Local Citation Building Service | Citation Builder by BrightLocal (original) (raw)

Build citations on key sites

Submit listings to 100+ sites, as well as specialist industry sites, in one go.

Clean up existing citations

Fix NAP inaccuracies in existing citations so there’s no misinformation to confuse search engines or customers.

Remove duplicate listings

Remove harmful duplicate listings that could be holding back local SEO performance.

The most cost-effective solution

Short of spending countless hours submitting local citations yourself, BrightLocal is the most affordable way to grow your online presence and improve local SEO, costing as little as $2 per site.

See for yourself in the full competitor price comparison table below.

No recurring fees — unlike some solutions

Not only will you enjoy savings from the outset, but many agencies and businesses end up saving $1,000s every year, just like these customers.

Complete control

Every business is different, yet most of our competitors offer a one-size-fits-all solution with no consideration for your industry or vertical.

Our local citation software not only gives you coverage on top sites, but also allows you to build listings on 100s of niche sites in over 40 industries.

This gives you complete freedom to get listed on the sites that matter the most to you, as well as those sites that give the biggest SEO impact.

For further information on which sites we submit to, and how we do this, see the FAQs section below.

You own your listing, forever

There are many companies that effectively charge to rent your business listings. You don’t own the listing and you’ll be stuck in the renting cycle. And if you leave, your listings could revert back or disappear completely. Who wants that?!

With BrightLocal you retain full ownership of every listing we build, with all login details passed to you.

White-labeling

Over 5,000 digital marketing agencies and resellers outsource their local citation building to BrightLocal.

Our trusted and reliable service completely removes the time and expense of building citations in-house.

And the best bit, the service, software, and reports can all be white-labeled so your agency gets to take all the credit!

• Set up a free account.
• Add your business information.
  Citation Builder will automatically scan the web to audit existing citations, and uncover new opportunities.
• Select which listings that you want to fix, update, or create.
  Confirm (pay via credit card or PayPal) and let our expert citation submission team get to work for you.

Countries we support

United States

United Kingdom

Canada

Australia

South Africa

Netherlands

Germany

Singapore

New Zealand

Ireland

France

Spain

Italy

Turkey

Greece

Sweden

Switzerland

Austria

Belgium

Portugal

Manual citation submissions

Just $2 per site (with bulk discount).
Only $3.20 per site (without bulk discount).

Data Aggregator Network submissions

Just $30 per year.
All five Data Aggregator Networks $120 per year (20% saving).

Some citation services charge per site. Others bundle many sites together for a fixed fee.

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"BrightLocal has allowed us to scale our agency without hiring the amount of people it would take to do citations for every client."

"Citation Builder saves our agency hours every month at a low cost. It works on all the important citation sites and the support team will fulfill all of your requests promptly."

Austin Lund

Local SEO Specialist, Big Leap

"I have used several different citation tools but BrightLocal is still at the top of my list, the citation building and tracking resources are perfection!"

William Chan

SEO Specialist, Inbound Law Marketing

"We love that Brightlocal offers an easy way to track and manage local citations. It has provided us with so many important sites to get our clients listed on without the hassle of doing it manually. It has become an integral part in executing our local SEO campaigns successfully."

Tatiana Borisanova

SEO Specialist/Project Manager, 9thCO

"I like the fact that I can pick the citations I want based on my budget and your team helps do the rest. The one thing I like the most is that once the citation is created you give us access an ownership of that citation. Not many citation tools allow you to do that."

Michael Richmond

Owner, Orange SEO

"Citation Builder is an extremely valuable tool to help ensure consistent name and address information throughout the internet. With literally hundreds of different sites displaying our N&A information, it is imperative, from an SEO perspective, to have that data consistent. Citation Builder enables us to accomplish that goal."

Thomas D. Pollan

Marketing Lead, Shankle Law Firm

How does BrightLocal differ to traditional citation services, such as Yext?

Other than Data Aggregator Network submissions, all our citations are made direct-to-site by our own in-house team of 80+ expert listing agents. Between them, they handle over 100,000 citation submissions for 1,500+ businesses every month.

Unlike traditional solutions, we don't:

• Charge expensive, annual fees.
• Hold your listings to ransom — we give you full ownership of every listing we build, we even give you the keys to them (well, the username and passwords at least).
• Ignore duplicate listings and inaccuracies — as part of our service we offer a clean up of duplicate listings and remedy inaccuracies.
• Offer a pre-packaged, 'one size fits all' solution — instead, we give you complete control of the sites where you are listed.
• Miss important, niche, industry sites — we help you uncover the perfect sites for your business type.

To find out more about the differences between BrightLocal and other citation services, read our full citation competitor comparison article.

Which sites do you build citations on?

You have complete control to pick from any of the 1,000+ sites that we submit to. That said, we highly recommend you include the following power-players as part of your selection: Google My Business, Bing, Apple Maps, Facebook, Yelp, and YellowPages.

For the rest of your selection, our Citation Builder tool helpfully orders the list of available citations for you by Domain Authority, so you can use this to guide your selection choice. It will also highlight any existing citations that require updating.

Get started

Which countries does Citation Builder work in?

Citation Builder works in 20 countries:

• USA
• UK
• Canada
• Australia
• South Africa
• Netherlands (Holland)
• Germany
• Singapore
• New Zealand
• Ireland
• France
• Spain
• Italy
• Turkey
• Greece
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• Austria
• Belgium
• Portugal

Which countries do Local Data Aggregators Networks work in?

• Data Axle - US, Canada
• Neustar - US
• Foursquare - Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands (Holland), New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, UK, US.
• GPS Network - Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands (Holland), New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, UK, US.
• YP Network - US

Do I need a BrightLocal subscription to use Citation Builder?

Nope.

Citation Builder is a pay-as-you-go service that's available subscription-free. You only pay for the citations that you wish to build. You can go right ahead and set up a free account here.

What happens if I already have a BrightLocal subscription?

If you already have a BrightLocal subscription there is no need to set up a separate Citation Builder account. You will be able to access Citation Builder straight from your dashboard.

Are there really no recurring fees?

That's correct. Once you've built your listings through BrightLocal they are yours to keep — forever!

The only instances you might be required to pay additional fees are:

If you need to make changes to your business information
See 'What happens if I need to change details about a location'.

To renew Data Aggregators Networks
Whilst it's not compulsory to do so, we do advise renewing Data Aggregator Networks each year ($120/year for all five). If you choose not to, they go into an 'unmanaged' state, which means they could be susceptible to inaccurate data about your company being distributed throughout their networks.

Do I need to order Data Aggregator Networks as well as manual listings?

There is no requirement to add Data Aggregator Networks when placing an order, however, we do recommend doing so as it allows you to claim multiple key citations quickly and easily. This rapidly expands the reach of your listings across the local search ecosystem, reaching 1,000s of directories, mobile apps, and maps around the world, at a very low cost. The charge for all five Data Aggregator Networks is just $120.

For more information see our article 'What are Data Aggregators and how do they help local SEO".

Am I required to renew Data Aggregator Networks each year?
While it's not compulsory to do so, we do advise renewing Data Aggregators Networks each year ($120 for all five). If you choose not to, they go into an 'unmanaged' state, which means they could be susceptible to inaccurate data about your company being distributed throughout these networks.

What is duplicate removal?

It's possible that over time multiple listings may have been created for your business.

Having duplicate listings can confuse search engines, hurt local rankings, and reduce the trust that consumers have in your business.

Traditional API solutions do not identify or fix these duplicate listings, and can also miss inaccuracies. For this reason, we strongly recommend when creating a citation campaign that you add duplicate removal to permanently fix any outstanding issues that may be present.

What happens if I need to change details about a location?

No problem.

Unlike traditional API solutions, we don't charge expensive recurring fees just to hold the door open for those rare times you might need to update a listing.

Instead, we charge a simple, one-off fee of $3.20 for each listing you need to update, and if the listing is managed through a current Data Aggregator Network subscription, there's no charge at all!

Are there any situations in which I'd be better off choosing a traditional API solution?

It's easiest to answer this with the following two questions:

• Does your business move location each year?
• Do you regularly make changes to your business information?

If you happened to answer 'yes' to either of those questions then it’s possible that Yext or a similar provider could be a good choice for you.

If you're a business that is regularly moving address or making changes to core business information, then a service that can push out these changes instantaneously (but charging expensive annual fees for the privilege) could well be a good option.

We can of course facilitate any changes or updates to your business data. See 'What happens if I need to change details about a location' for full details.

Any further questions?

What is a local citation?

Most commonly, a local citation is a business listing on an online business directory or citation site.

They provide basic information about your business, such as business name, address, and phone number (NAP) and, usually, a link to your site.

Check out our local citation guides, including a more in-depth answer to “What are local citations?”.

Do citations help SEO?

Yes, they do. They’re an important piece in the ranking puzzle for a local business. While they don’t hold the same power they used to (you won’t rank top in Google from citations alone), they’re an essential foundation that needs to be built early on.

Learn more about local citations and SEO in our guide, to get the full picture.

Can I build local citations myself?

Learn how Big Leap uses BrightLocal to effectively manage citations for 1,600 locations.

See how Staylisted saved over $67,000 on Citation Management by switching to BrightLocal.

Discover how Blue Corona reduced their annual citation spend by 79%.

100% focused on local search

No other SEO platform can offer you this chance to succeed in local search.

Cost-effective and scalable

Plans start from just $39 per month. BrightLocal is kind on your marketing budget, no matter your size.

Take back countless hours

Find the answers quick, and with more confidence. Reports and audits do all the hard work for you.