword rankings, and current online profiles. All variations of NAP information are researched and a unique plan of attack is created.Loganix is well known for their high quality $7 citation audit that is more than worth the money you’re paying so it’s a good way to try them out before committing to a larger service. You can even get all their reports completely white labeled in case you want to provide this service to your clients. And on top of that, their customer service is pretty awesome too. They can be reached by live chat, phone and email anytime.

How to order citation building services from Loganix

1. Login to your Loganix account or register for a free account.
2. From your dashboard, click on ‘Add Credits.’
3. Select the package you would like to order.
4. Enter your payment information and click ‘Submit Form.’
5. Next, you’ll be asked to share your site’s information so service can begin.’

Citation Labs’ Link ProspectorLink Prospector is an automated link building research platform. The tool is designed mainly to generate lists of potential and profitable links but it can also be used to search for websites and other platforms where citations can be submitted. The greatest thing about this tool is that it can return a huge data with a single search, plus the data can be exported if users wish to use the information at a later date.The tool is not free, however, it is very inexpensive. They offer both one-time and subscription-based / monthly packages.Let’s take a look at how to use the Link Prospector to help you determine if this is the right tool for your citation needs.How to use the Citation Labs’ Link Prospector

1. After signing up and logging into your account, you will be redirected to a very simple dashboard that looks like this:
2. The dashboard has a simple design and easy-to-use interface. The “Campaigns” tab is where you will create a new project or campaign and it also lists previous campaigns you have created. Type the name of your project/campaign and click the blue “Create Campaign” button.
3. You will be redirected to the “Prospects” tab and you will see a confirmation message that your campaign has been created. Click the blue “Find Prospects” button.
4. A page containing drop-down menus and text boxes will appear. This is the section where you will specify the report you want Link Prospector to generate.
5. Enter the Report Name of your project and go to the “Select Report Type” drop-down menu to choose the type of report you want the tool to prioritize. The “Select Report Type” menu allows you to specify what kind of link building opportunities you are after and you want the tool to search for.

6. There are a total of 13 report types you can choose from: guest posting, link pages, content promoters, reviews, giveaways, donations, commenting, expert interviews, directories, forums, topical blogs, professional organizations, and research: content. It also has a custom option if you want to search for more than one keyword or keyphrase. Directories are a great place to start for citations.7. After specifying your report type, the next things you need to enter are your region and scope. On the “Select Region” drop-down menu, select the country where you or your business is located. On the “Search Scope” section, select if you want the tool to generate results from the web only, from blogs only, or from both the web and blogs.8. The “Select Depth” menu allows you to narrow down your results to the most relevant. You have the option to narrow your results from 10 to 200 items.9. The next thing you need to do is specify your TLD Filter. The TLD Filter allows you to generate the most relevant results by getting results from .edu and .gov sites, which are typically high authority domains. You can also set it on the default “Any TLD” if you don’t want to put a TLD filter on your results.10. Next step is to choose your date range filter. The date range filter allows you to get the most recent or the most historically detailed prospects list. You can choose from “Past 24 Hours,” “Past Week,” “Past Month,” and “Past Year.” You can also leave it blank by choosing the “Any Time” option and allow the tool to generate the most relevant results at any given timeframe.11. Lastly, go to the “Research Phrases” section and enter at least 5 keywords or keyphrases related to your business and niche. Click the blue “Submit” button.

12. After submitting all your specifications and keywords, the tool will queue your project and start creating the report. You will be notified via e-mail once this is finished.13. You can also go to the “Exclusions” tab to any URL or website you’ve already been to or used so that these will not be included on your report.

How to use your Link Prospector report

1. Once the report is finished, you can access it through the dashboard or you can export in by domain, by path or by Excel. An exported Excel file makes it easier to go through your list, especially if you have requested for a large data like 100 or 200 links. The report, when viewed on the dashboard, should look like this:
2. On the leftmost side of the report are the domains, which are ranked by authority. Beside in each domain is a number that is enclosed in parenthesis. The number denotes how many pages in that particular domain use your keyword or keyphrase. You can click on that to expand it and see the pages in detail and on what URL they are located.

3. The column text to the domains is the TLD. It makes it easier for you to sift through which domains are worth pursuing immediately or those you should consider at a later time.4. The last two columns, the LTS and the PR (Page Rank), is the measure of each domain’s web authority and their search engine presence. The higher the LTS and the PR scores are, the higher the authority. It would be wise to submit your citations and links first to domains and websites that have good LTS and PR scores.

As a side note, Citation Labs’ Link Prospector supports all countries and geographical locations and you can also have your reports created in other languages other than English. At present time, the Link Prospector supports the following languages: English, German, Spanish, French, Dutch, Danish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, Polish, Hungarian, Slovak, Swedish, and Czech.Citation Submission servicesNow that we’ve looked at building citations yourself, that’s take a look at what citation building sources you can use to free up your time. Two of the biggest advantages to hiring someone are:

• It frees up your schedule which enables you to spend more time focusing on income-generating activities
• You don’t have to learn from scratch and experiment because you are already hiring people who are knowledgeable, experienced, and have proven systems when it comes to building citations

You can also opt to subscribe to submission services, which fully automates the citation building process. Your chosen provider does all the heavy lifting for you from researching possible citation sources to manually submitting your business details to these citation sources.Whitespark Citation Building Submission Service

1. Go to the WhiteSpark Citation Building Submission page
2. You will be redirected on the Citation Building Submission Page
3. You will be redirected on the Citation Building Submission Page
4. Under the “New Order” tab, fill out your business name and phone number
5. Select your country on the drop-down menu list. Whitespark currently serves 10 locations including USA, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Ireland, Germany, Holland, Singapore and South Africa.
6. The next step is to create your package. For generic citations (common and typical nation business directories), it is priced at $4 per citation and you can create a minimum of 10 generic citations and a maximum of 120. Local citations (city-level directories), on the other hand, are priced at $5 per citation and you can order a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 15.
7. After choosing your preferred package, download the intake form and fill out all the details. Make sure that you double check for any mistakes before submitting the form.
8. Once you are done filling out the intake form, go back to the section entitled, “Section 3: Submit your intake form” and upload the file.
9. Lastly you can also opt in on additional options and features like follow up reports, rush orders, and bulk orders.
10. Click the pink “Continue to photo uploads” button at the bottom of the page.
11. You will be redirected to another page where you can upload your business images. You can upload a total of 10 images, and you can also upload a company profile image like your business logo.
12. After you have attached the necessary files, go to the bottom of the page and click the pink “Continue” button.
13. Fill out the payment information and click the “Process Payment” button, and you’re done. The service typically finishes within 3 weeks, but if you have a rush order specification, it may only take 1 or 2 weeks.
14. Fill out the payment information and click the “Process Payment” button, and you’re done. The service typically finishes within 3 weeks, but if you have a rush order specification, it may only take 1 or 2 weeks.

Bright Local’s Citation Burst

1. Log in to your Bright Local account or sign up if you don’t have one yet.
2. You will be redirected to the platform’s dashboard and click the “CitationBurst” page from the top menu.
3. Click the green “Start New Campaign” button.
4. For Step 1, fill out all the details needed for your campaign, your business, contact information and photos. You also have the option to include any old or incorrect business details that have existing citations so that the Bright Local team can update or remove them. At the bottom of the page you will also be asked if you want to opt in for e-mail alerts or not.
5. Click the green “Done! Next Page” button.
6. The platform will review known citation sites and will pick out the most appropriate based on the details you have entered in Step 1.
7. After generating the citation sites, you’ll be redirected to Step 2 where you can browse through all of the listed citation sites and pick the ones you want Bright Local to submit to. You can select and deselect your choices on the last column entitled, “Submit to Site.” Take note that you can only submit to a certain number of sites, depending on your package or subscription plan.
8. After choosing which sites you want to build your citations, click the green “Confirm & Continue” button.
9. You will be redirected to Step 3 where you can review all of the details you have entered in Steps 1 and 2. Go to the bottom of the page, tick the “I have read & agree to full terms and conditions.” check box and click “Confirm & Pay” button. It takes a total of 14 days from the date of purchase for all your submissions to be carried out by Bright Local.

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Moz Local

1. Log in to your Moz account or sign up for a new one. After logging in you will be redirected to the platform’s dashboard.
2. On the dashboard’s left side bar, click the yellow “Add Listings” button. Take note that Moz Local can only provide their services for businesses that are located in the United States and in the United Kingdom.
3. A pop up window will appear and will give you options how to add your listing/s. You can import your listing from your Google My Business account, upload a CVS template or search for it on the web.
4. Follow the instructions given by Moz to verify new listings and resolve duplicate ones.

The Hoth’s Citation Remediation

1. Log in to your Hoth account or sign up for a new one. You will be redirected to the platform’s dashboard, and click the blue “Create New Order” button on the right side of the page.
2. A drop-down menu will appear and select “Hoth Local Order.” You will be redirected to a New Order page.
3. On the “Select Package” section, pick your desired package from the drop-down list. On the gray box below that, it will describe what is included on your chosen package and how much it costs.
4. Fill out all the required fields, and make sure these are all correct, accurate and up-to-date. The details you supply will be used by Hoth to create your campaign and build your citations.
5. Go to the bottom of the page. There is a blue box asking for further specifications about your order. You can choose instruct Hoth to carry out your campaign at present time or you can schedule it at a later date. You also have the option to subscribe to an ongoing, monthly package or you can choose to stick with paying a one-time fee.
6. After entering all the details and your order specifications, click the blue “Review Order” button.
7. You will be redirected to a new page to check that your order has all the correct information needed and you will be asked for your payment details as well. You’re done and Hoth will complete your citation campaign in 4 to 6 weeks.

A Comparison: Which Tool or Service to Use?As you can see from the previous section, citation submission services are extremely convenient and they are great time-savers compared to the Do-It-Yourself method. The bulk of the work you need to do are automated or semi-automated and all you have to do is wait for your provider to complete the task and recheck if there are other, little tasks that you need to do manually.You have also seen that there quite a handful of options to choose from and it can be a bit overwhelming to make a decision. Here we’ve covered the top services we feel confident in recommended and left off the ones that we’ve found only provide average service or worse and are not you worth your time.

Building citations is a great way for local business owners to improve their online presence and their business’ search engine visibility. However, like any SEO activity, creating and building online citations is a very time consuming process.The process can, however, be made tremendously easier with the help of the right citation tools and services. Hopefully, this in-depth overview of the best citation tools and services available will help you find the right provider for you.

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