Meredith's Husband: 0:42

Hey, this is Meredith husband, I've got some SEO advice for you. But I'm gonna keep it really simple so that you can understand it. So make sense. And most importantly, so you can actually use let's do a podcast.

Meredith: 0:59

Let's, let's do a podcast.

Meredith's Husband: 1:02

Let's talk about local citations. Let's doesn't that sound exciting?

Meredith: 1:06

Talk about, look, we've talked about citations, because I do remember that I was referring to them as traffic citations or

Meredith's Husband: 1:16

yeah, you you don't agree with the the naming scheme? Well,

Meredith: 1:20

it's not necessarily agree with it's just the way that it enters my brain and doesn't really well, it just bounces

Meredith's Husband: 1:27

regardless. They are important. It is kind of a stupid. I mean, I wish they would call it something sexier. More interesting, but they don't like but they are really important. Well, that wouldn't make any sense either. But Well, look, I often call them local business listings. Okay, that's clear. It is. But if you're gonna go online and do a search and figure out like how to do this stuff, you're gonna want to call them local citations, because that's what everybody else calls them. Let's call it what it is. So yeah, we have talked about this in the past. And I've always talked about using a service to do it like Whitesburg. Yeah, that's what I do. When I do it for myself, for you, for my clients. I use this service. I don't do it manually. However, yes, you can do it for free. Yes. We're going to talk about today. Oh, using the doing it manually.

Meredith: 2:13

Okay. Have you talked about this? Before?

Meredith's Husband: 2:16

We talked about it, we touched on it. Because the last couple episodes, we talked about how to improve your local rankings, your local search results right? Now these this, this is why these are important. Because building your local citations is going to help you improve your local results, you're going to see you're

Meredith: 2:33

like planting seeds in the neighborhood.

Meredith's Husband: 2:37

Kind of yeah, yes. Kind of like seeds or roots, or you're laying the foundation, it's easy to

Meredith: 2:43

become roots, oh, husband, you cannot have a root without a seed.

Meredith's Husband: 2:49

I'm not gonna argue with that one, either. But yes, and the last couple episodes, we were talking about how to improve your local ranking results, how to get your site to appear next to that map and Google more often. And this is one of the important factors. And weed. So we did touch on it in the last couple episodes. But I'm going to dig down a little bit into how and why and the exact steps. And exactly what to do if you are building them manually if you don't have a budget to go out and pay white spark or some other service to do it for you. Okay. So one reason that that these local citations are important, is that in SEO, there's a lot of things you can't really control. Yeah, yeah, there's there's things you can there's roughly can write your title tags, and your meta tags and your you can do all that stuff. But then there's the whole other part of SEO, what we call off site SEO, which you can't really control. That's how other websites link to yours. Now, so the stuff you can control is your website that's on site SEO, the stuff you can't control is off site SEO. That's other other websites, because now off of your plate? Exactly. Now, those two halves of SEO are not exactly equal. The off site SEO to be honest, is more important. Oh plays a bigger role. And it's an I think, kind of with good reason. If SEO were all about stuff you could completely control then everybody would just have perfect SEO and then what would be the difference? So it's

Meredith: 4:18

like a plate on a massive 3d field.

Meredith's Husband: 4:24

I was expecting you to talk about ice cream or I

Meredith: 4:28

want since you have it seems repeatedly referred to my obsession with ice cream, or no more agricultural. Alright.

Meredith's Husband: 4:40

Well, I don't know what a plate on a three dimensional field. I don't understand that one. Exactly. Okay, hold on a buster or dog has something to say. Always. So for example, if I could cheat if I could have one of two different sites either I have a site that is perfectly optimized, the on site SEO is just technically perfect. And I have no links to that site. So I have perfect on site SEO and no off site SEO. That's one option. The other option is terrible. Nope. Completely unoptimized website, no on site SEO and a whole bunch of links. So no on site SEO good off site SEO 100 times out of 100 times I would rather have the site with good off site SEO, it's going to rank better. Oh, so off site SEO is more important than

Meredith: 5:30

kind of like attaching yourself to the bootstraps of a others are just helping.

Meredith's Husband: 5:36

Oh, no, not really. It's more than you remember. Being connected? Yes, absolutely.

Meredith: 5:42

All right now, let's go married. And you got that one. Yeah.

Meredith's Husband: 5:46

You remember we talked about the popularity contest many, many episodes ago. Google has sort of popularity contests. They have two high schools. Here's another analogy. You have two high schools. So you remember in high school, you would have things like who's the most likely to succeed? No, we didn't have any. Okay. Well, a lot of high school. A lot of everybody in your high school is like, guaranteed to succeed. God was I guess I went to a lesser High School, obviously, no, not lesser, just different. Many high schools had things like you vote who's the most likely to succeed? Who's the most likely to be arrested? Who's the most likely to be president who's the most? I won't, I won't list anymore, but you get the picture. So what Google does, is, it's kind of the same thing, Google goes around, and they ask a whole bunch of webs. They don't ask, but they look to links to give them the information. Hey, who's the best children's photographer in Brooklyn, who's the best wedding photographer in Seattle? That's a lot of how they build their rankings. Now, what other search engines used to do before Google is they would go around, and they would only look to on site SEO, they would not make it a popularity contest, they would go to every single student, essentially, and say, Hey, are you the most likely to succeed in your high school? And of course, everybody is going to say yes, so the method that Google used is much more objective, it's a whole lot better. It's an immediately with that method. And all of their search engines were were using that more direct method. Right away, when Google came out, the results were better. And everybody noticed. So this is, so this is why off site,

Meredith: 7:29

SEO, just holding the metal thinking.

Meredith's Husband: 7:34

But I voted for myself voted for me. Anyway. So that's the reason with, especially with Google, that off site, SEO is so important. It's the links. And these local citations are one form of link that we can guarantee we can go out and we can just absolutely get that opportunity we don't normally have, we can't go place our link to our website on a whole bunch of other websites. I'm gonna leave that in, because I want everybody to experience that.

Meredith: 8:10

Thank you pop, that is all my father.

Meredith's Husband: 8:13

So for example, we I just redid this for your site. Oh, thank you. Because, you know, I did this many years ago, but your address has changed a bunch of times. Remember, we had, we had our home address, and then we had kind of virtual office, then we had a PA, it wasn't a Pio box. It was never used, never use a P, I'd like a US Post Office blocks for your address. Never ever, ever do that ever,

Meredith: 8:37

ever, ever. We were not using a Pio box? We were not. We were using a mailbox in a place

Meredith's Husband: 8:44

in a private? Yes. Right. That's no longer a good idea, either. And so we've gone back to using your home address. And I've noticed that in recently that your rankings have not been good. Like they've really declined. And one reason turns out was because of these local listings, there were a lot of conflicts you had, or something that you want to do when you're building these listings, you want to make sure that they're all consistent and accurate. Because if Google goes out and they look at all these local citations, and you have all sorts of different addresses, it's not going to rank you very well. Google likes to see that your address is the same everywhere. Yeah, before they're going to recommend you to their users,

Meredith: 9:25

because they don't know where to send their users because you have multiple. It's also

Meredith's Husband: 9:29

just kind of suspicious if a business has a whole bunch of different addresses and or phone numbers, or it's just that's it's one sign of a potential scam. People have had tried to scam the system using multiple addresses. So Google's on the lookout for that stuff. Fair enough. Now, I've said when I do this, I use Whitesburg. I use this service. I use it for myself, I use it for your site. When my when my clients need to do this, they always have budgets for this. So I just say hey, you need to spend 500 bucks on this, or 1000 bucks or whatever and go do it and it's done. It's a whole lot easier than doing it manually. But, you know, I understand. Not everybody wants to spend 100 bucks or 500 bucks or 1000 bucks on this stuff. So doing it manually is the other option is something I've never really talked about.

Meredith: 10:15

About It. Yeah, let's talk about my new war. SACD shins, man.

Meredith's Husband: 10:20

That's pretty good. Thanks. So in doing these local citations, there is what we call a local ecosystem. There's a whole bunch of these local direct at least places where You can put your local citation directories, yeah, local business directories, there's probably 1000s of them. And there are actually people have tried to map these in it's like a visual thing. And it comes up looking like an absolutely crazy looking map, because one little directory that you've never heard of Can, can be a feed, or it can feed information to five other directories. And then those directories can feed other directories and those directories can feed things that maybe you have heard of. So it's a very intricate system being a lot of food being passed. Yeah, it's more like think of train. Now think of like a root system. Think of how No, no. Okay, now,

Meredith: 11:12

what I see is I see like, hundreds of baby birds and hundreds of parent birds, and one is feeding the other and then taking from the other and the other.

Meredith's Husband: 11:22

Well, I'm glad I'm not inside your head. But I think we that's not too bad actually, that, you know, I'm thinking more of like, if you were to look at a diagram of how you know, a tree, and then they have the soil line, and then below the soil, you have all the roots, they spread them. They're all over the place. It's like that, in fact, I will link to that.

Meredith: 11:42

Local ecosystems map for them. Yeah.

Meredith's Husband: 11:45

Yeah. Because it is interesting. Don't feel you need to do anything. No, but because you'll have

Meredith: 11:52

information to plug in.

Meredith's Husband: 11:54

Okay, so what are the steps that you need? How do we do this? How do we? How do we do this, you need a few things. Number one, you need to gather your information, you need to have it all centralized, your business name, address, that your hours of operation, your phone number, some images of business, a short business description, a long business description, how many years you've been in business, because when you go out and start building these citations, these are all the fields that you may be prompted to enter.

Meredith: 12:23

Do you want to enter the same? Always? Exactly,

Meredith's Husband: 12:26

yes. Yeah. It really, really, really, really, really want them to be the same. Okay? So that's why you want it the first step is to gather these all up in a central place where you can always just wait every time you build a new listing, a new citation, you can just go somewhere, copy and paste, copy and paste just a spreadsheet. In fact, I will link to I have a spreadsheet that I use. Evernote could use Evernote, I use a spreadsheet. Yeah, you would. Yeah, of course I would. I will. I will link I will link to that spreadsheet. Get Buster barking at the siren this round. Always. He has protected us from so many sirens. It's incredible. Yeah, many. In his in his mind, I know that he has protected us from every single site ambulance and fire engine and police through his entire life. He's our sole Guardian he is scares them all away. terrified them from us. Yes. So I will link to the spreadsheet. Okay, I use for this.

Meredith: 13:26

Oh, that's great. Can people then use that?

Meredith's Husband: 13:28

Yes, yeah, they can use Thank you. So you want to make sure they're accurate. You also want to have this information. Because when you go out and build local citations, the first thing you want to do is you want to look to make sure you don't already have a citation. So if you're building a, if you're looking for a citation on, say, yellow pages, you the first step is to make sure you don't already have a listing on Yelp. So search, so you want to search for your business name and or phone number. Before you add a new one. You do not Yeah, you don't want to add two listings, because that's even worse than having your yeah that Google really doesn't like multiple listings?

Meredith: 14:09

No. Okay. Do you have a list? Or rather? Is there a list of recommended places to create your citations and place them?

Meredith's Husband: 14:20

That is a good question. And of course there is I created one. I mean, no, there's a bunch of there's a whole you can find them in a lot of different places. I have put together what I would call kind of a master list. And it it is one of the tabs on that spreadsheet. Yeah,

Meredith: 14:37

let's let's pause for a sec round of applause.

Meredith's Husband: 14:42

I was just gonna say something really important. Oh, well, let's skip it. Now, the important the important thing that I was going to say is, when you are gathering your information, you have to be sure include any of your old addresses if you've ever moved, like in your case, we have some multiple addresses, any old physical addresses or domain names or phone numbers. Because when we go to make sure that we like I just said we don't have duplicate listings, we want to find any old listings also. Oh, I don't find that. You're going to search for your old you're going to go to like Yellow Pages. If you're using yellow pages. Check for your current phone number and your old phone number and your current address and your old address. Because you want to eliminate the duplicates,

Meredith: 15:30

eliminate duplicates Okay,

Meredith's Husband: 15:34

so to your question about, is there a list where what are the where are the directories that we need to submit your nation? So they're not all created equal. There are some that are more important, more influential than others, right? So there are three, what we call data aggregators, data aggregators, aggregators, there used to be four. Now there's three. But what these do is they feed, you've probably never heard of these. But they they feed a whole bunch of other directories. They're really very important. So these are the ones you need to start with. Oh, and they are, yes. Number one is called Data axle with a hyphen in between. X E L. Yes. Data hyphen, axel.com. Now, this used to be something called the Infogroup. But they've changed names. Well, that's good, somewhat recent. So if you see something out there, it says info group that's not now called Data axial. That's number one. Number two, is is called and this one I love. New Star. No. New Star local ease dot biz. What? Yeah, exactly. Now, this used to be there used to be two of these, one of them was called New Star. And one of them was called Local ease. And they have combined and now they have chosen what I think is the worst domain name in the history of domain names. New Star local ease dot biz. Yeah,

Meredith: 17:03

that's a mouthful. Yeah,

Meredith's Husband: 17:05

it's terrible. I'm not even going to try to spell it. I will link it below. Okay. So that's another of the really important ones. The third one are, yeah, but it's not even new. It's not like any W. It's an EU s. So I'm not. I'm not even trying to spell it. Yeah. So just use the link below. The third one is Foursquare. Foursquare. You are Yes. Now, you may have heard of Foursquare, because it used to be

Meredith: 17:32

something else used to check in like, hey, yeah,

Meredith's Husband: 17:35

yeah, I'm eating. Right. And so I guess that business model wasn't working for them. And they had now become a data aggregator. They've pivoted. Oh, they did, but hopefully name. Yeah. So those are the three most important. So if you're only going to do three, do those three, like I said, make sure you look for your existing listings. If you can't find them, or you spend time then add the new one. Yeah. Got it. Now. Now, there's

Meredith: 18:04

another Ew, not any, you know, yes.

Meredith's Husband: 18:07

Any you know, No, you

Meredith: 18:09

said add the new ones. And then

Meredith's Husband: 18:11

Oh, right. Oh, God is doing a comeback. Right. Okay, so there is the next tier of I what I would call important. business directories. These are the things you've probably heard of, like Apple Maps, Facebook. Yes. Yellow Pages. Yes. Bing Places, Yelp. These are all fairly important. One thing is still is still around. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Sure. Bing Places, and specifically, it's Bing Places now. There's also exclamation point. No.

Meredith: 18:43

With an exclamation

Meredith's Husband: 18:44

Oh, yeah. Bing is still there. Bing is still a search engine. This but specifically Bing Places is where they keep all their their business information. Why not? So Google has their Google business profile. Bing has been places same thing. Similar similar thing. Also in this tear are some things are some sites that you probably haven't heard of d&b, Dun and Bradstreet? Oh, the economy? Yeah. They're huge. They're a huge company they've been around for for years and years, not many. Why did they call me they call every sort of business that trying to sell you something. By the way, if any of these directories ever call you and try to sell something, don't buy it. Don't just don't buy it. You never need to do any of the paid service. Never Never. But there's things like dnb.com, merchant circle.com, there's probably half a dozen others. They're all in the sheet that I will link to at the end. Thank you for playing. So well, after the after the three data aggregators, and I would say do this list, then there's probably 70 to 80 additional ones that are not even though you're less important than everything. We've got less important than the aggregators. Yeah, the little Walker in Napa. Yeah. And like I said, there's 70 or 80. So this is going to take time, this is where white spark or a paid service is extremely handy, because adding your site to 70 or 80 listings can be extremely time consuming.

Meredith: 20:05

Yeah. But if you're just okay, this is what I'm gonna do. I'm going to be a machine. I can do it. You can do it.

Meredith's Husband: 20:13

Now, if you have done the aggregators, and you've done that second tier, what I would recommend as the next step is look for what we call local and industry niche citations. They're going to be more beneficial than this next than that huge group of 70 to 80. Now, why don't you find them so you just have to do a search to You can just write niche. No, you just, you know, so what, let me explain what they are. And that will probably help you look for them. So in your case, you're a photographer in Brooklyn. So, so one thing, so an industry niche would be like a photographer directory, there are, there are directories of just photographers,

Meredith: 20:55

they keep trying to get me to pay for them, right, don't pay for them.

Meredith's Husband: 21:00

That would be that would be an example of an industry niche. A local niche would be like a Brooklyn like the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, that Brooklyn, Park Slope parents, things that have to do things that are essentially lists of businesses in your geographic area. Listings like these industry and local directories are going to be more valuable than the 70 to 80, or lowest here. So that's why I would do these first. So you'd need to do a search, I can't provide a list of these because everybody lives in a different area, right? But do it spend a little, a little time not a whole lot, but spend some time looking for those directories, and submit there. And then if you still want to go through and do the other 70 to 80, business directories, then do those. They are all listed. Those are all listed in the spreadsheet. Wonderful. I will link oh my god, that's so wonderful. I will link at Meredith husband.com. Forward slash blog, forward slash citations. Okay, okay. And since I seem to be doing a lot of tools, kind of like this, that I share online, if you want to subscribe and just be notified whenever I create new tools and just get a notification like, Hey, I created such and such a tool if you want to get a note so so that you don't have to listen to the podcast, and then oh, write it down or remember it and then go download it. You can do that at Meritus husband.com/subscribe.

Meredith: 22:29

And you'll feel you'll if you if you do subscribe, you'll feel a little happier during the day and your life will be just a little bit better.

Meredith's Husband: 22:38

You will be better looking and healthier and more funny and more funny. And you will

Meredith: 22:43

remember people's names and historical dates that perfectly.

Meredith's Husband: 22:48

Absolutely. Anyway, I hope this all helps. If you're doing this manually. Good luck to you. It's gonna take some time, but it'll be worth it. Yeah, you need you do need. Yeah, you need to do this one way or no?

Meredith: 23:02

You're gonna need this. Yo, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, wait.

Meredith's Husband: 23:07

Okay, podcast is over.

Meredith: 23:08

I guess it's over by friends.

Meredith's Husband: 23:11

We have a surprisingly lot of international listeners affected that kind of the fact that anyone listens to us is a little bit mind boggling.

Meredith: 23:26

I know I don't even listen to us.

Meredith's Husband: 23:28

If you're finding these episodes helpful, I created something that I think you're going to find even more help. It explains the SEO process similar to these episodes in a way that I hope is new for you. But it also puts them in order so that you know what to do first and second and third through the entire SEO process. And I hope saves you a lot of time by giving you an actionable step by step plan. It's called the SEO roadmap, and you can find it at Meritus husband.com/roadmap.