This guide to the Local Citation Finder will show you how to setup campaigns, search for citations, interpret results, and use each feature.
INTRODUCTION TO LOCAL CITATION FINDER
The Local Citation Finder is ideal for people who want to:
Discover new citation opportunities based on the citations their top competitors have and they don't.
Find and track all the citations sites their business is listed on across the web.
Monitor their citation growth and progress over time.
Manually build their own citations.
1 FIRST STEPS
Create a Campaign
Your Campaign acts as a centralized hub for all your citation work. Set each business location you manage as a separate campaign, with their targeted Keywords, you can add up to 5 keywords per campaign. The tool will show you which citations you already and uncover new opportunities based on your top competitors' citations.
1. Click “New campaign” button
2. Add your
Campaign Name
Business Name - use the autocomplete functions to match your data with what's in Google Places
Phone Number
Keywords (add up to 5)
Country
City & State/Province
3. Click "Create campaign"
Enter a Business Short Name
If you have a really long business name, adding a short name can help our system uncover listings that may use a variation of your name. Short names allow us to do partial name matches which help us discover more of your citations across the web.
Once we have completed our scan for your existing citation listings across the internet and have analyzed potential opportunities we will present you with a Summary of your current standing.
The Progress Chart shows how your citations have grown over time.
The Summary chart and data shows you how your business stacks up against your top competitors for the keywords you are targeting in your campaign.
2 OPPORTUNITIES
Find Citation Sources Based on Citations Your Competitors Have That You Don't
Your opportunities are grouped by “submitability”. There are four ways to view the citation opportunity data:
Submittable – our team has confirmed that you can submit a listing.
Probably submittable – sites that you can likely submit a listing.
Unknown – maybe you can submit a listing, maybe you can’t. We don’t know!
When you’re looking at your opportunities in campaigns, or the citation sources in searches, you’ll see a little colored dot beside each domain that tells you if it’s a site you can easily get listed on or not.
By default, the lists are grouped by submittable, followed by probably submittable, then unknown. Jump straight to the sites that you can just “submit your business” to get a citation.
Click the little colored toggles at the top of the lists to see only the sites in each group.
By default all your opportunities are filtered by Submittable and tackle these listings sites first to quickly and efficiently build your citations.
To-do List
Keep your campaigns organized with the To-do list. Mark any citation opportunity by importance and manage your new listings submissions.
Once a citation is on your To-do list you can optimize your submission workflow by marking the most important citation with a star, adding notes and details about sources, and marking them complete once you've submitted your business.
Set it and forget it! When your campaign runs every week, if the system discovers a new listing that's in your To-do list, it will automatically be marked as complete and added to your My citations tab.
Filtering Your Opportunities
Competitor - Easily filter your opportunities by competitor based on the tools analysis of the Top 10 ranking competitors for each keyword in your campaign.
Keyword - Filter your opportunities by a keyword in the domain to find industry and city specific citation sources.
3 COMPARISON (CAMPAIGN)
See How Your Business Stacks Up Against the Competition
Based on the Top 10 ranking businesses for your targeted keywords in your campaign, you will see at a glance how well your business is doing compared to your top competitors. You can Add any competitor to the comparison chart (but only based on the competitors who rank in the top 10 results).
To Remove a competitor from the results just click on the X and the results will refresh.
Drill down into the results further by Filtering your competitors by a Specific Keyword you've set in your campaign.
4 BUSINESS & KEYWORD SEARCHES
Searches are for occasional citation research of specific keywords or businesses that are not covered in your campaigns.
Keyword Search
After you’ve created a keyword search, your results will populate and you can view the combined Citation Sources for the Top Businesses ranking for that keyword term, and use the Comparison feature (pro subscriptions and up).
Simply go to the Searches tab and click on New Search to get started.
2. See the combined Citation Sources of the Top 10 Businesses ranking for this term in search results.
Top Ranking Businesses
All Citation Sources are based on the Top 10 ranking businesses for the keyword searched. This shows you who is currently ranking #1 to #10, how many citations they have, and what their citations profiles looks like.
Don’t see your business or a specific competitor in the Top 10 results?
1. Click the “Add a Business” button
2. Add:
Business Name
Business Phone Number
We will re-run the search and update the sources to include the citations of the newly added business.
3. Add more businesses if you’d like, such as other competitors not listed or your other locations
You can Filter the “Citation sources” by an individual business’ citation profile, or click on their business name in the Top Businesses tab.
Comparison
Go to the Comparison tab to see a chart comparing which businesses have a specific citation source and which don't. If you've added a business, you will also see it included in the results. You can also add or remove specific competitors and filter the citation sources by their 'Submitability".
!Tip! If you prefer to work in Microsoft Excel, you can download the report to a CSV file, the citations will be listed as Yes or No, and include if the citation source is "Submittable". You can also export to PDF 10 or less businesses to Using the results in Excel will allow you to organize the report according to your own personal preferences.
Business Search
Complete a business search to find out what "Citation sources” an specific business has.
1. To use this feature, click on the "New Search" button, click the toggle to turn on "Business Search".
2. Add the:
Business Name
Phone Number
Country/City
3. Then click "Create Search"
4. Review all the Citation Sources for the business.
You can convert any Business Search into a Campaign by clicking "Convert to Campaign" button in the search results.
Just add your Top 5 Keyword Terms then click Create Campaign and start tracking citation sources, discovering new opportunities, and gain access to the Competitor Comparison feature.
*Note: The Business Search feature does not show you any opportunities or competitors, this feature is designed to show you what citation source a business has. Create a campaign to see opportunities and competitors, or perform a specific Keyword Search and Add a Business to see how their citation profile stacks up.
5 FEATURES
Automatic Citation Monitoring
The Local Citation Finder automatically monitors your Citation growth over time for all your campaigns (Pro subscriptions only). Every week the tool will scan for new citation listings to add to your citation profile, and find new opportunities based on the keywords setup in your Campaign and what the citations your top competitors have that you don't.
Every week you will receive an email update on your total citations for your specific campaign. Citations are organized by the “date of discovery.” If you do not want these reports sent via email, click the Gear in your campaign to unsubscribe. By default all campaigns will be subscribed to weekly updates.
Campaign Settings
Keywords
Each Campaigns can track up to 5 Keywords. The keywords set in your campaign are used to identify competitors and find their citation source. The citations they have that your business does not are your opportunities.
Choose keywords that best reflect your industry, categories you would use in Google My Business, or keywords you know your clients would search to find you. For example - Plumber, Accountant, Criminal Lawyer, and so on.
!Tip! Once you've reviewed your opportunities, update your campaign, remove old keywords, and add new keywords to get fresh opportunities.
Citation Progress Chart Type
Once your campaign has 2+ months of citation tracking data, you can change the data chart to present your total citation sources to Weekly or Monthly.
Weekly Monitoring
Get weekly updates to your campaigns - we will rerun your campaign every week and update your Citation Sources and scan for new Opportunities based on your targeted keywords. If you do not want this data to be updated every week, simply Disable the feature by editing your campaign.
Management features to keep track of your work:
If you have someone else on your team doing the citation building work, you can tag the opportunities as “useless” or “to do” and leave notes. Notes can also be useful for comments like, “this site has a $300/year fee to get listed”.
Status Tags - Allows you to mark your search results as:
To Do
Submitted
Got It
Useless
If the site is not relevant to your business:
Tag as “Useless”, so that is is greyed out in your list
If the site is relevant to your business:
Mark the status as “To Do”, so you remember to come back to it later
If you prefer to work as you go, create your citation on the site, and then mark as “Submitted”, so you it’s know done. You can come back and Add as a Citation once your URL is live.
Or “Got It”(depending on if the website automatically approves new submissions).
Notes
Do you have a specific reminder you want to make for yourself about the website? Maybe you want to mark the date you submitted the citation or that you need to update your categories once approved, whatever it is you can add a quick note for future reference. When you go back you can hover over your note to see what you previously wrote.
Exporting Reports
Every campaign you create, and any search you make in the Local Citation Finder can be exported to an Excel CSV or PDF file.
FROM YOUR CAMPAIGNS
1. In the “Campaigns” tab
2. Click on the specific Campaign name you'd like data for
3. Export your data from My Citations, Opportunities, or Comparison. You can choose to include all URLs for the CSV option as well
FROM YOUR SEARCH RESULTS
Keyword Searches
1. Go to “Searches”
2. Click on the specific Keyword search you would like to export
3. Choose which data you would like to export - Citation Sources, Top Businesses, Comparison Chart
4. Click the Export button
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CUSTOMER SUPPORT
We’re here to help and truly care about your experience and satisfaction with our platform.
Visit our Help Center to dive deeper into FAQ’s and How-to Articles.
Have more questions? Email our support team:
USA 1 (855) 406-6050
CAN 1 (877) 336-3505