Citations are to local search ranks as links are to organic search ranks. ABSOLUTELY 100% PRICELESS!

Citations are references to your business name and address on other domains’ web pages. Even when there is no static link to your domain, the reference is enormously valuable.

A great example of a citation might be a member’s reference on your city’s Chamber of Commerce domain. A local Chamber of Commerce, a local business association, or even regional archives that support your city, anywhere your business information can be found. Even if they are not linking to your website at all, these citations can have an enormous impact on your local search listing.

Citations are a key component of the ranking algorithms of the major search engines, particularly for local search information. Businesses with a greater number of citations will rank higher than businesses with fewer citations. Additionally, businesses with more of the ‘local authority’ representation in their citation references stand a better change of listing higher in local search.

Donating and sponsoring local charities and events (YMCA, youth shelters, or a music festival) all improve citation diversity and also validate that a business is part of a community. It’s hard for someone to fake membership in a chamber of commerce or a city or county business index, or to be written about in a local online newspaper or popular blog. Citations (and links) from these kinds of websites can dramatically improve your Local search engine rankings.

Citations from well-established and well-indexed portals (like Superpages.com for example) also help increase the degree of certainty the search engines have about your business’s contact information and categorization.

Use your company (dba) name for local search company name field; citations aren’t credit to a keyword phrase.

References:

• http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml

Many local search strategists suggest that adding keyword to your local search profile ‘company name’ improves ranks and/or CTR… as noted in David Mihm’s Local Search Ranking Factors posts such as http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml#5 – Product / Service Keyword In Local Business Listing Title and again at http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml#17 – Location Keyword in Local Business Listing Title.

I believe both assumptions are vastly in error and also believe David Mihm does as well since noting his own negative factors, such as:

• Multiple Addresses on Contact Page
• Multiple LBLs with Same Business Name
• Multiple LBLs with Same Phone Number
• Multiple LBLs with Same Address (most harmful)

Having multiple company names for the same company is more likely a negative influence rather than a positive one.

If for an example, your real dba name is Spherica Inc., and you edit that to be SEO Spherica Inc. or just use the keywords as your profile name ‘Search Engine Optimization’… what local search profile acquires the citations that are physically labeled as Spherica Inc. (as opposed to SEO Spherica Inc. or Search Engine Optimization)?

If you don’t get certain citations because they belong to a different company (by a different name than the one you chose in your local search profile) would you even know you lost that value? Probably not.

I caution anyone augmenting their listing with keywords to ensure that these associated keywords are equally used in all their citations in the same manner instead of just their legal business name or doing business as name, since each lost citation is lost ranking factors.

I have noticed that when there is a physical url reference associated with a citation there appears to be much more flexibility in associating the citation (even when a different profile listing name appears than what is used in the citation) but when searching for citations with different names and no url – they appear to be nonexistent.

All domains pass Local Search citations. Best domains to list in then limits your competitors.

Reference:

• http://forums.seochat.com/local-search-techniques-82/local-search-citation-test-265124.html

"Most any website that has enough quality or trust and displays your:

• Company Name
• Company Address and
• Company Phone Number

Would provide citations to the local search archive."

To get ahead of the Local Search competitive landscape you just can’t repeat what others have done before you; you need to target that which they can’t have or think not to have.

Some suggestive target domains:

• Industry forums you actively participate in
• Industry blogs you guest post at
• Journals, ezines or article repositories and
• Most notably any domains with private deals you can make that limit competitors from inclusion

I would postulated further that if you add comments at blogs it would be worth including a signature block with:

• Company Name
• Company Address and
• Company Phone Number

Even if links are nofollow or are not allowed that doesn’t prevent Local Search citation credits.

We previously mentioned that Google has pre-labeled categories for local search and we started with (for SEO):

• Internet Marketing Service
• Marketing Consultant
• Marketing Agency
• Advertising Agency
• Consultant

We started this way to research our local region in order to determine:

• Broad competitive landscapes
• Category aliases or synonyms, and
• What might be niche areas to jumpstart local returns.

Obviously if you are ranked 454 out of 460 "consultants" that may not be the best use of one category but at the same time it pays to research.

The next step is redeveloping your categories purely on user define principles without an suggestions from Google… again this is for research value and not necessarily targeted to categories you ultimately desire.

Part 1 – Describe your businesses in single phrases. Continuing on with our SEO example:

• Search
• Internet
• Marketing
• Advertising
• Consultant

…and make these you categories. The idea here is to make as many plausible search phrases out of the broad singular terms like:

• Search Consultant
• Internet Consultant
• Marketing Consultant
• Advertising Consultant
• Search Marketing
• Internet Marketing
• Internet Advertising
• Search Advertising

…among other 3 word phrases… Search to see if local search in available and where you are positioned and compare your findings with your previous results.

It’s worth mentioning that you are not just interested in positioning well for these but positioing well for phrases that searchers use and click on the results.

In Google’s Local Business Center you have a section to complete called Categories and you can select up to five categories to help Google position your listing correctly.

There are a few interesting nuances here to be mindful of but we’ll cover each one in separate articles. It’s important to mention that these nuances require a little testing; trial & error development it order for you develop a "best match" for your local search traffic.

Google has many pre-labeled category names like Internet Marketing Service that also appears when you start typing in aliases or synonyms like search engine marketing, online marketing, SEO, or search engine optimization. This suggests that if you are any of the latter using the former ensure you list for all such aliases or synonyms.

Prelabled Categories

It would be best to attempt selecting as many pre-labeled categories that define your business "first"… to determine all the aliases or synonyms Google has assign to your targeted industry. Using the previous noted example (revolving around SEO) I selected:

• Internet Marketing Service
• Marketing Consultant
• Marketing Agency
• Advertising Agency
• Consultant

These are not necessarily directly targeted to an "SEO gist" but the idea is to understand the competitive landscape and what Google has defined as your aliases and/or synonyms.

It’s also noteworthy to mention the category "words" are interchangeable. Using the previous category words it is equally plausible to be listed (and ranked) for Internet Consultant, Advertising Consultant, Advertising Service, etc.

This means you don’t necessarily want to just define a set of categories – you want to test a marketing mix of terms and see how they perform in both ranks and traffic.

Some experts claim that Google scores business addresses higher that are closer to the city center and that suggests you should move your business closer to your city’s center in order to position yourself higher in local search results.

Physically doing this may not be cost effective (downtown office space tends to be at a premium) and while a virtual office may indeed get you much closer to a theoretical center of town inexpensively… before you jumpstart this premise maybe we should take a closer look at the overall foundation.

My first question to an expert would be: “How does Google determine city center”?

Google certainly doesn’t just guess at it – there must be some overlying criteria. 

A fixed point on some map based on centrical circles could be a possibility but what actually defines a “center”? Where city hall is? Where the residents of the community classify as “downtown”? …which can be in many coastal cities at the extreme edge of the city.

An interesting point of principle here — local search is primarily based on geo-targeting; thus by design, the center ‘point’ isn’t based on any fixed geographical landmass but the specific computer system that is doing the browsing as well as its local Internet access provider’s location. That may indeed be “downtown” but it can be everywhere else and in large cities in multiple locations.

It is true that if your primary customer base is physically located downtown – their Internet access provider would also be in the geographical vicinity and then the original premise might well be correct but if downtown is not full of residential communities and you are a retail outlet – closer to downtown may indeed be the worse move you could ever make.

It’s also noteworthy to mention that if your business (and ISP) is located at an edge of a major city you are much closer to the ring of smaller communities and suburbs than providers on the far side and you’ll rank exceptional better in these areas.

So while geo-location is a factor if there is need of a shift – being in the same building of your best customers’ ISP would be the correct location.

In Google’s Local Business Center on the basic information setup page there is a field specially for your Company/Organization name. As with any form you complete in the off-line world, say for your bank, your insurance company, or the IRS it would be foolish not fill in that field with only your legal business name or your dba name.

While many marketers claim you can enhance your local search ranks by augmenting your legitimate Company/Organization name with keyword phrases you wish to rank well under; this is a complete fallacy (likely based on their understanding of organic results enhancements as it relates to the title element). Local search is not organic search.

There is absolutely no correlation between the use of keywords utilized in the Company/Organization name and rank changes local search positioning.

Setting aside research for the moment, let’s look solely at common sense.

Had Google seriously considered making the Company/Organization field keyword sensitive they would have likely considered this scenario:

Do you seriously think Google had this nuance in mind?

Google’s desire is to be the new Yellow Pages – but if all business are merely a keyword – what’s the point.

In the real local search results for Austin Internet Marketing a real business Company/Organization name beats all the keywords… which kinda refutes that overall philosophy.