Buying citations from a service or doing them manually myself

[rvcasrfr]

Money is not an issue. Whether I spend $500 on citations or save $500 by doing them myself doesn't really matter to me. Above all my concern is ranking as quickly as possible without raising red flags with the big G.

I am doing my first local campaign for a family business. Looking to rank upwards of 10-20 domains, starting with 3 to get my feet wet. I was looking at starting out with this service. Other people have recommended I drip backlinks in slowly. I'm already familiar with standard SEO and the need to get slow drip backlinks there to not flag the big G, so it makes sense it would be the same for Local listing. But should I slowly scale citations as well? Is 350 citations on 3 sites new to Google Places too much? Is getting all my citations for all my sites from a single provider too conspicuous? Are there any disadvantages to buying citations from a provider like that instead of manually doing them myself?

Thank you in advance.

 

[sashablack]

If you are able to do all your back linking and citations, I recommend doing it yourself! good luck!

 

[rvcasrfr]

If you are able to do all your back linking and citations, I recommend doing it yourself! good luck!

Well, I am physically able to, sure. Do I want to spend a hundred hours manually doing citations if I see little to no benefit over just paying a contractor to do it? No. If I will see a big benefit in avoiding a google slap or any sort of flagging with big G then I'd do it myself, if not I would much rather pay to have it done.

 

[Andrew Scherer]

I like to do about 60 a month.

Do you have unique addresses to go along with all of those domains?

 

[rvcasrfr]

I like to do about 60 a month.

Thanks. So I take it the idea of getting backlinks too quickly and getting G slapped also applies to citations? Have you found yourself getting the slap if you venture too far past 60 per month?

Do you have unique addresses to go along with all of those domains?

Yes, absolutely have unique addresses that can be PIN verified.

 

[SEODEMON]

Money is not an issue. Whether I spend $500 on citations or save $500 by doing them myself doesn't really matter to me. Above all my concern is ranking as quickly as possible without raising red flags with the big G.

I am doing my first local campaign for a family business. Looking to rank upwards of 10-20 domains, starting with 3 to get my feet wet. I was looking at starting out with this service. Other people have recommended I drip backlinks in slowly. I'm already familiar with standard SEO and the need to get slow drip backlinks there to not flag the big G, so it makes sense it would be the same for Local listing. But should I slowly scale citations as well? Is 350 citations on 3 sites new to Google Places too much? Is getting all my citations for all my sites from a single provider too conspicuous? Are there any disadvantages to buying citations from a provider like that instead of manually doing them myself?

Thank you in advance.

Citations can be as fast as you want. Fiverr is the cheapest and I have gotten quality work.

 

[Andrew Scherer]

Thanks. So I take it the idea of getting backlinks too quickly and getting G slapped also applies to citations? Have you found yourself getting the slap if you venture too far past 60 per month?

No, never seen a slap occur because of too many at once, but I think it wise to play it safe.

Yes, absolutely have unique addresses that can be PIN verified.

Perfect !

 

[shakeitout]

I like to do about 60 a month.

Do you have unique addresses to go along with all of those domains?

I can personally give Andrew a solid reccomendation...

Nearly all of my local clients at the agency have received Hyper Citations and the BIG citations from Andrew.

Quality is solid and gets the job done and the price is superb.

Reports are supplied and I have yet to get any problems.


When dealing with local you need to have citations for the geo effect - if you're trying to stick longterm those links get stronger with age and are a solid foundation.

Local needs tend to be a handful of solid local links in your area, PBN links, decent social media setup and so forth.

Good Luck

-RD

 

[Techxan]

What matters with citations is that the source is a qualiy source, and your citations are consistent from source to source.

The most important things when doing a citation is to get the listing in the correct category, have them be absolutely the same, only get the higher quality ones (this is a change that has just become apparent. it used to be the more the merrier) and to completely fill out each citation.

That is where many people fail with automatic submissions, because when software cannot find the exact category, it will pick one. Sites have all kinds of category structures, anyou have to sift through them to get exactly the right category.

The next problem you have with most peopel who do citations is that they do not complete the citations. Most providers will post three pictures to your citation but not video, but to really optimize them, you need to give them as many as they ask for. If they have a spot for 10 pictures and two videos, you should give them that.

You do not need to worry about citation velocity. It will not hurt a thing if you get all of them overnight. You do not earn citations from people based on your content like links. You tell people about your business not wait for them to find it.

Citations do not rank your site, really. Not in the way backlinks do.

Citations qualify you for the local algorithm (for so called "local" search terms) and contribute to Google trust, which makes ranking your site easier.

Google has decided that the local citations are use to qualify a business as a local business for the very reason that local business were already listing themselves in these directories (and spammers didn't). Citations are not backlinks, you are encouraged to list your business with as many related directories as you can, because this increases Google's trust that you really are a local business. These directories have various verification processes that make it difficult for spammers to get them.


I am much more concerned that you are building 3 websites now for the same company, and planning on 15 more.

I do not know your business but if your family business is a local business this is completely insane, and will probably hurt you badly down the road.

 

[qu4rk]

Do you have unique addresses to go along with all of those domains?

Why does he need unique addresses? Is this a PBN?

Yes, absolutely have unique addresses that can be PIN verified.

Can you elaborate on what the advantage of PIN verified is?

 

[qu4rk]

A separate question is, what do you do for citations on a lead generation site where you don't have an address & a virtual phone number?

 

[randybishop]

I got my citations from Andrew's Hyper Local Citations too (2 orders) and have been extremely pleased.
First round of citations I did myself and trust me after you do about 20 you will want to tear your hair out it is so fucking tedious.

 

[freelanceronline]

Doing Work by yourself is always best. but if you want Manual work of Citations done while avoiding dupes and cleaning wrong NAPs http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/seo-link-building/626642-local-citations-building-already-listed-wrong-nap-mess-cleaning-services.html.

 

[Izaguf]

Everyone should do his work! So let specialists work on it.