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Local · 8 min read · July 23, 2026

Local SEO Citations: What They Are and How to Build Them the Right Way

Citations are mentions of your business name, address and phone number around the web. Getting them right is tedious work that quietly lifts local rankings.

Ryan Pereyra, Founder & Agency Owner of RPM National

By , Founder & Agency Owner, RPM National

Paper city map with a red pin next to a phone showing a 5-star Google Business Profile — local SEO guide

What counts as a citation

A citation is any online mention of your business name, address and phone number, often called NAP. Structured citations live on directories like Yelp, Apple Maps, Bing Places and the Better Business Bureau. Unstructured citations appear in news articles, blogs and event pages.

Search engines and AI assistants use these mentions to confirm that your business is real, where it is located and what it does.

Consistency matters more than volume

Ten accurate listings do more than a hundred messy ones. If one directory lists your old suite number and another has a tracking phone number, you send mixed signals.

Pick one exact format for your name, address and main phone number, and use it everywhere, down to "Suite" versus "Ste."

Start with the core platforms

Claim and complete Google Business Profile, Apple Business Connect, Bing Places, Yelp, Facebook and the Better Business Bureau first. Those feed many smaller directories and map apps.

Next, add the data aggregators and the major navigation apps so your details spread accurately instead of being scraped wrong.

Then add industry directories

Every industry has its own trusted listings. Contractors belong on Angi, Houzz and HomeAdvisor. Dentists and doctors need Healthgrades, Zocdoc and WebMD. Law firms need Avvo, Justia and FindLaw. Hotels and restaurants need TripAdvisor and OpenTable.

These listings often rank on page one themselves, so a complete profile can bring in customers directly as well as supporting your own site.

Audit once, then maintain

When RPM onboards a client, we search every variation of their old names, addresses and phone numbers to find stale listings, then fix or remove them. After that, a quarterly check catches new duplicates before they spread.

Any time you move, rebrand or change your main number, update your citations the same week.

Ryan Pereyra’s take

Ryan Pereyra, founder of RPM National, calls citation cleanup the least exciting and most reliable local SEO fix there is.

Get your name, address and phone number identical everywhere before you spend a dollar on anything fancier.

Keep reading.

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