Backlinking Citations: Is this a "Thing"?

[Mike Vannington]

Just sitting here at my desk atm, thinking, pondering, theorizing and now "spitballing". I wonder if there would be any value to backlinking citations. At this point in my guesswork, I think the question boils down to, whether or not citations have a "set value" to Google, no matter what their backlink profile might look like, or if that value can change based on what other sites are linking to them. After that, the obvious question is whether or not this might be "risky", and whether or not it might be considered a greyhat or blackhat technique. But mostly I'd like to keep it in the theoretical if possible.

 

[Rich Owings]

Check out this thread: Citations not indexed - Local Search Forum

 

[Yan Gilbert]

I do think it is important. Some businesses I have worked on have a low % of citations indexed. The value of each one might be low, so it is difficult to justify the time to spend trying to get it indexed however.

Spamming a cheap link service to the citation might work to get it indexed, depending on the quality of that service. I don't think that it would harm the site since it is a secondary link. Blackhatters probably have robust know more about tiered backlink strategies however.

 

[Mike Vannington]

Thanks the first thing I learned is that at some citations aren't even indexed, which is new news to me. So it seems getting them at least past that threshold is important. I have to read more...

 

[jvaquino]

Try creating a unique business description in every citation. We are having a good % of indexed citation when doing it.

 

[mattheffner]

Yes it's definitely a thing. Chaz Edwards Web20 Ranker has some interesting info on doing this. Haven't tried it myself.

 

[CraigJMount]

@mattheffner

Ha—We were just talking about this.

Linking from Citations w/ CID's | Local Search

Suuup guys, Anyone here familiar with linking directly to a Google Maps CID from a citation as a Google Maps strategy? Link to article here—Test Results - Using the GMB CID URL in Your Citations - Web 2.0 Ranker I'm told this works. But I'm moreso interested in why, is this because the brand...

www.localsearchforum.com

tl;dr—The study is inconclusive. Also, consider that Google may just value the mention on the citation site as opposed to the backlink itself.

 

[mattheffner]

Thanks @CraigJMount very interesting. Love to see Darren and you guys test it out more. Let me know if I can assist at all.

I'm also thinking of eventually trying some more experimental/advanced stuff life this for a State Farm insurance client where I have very limited ability to do any on-page optimization.

 

[Tim Colling]

I don't know about that, but not long ago I did have a plugin created that creates a page on clients' websites with links to the citations that exist for them according to BrightLocal. Slowly but surely, the links from those citation sites are showing up in GSC, and I just hope that they have some value.