Citations: Your Business Details, Everywhere
A citation is any listing of your business name, address and phone number (NAP) on another site. Google and AI tools compare these details. When they do not match, trust drops.
Links: Proof Other Sites Trust You
Links from real, relevant websites tell search engines your business is credible. We earn them the right way.
What to Gather Before a Citation Cleanup and Mistakes to Avoid
What to Gather Before We Start
Most citation problems come from history. A business moves, changes its phone number or renames itself, and old listings keep the old details for years. The cleanup goes faster when you give us that history up front.
- Your official business name exactly as it should appear, including whether you use LLC or Inc.
- Every past address and phone number the business has used
- Any former business names or brand names
- Logins for directory listings you already claimed, if you have them
- Your main website address and the page for each location
Common Citation and Link Mistakes
These are the problems we see most often when we first review a business’s listings.
- Tracking numbers on listings. A call tracking number on one directory and your main number everywhere else creates a mismatch. We plan tracking so the main number stays consistent.
- Missing or wrong suite numbers. “Suite 120” on one site and “#120” on another is usually fine. A missing suite or a misspelled street name is not.
- Duplicate listings. Two listings for one location split reviews and confuse search engines. Duplicates need to be merged or removed, not ignored.
- Chasing link counts. Hundreds of links from unrelated directories do little. A handful from your local chamber, suppliers and industry groups carry more weight.
- Buying link packages. These links often come from sites built only to sell links, and they are the harmful links we later have to clean up.
How Progress Is Measured
We start with a count of listings that are correct, wrong, duplicated or missing. Each monthly report shows how that count changes and which listings were fixed. For links, we report new links earned, where they came from and any harmful links removed or disavowed, which means flagged to Google to ignore.
Some directories update in days. Data aggregators can take weeks to pass corrections to the sites that pull from them, so expect cleanup to show gradually. Your Google Business Profile is the most important listing of all, and Google Business Profile management keeps it aligned with everything else. For earning media mentions, see our digital PR services, and for a self-check, use our local SEO checklist.
