Dentaltown January 2025 - 47

Fig. 4: Your primary business category.
Pages and the GPS listing (which is
important for having updated information
GPS/map products).
In a citation campaign, you also
want to correct any old or incorrect
listings (like if you have changed the
name of the practice or changed the
address) so that your information is as
consistent as possible for Google.
My personal objection is that there
is no way to quantitatively state that
if you have twenty citations, you'll do
better than a competitor with only 19
citations. Or if you have 10 top authority
citations and your competitor
has 100 low authority citations that
they will do better. Ultimately there
is no current guidance as to what the
correct number of citations is and
how having more citations or fewer
citations will affect your local listings.
While you can run a citation camCitation
campaign
Before we talk about citations, let's
talk about links. A link is when one
website connects to another, and
high-authority sites can share their
authority. For example, if you are
featured on CNN, FOX or MSNBC and
they link the story to your website, it
is a much more valuable link than the
same one from Short Hills Design's
website because Google views these
major news sites as much more
authoritative.
When it comes to a local SEO campaign,
when we refer to links, we are
usually referring to citations. A citation
is a listing for your business on an
aggregator or directory-type website.
Google states that they want local
businesses to have citations because
the more accurate and consistent
citations that a business has, the more
proof that the business is local.
A citation campaign is a process
by which you submit your practice's
information to multiple listing sites
to make sure that you have a presence
on these sites. Of course, some of
these sites have more authority than
other sites, so your goal is to list your
practice on the top sites. There are
also services called aggregators which
submit your information to a group of
citation providers including the Yellow
JANUARY 2025 | 47 | DENTALTOWN.COM
paign by hand and manually submit
your practice's information to 50-plus
websites, we use the service BrightLocal.
There are many other companies
that provide citation submission services
and they all cost some amount
of money to make submissions, but
we've found that BrightLocal is the
best choice when it comes to price,
ease-of-use and support.
Notes about citations
You want to make sure that your
citations are consistent across the
web, but not to the point where it
consumes your life. That is, if the bulk
of your citations are consistent, don't
lose sleep over a few errant listings
(however, you must make sure that
top sites such as GBP, Facebook and
Apple Business Connect are accurate).
Also note that once citations are
submitted, they generally can't be
removed-only updated (unless the
business closes). So, once you submit a
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