The top 20 directories built in authority order, with one consistent name, address, and phone across every one. Citations are the web of references Google uses to confirm your business is real. We build the right twenty, not the noisy hundred.
Citations are not Yelp. Citations are not paying a "directory submission service" to dump your business into 200 spammy sites at $99 a pop. Citations are the small handful of authoritative places online that publish your business name, your address, and your phone number, and that Google reads when deciding whether your business exists and where to file it.
For Las Vegas home service contractors, the right list is roughly twenty places. Some are end-consumer sites you want to be on so customers can find you (BBB, Yelp, Houzz). Some are data aggregators that quietly feed dozens of downstream sites including Apple Maps and Bing (Localeze, Acxiom, Infogroup). All of them publish your name, address, and phone, and the version they publish needs to match exactly. One missing apartment number on one listing is a signal Google notices.
Citation building is the work of getting all twenty live, with one consistent version of your details, in roughly authority order. Not bulk-submitted. Not sprayed across a hundred sites that nobody reads. Twenty, done right, with screenshots for proof.
Roughly in order of authority. Trade-specific directories (Houzz, Angi) get prioritized higher for the trade they fit.
Google Business Profile is the anchor citation. Everything else either confirms what GBP says, or contradicts it. We start there and work outward.
Bing Places. Microsoft's local directory. Powers Bing, DuckDuckGo, and a chunk of in-car navigation.
Apple Maps via the Apple Business Connect portal. Half of all phones in the US, and Siri reads it for voice search.
Yelp. Less load-bearing for trades than it used to be, but still indexed and still pulls from a national audience.
Better Business Bureau (BBB). Higher-trust signal for home service categories. Worth claiming whether or not you go for accreditation.
Angi (formerly Angie's List) and Houzz for home-service-specific authority. Houzz especially for trades with a visual portfolio.
Yellow Pages, Foursquare, Manta. Older directories that Google still reads for cross-confirmation. Quick wins.
BrightLocal and Whitespark data feeds. These push your details into the citation ecosystem at scale. One submission, dozens of downstream sites updated.
Localeze, Acxiom, Infogroup. The three big data aggregators. They feed the long tail. Wrong data here is the source of most of those "weird listings I never created" problems.
Chamber of commerce (Las Vegas Metro Chamber or city-specific) for a local authority link, where applicable.
That is roughly the twenty. The exact list shifts slightly by trade. A roofer gets a different mix than a tree service. The full list goes in the proposal after the audit.
Per Whitespark's Local Search Ranking Factors research, citation signals account for roughly 7 to 10% of local pack ranking weight. That is not the biggest lever in local SEO. The Google Business Profile itself, reviews, and on-page work all carry more individual weight. But citations are the foundation lever. Until they are consistent, the other levers underperform.
Two reasons. First, Google uses citations to confirm your business is real and the details you put on your GBP are not made up. Sparse or inconsistent citations make Google less confident in your profile, and a less-confident profile ranks lower. Second, citation listings show up as branded results when someone searches your name directly. A clean Yelp page, a verified BBB listing, an accurate Apple Maps card. These are the things prospective customers see in the search results before they ever click your website.
Citations are the foundation that lets the other work pay off, not a magic ranking lever on their own. We are honest about that. Anyone telling you they can rank you through citation building alone is selling a 2014 playbook.
We start with the top five and confirm each one is fully claimed, verified, and live before moving to the next. A spammy bulk submission that creates 100 listings in a week is the move agencies use to look busy. It does not move rankings, and the cleanup if your details get spread inconsistently is more expensive than building them right the first time.
Name, address, phone. The version that goes on Google goes on every other directory, character for character. No "Inc" on one and "LLC" on another. No "Suite 200" on one and missing on another. The aggregator listings get the same exact details. This is the citation consistency check that the free audit covers.
You get a tracking sheet with every directory, the URL of your listing, the login email, the verification date, and a screenshot. If a listing gets edited later by a random user or an aggregator overwrite, we can prove what it used to say and put it back. Without the record, you are at the mercy of whoever touched it last.
Yes, and home service trades are where this work pays back fastest. The directory ecosystem was built for service businesses, and the big trade-specific directories (Houzz, Angi, BBB) read straight through to the same audience your GBP serves. A clean top-20 build runs as a one-time investment that compounds for years, then needs light maintenance.
For trades that travel to the customer (most of you), citations are how Apple Maps and Bing learn your service area in the first place. Without the directory layer, those secondary surfaces leave you out entirely, and that traffic goes to whichever competitor took the twenty minutes to claim their Apple Maps listing two years ago.
Citation work is included in the Authority and Dominate tiers. The Visibility tier covers GBP optimization but leaves citation work for later, which is the right move for businesses with a clean GBP and an already-decent directory footprint.
GBP optimization and monthly reports. Citation work not included.
Adds citation cleanup and listing build across the top 20 directories, plus call tracking.
Adds 6 service-area pages and a monthly strategy call.
Setup is $497, one time. We don't lock you into a contract. What we do ask: be ready to give this at least 3 months. GBP rankings need 90 to 180 days to compound, per BrightLocal's 2024 Local Search Ranking Factors report.
The citation build itself happens in months one and two. Maintenance and monitoring run from month three forward, because aggregator feeds reshuffle and listings drift if nobody watches them.
The free 169-point audit includes a citation consistency check across the top 20 directories. PDF in 48 hours. No obligation.
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