Local SEO: Links with the citations so should I slow down?

[BobGW]

Hello,

There seems to be some nofollow and dofollow links building as I add structured citations.

Is this a reason to slow down the building citation process if you want the links to count? Do they help organic SEO?

[BobGW]

Awesome! Very useful information from Mr. Shaw.

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Again Bob,

Happily, I was able to catch Darren almost immediately. I have his permission to quote his replies on this topic. Very fascinating stuff here, I'm sure everyone will agree!

"Citation velocity isn't an issue. If I build 100 citations today, they will "go live" on the various sites at all different rates. 10 might get posted same day, some within a week, others within a few weeks, and others with months (or even years). So, citation throttling is naturally built in to the citation building process. I don't believe Google is measuring citation velocity as a positive or negative factor, but, the links can hurt you if you get too many at once.I have seen a case where one citation submission on one site spread to listings on THOUSANDS of other domains within the same business listings network. Rankings tanked.

"It's important to make sure you're submitting to quality sources. See: http://www.whitespark.ca/blog/post/12-how-to-identify-quality-citation-sources

"I think it's only a concern if you're not careful with the quality of the sources you're submitting to. You can only cause damage if you hit a site like the one I identified (it's a very nasty negative SEO source that I don't want to reveal). Building citations at 20, 30, 50, even 100 per day is no problem in my opinion because of the natural spread of when these listings go live."

Great feedback from Darren, no? I learned something today! I always learn something new whenever I talk to Darren and I appreciate the time he took to share his take on this with me. If anyone knows citations inside and out, it's Mr. Shaw!

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Bob,

I think you raise an interesting point, given that many citations do contain links and velocity of linkbuilding does play a part in Organic SEO. No one is citing this as problematic, in my experience, in the Local SEO sphere, but this doesn't mean there is no chance it has any effect.  As you are using Darren's tool, why don't I give Darren a shout-out to get his expert opinion on this topic? I'll return with an update if Darren will be so good as to reply.

[Casey_Meraz]

Bob,

Thanks for the feedback! I hope you find great success in local SEO! One side note is that services like Yext will submit 40+ instantaneously with no harmful effects. That's just an interesting data point since if you're doing them by hand there's no way you could ever do that In the same amount of time!

Yes, building citations is not the most exciting task in the world. However a lot of times you will see the added benefit of gaining new customers through the other sites where your business is listed. Good luck and keep the data consistent.

[BobGW]

Thanks Casey,

I think it's time to let the citations play out for a while. I'm glad you think it's OK so far. I am using Roboform and your post.

I feel like I'm doing directory submission. I bet the time will come when the algorithm changes to something not so easy to do.

[BobGW]

I'm just using Whitespark

It's bobweikel.com

It's the first SEO besides content I've done for the site.

I'll spend some time auditing the competition. That will be simple in my case.

Let me know what a good round number of Whitespark-found citations would be for a new non-SEOed site. I can work on nofollow blog commenting and guest posting for now or I'll see what my analysis turns up.

[Casey_Meraz]

The new NAP is actually NAP+W (W meaning website). That's what they're teaching at local U Advanced and I agree.  Basically wherever you have a citation you should try to get a link. Everywhere you have a link you can also try to get a citation.

Many citation sources will give you a no follow link but having a mixture of follow and no follow links is natural and good. When you add these citations it may take a while for them to get indexed too. Many of these directories are huge and put your listing deep within them. Long story short... If you are building citations manually (even using the Roboform method in my Moz Post to speed it up) you should have nothing to worry about.

You will be surprised to see how long some citations take to get indexed and then how long they will take to help you. Don't forget to submit your listing to the major data aggregates like Axciom, Localeze, Infogroup etc.

[NakulGoyal]

I think that's a little too much. Slow down. Revisit your link profile. Do a complete audit for yourself and the competition. See what you really need. Revisit your On-page and then fill the gaps. That's a little too many unless you are talking about an authority site/brand with considerable customer base, traffic, audience to justify this as natural. Are these all same kinds of links/citations ? Blogs/Blog comments/articles/press releases/guest posts etc etc ?

[BobGW]

Thanks Nakul,

Maybe 10-20 citations a day for one site.

[BobGW]

Thanks Chris,

So this isn't link building as well, the links won't help organic SEO and might not even be discovered if I understand you correctly

[NakulGoyal]

As long as you are not over doing any one specific kind of link building, I won't worry. A good mix is natural. Don't bother too much if there are certain citations, follow, nofollow. It's the normal nature of the web.

As Chris said, How many citations are you adding in what period of time?

[Chris.Menke]

My take on citations for local search is that they're dealt with by an algorithm other than the organic algorithm, one which looks to verify the correctness of the NAP and qualify the sites upon which the citations are found and that the sites where the citations are found are disregarded by the organic algorithm.  So, if citations occur on a bunch of local database sites, like yp.com, for example, and they also come with links, the fact that it's a site dealt with by the Local algorithm means that velocity of links add isn't an issue.

I could be wrong though.  I've been wrong before. : (

How many citations are  you adding in what period of time?