Citations not indexed

[AndySimpson]

@Josh Gill that is fascinating. Thanks for sharing. I'm going to repeat the experiment on some of our clients.

Ditto, this has been a brilliant thread to date, thank you all for sharing. I think I'll be doing my own testing / experiment and will share findings accordingly.

 

[JaraMoser]

We actively do this and have seen it make considerable improvements for new companies/rebrands. Existing businesses that haven't changed names or locations it doesn't have nearly the same level of impact.

 

[Justin Mosebach]

Now whether it will help or not, in the end, I am not sure. I am still tracking that.

If it did, it may be a fun idea for a simple tool to check the index for the top 40 citations and if you have them but they aren't indexed it could make an HTML page for you to add to your site to get them in the index..

Thoughts? Ideas? Worth a blog post or not?

Thanks!

Definitely worth a blog post!!! And the tool seems like an awesome idea!

 

[Justin Mosebach]

Another thing to try would be to add the directory listing URLs into "sameAs" Schema in JSON-LD: https://whitespark.ca/blog/the-json-ld-markup-guide-to-local-business-schema/

 

[Bryan Bloom]

Wow, thanks for doing this!

 

[Josh Gill]

So here is another update on the rankings improvements. Things are getting better!

Here were the rankings on the last screenshot I posted on 11/22 again for reference:

Now here is the latest results from today, 11/27:

All the red is gone and there is a glimmer of green!

I have to agree with @JaraMoser that this seems to be a great way to improve a listing, especially if the NAP has changed over time.

Now that I see a light at the end of the tunnel with my lame rankings, I think it is time to attack the high level of virtual office spam again in this area and see if I can keep things moving up.

I will be posting these finds in an in-depth blog post and will see what it would take to create a tool to pull in top 20-40 citations into HTML to be embedded on a page more quickly for those that may want to do this regularly.

What should I call it? How about the "Quick & Dirty Citation Indexing Tool"

I think Brighlocal should just add it as a feature to get more citation customers now that citations took a hit on this years ranking factors.

Thanks to all for your thoughts and ideas.

 

[Justin Mosebach]

I think Brighlocal should just add it as a feature to get more citation customers now that citations took a hit on this years ranking factors.

Totally agree! @Myles Anderson see above

Creating a tool to do it automatically could be problematic if it's pulling in a duplicate/outdated listing. But, assuming those duplicates are removed, it would only be a problem if the tool automatically updated the list of links.

 

[MattPelkey]

Great thread!

@Josh Gill, I'm assuming you haven't done anything else to your site in the meantime that would have an impact on these rankings, and these are just a result of Google indexing the citations from the page you made?

Really neat idea & experiment. I definitely want to give this a try!

 

[Josh Gill]

@MattPelkey You are correct. I can't control all the variables in this test for sure, but there is nothing I am aware of that would be adjusting the rankings except the indexed citations.

 

[Josh Gill]

Thanks to all who have been providing feedback along the way with this thread.

I wrapped all of this test up into a how to guide.

I wanted to create a tool to simplify this process but there are some nice tools already out there that the guide pulls together. I hope it is helpful:

The Local SEO Citation Indexing Guide

Please let me know what you think.

 

[bcherkezov]

Great guide and tools to use. I did it and got my citations indexed for 24 hours or something really quickly. But checking them today got some deindexed.

 

[Justin Mosebach]

@Josh Gill This was so well done! Thanks for doing the testing and sharing with the community!

 

[Josh Gill]

Great guide and tools to use. I did it and got my citations indexed for 24 hours or something really quickly. But checking them today got some deindexed.

I had that happen to some of mine too but they weren't from very high quality citation sites anyways. The good ones have stuck.

 

[Digitaldar]

I wanted to provide an update on this test of getting citations indexed in case anyone else will find it useful. It has been about 15 days or so since I created a page on my site with links to all my major citations that were NOT indexed in Google.

{...deleted...}
Some of the sites that haven't been indexed are:

• OpenDI
• ZipLocalOnline
• SaleSpider
• YellowBot
• Dexknows
• JustDial
• YellowPageCity (Shocker..)
• LocalStack

Thoughts? Ideas? Worth a blog post or not?

Thanks!

YES! While I love the BrightLocal tool, their annual list of top citations is bogus - so many of those sites cannot be submitted to. You've taken it up a notch: you can submit to these sites AND your page CAN be indexed!

Now we just need a Canadian version of this... oh my... maybe that's me

 

[Josh Gill]

@Digitaldar Yes, that would be you

 

[Josh Gill]

Just an update. I still haven't done anything else to my own site besides get these citations indexed and the rankings just keep going up. Here is a shot as of today.

I have started this for my clients and will report back on if I experience similar results with them.

 

[Justin Mosebach]

So crazy! Thanks for the update!

 

[chicoelnino]

I wanted to provide an update on this test of getting citations indexed in case anyone else will find it useful. It has been about 15 days or so since I created a page on my site with links to all my major citations that were NOT indexed in Google.

After a couple days about 8 new ones had been added to the index.

Now, after 2-3 weeks a total of 21 of the 32 citations on that page of links has now been indexed. So roughly 3/4 of them.

Some of the sites that haven't been indexed are:

• OpenDI
• ZipLocalOnline
• SaleSpider
• YellowBot
• Dexknows
• JustDial
• YellowPageCity (Shocker..)
• LocalStack

Some citations good, some not so important. But I think the experiment showed that it can work well.

Now whether it will help or not, in the end, I am not sure. I am still tracking that.

If it did, it may be a fun idea for a simple tool to check the index for the top 40 citations and if you have them but they aren't indexed it could make an HTML page for you to add to your site to get them in the index..

Thoughts? Ideas? Worth a blog post or not?

Thanks!

Hey Josh. Thanks for all this info.

I notice that the page you submitted for indexing - https://inboundauthority.com/places-to-view-us-on-the-web/

Is it necessary to put the links into anchor text like you've done, or can you just put the naked link like: Inbound Authority in West Palm Beach, 1106 Florida Ave - Web Design in West Palm Beach - Opendi West Palm Beach

I'm a little confused over which is the correct way, or if it even matters?

Thanks.

 

[Josh Gill]

Hey Josh. Thanks for all this info.

I notice that the page you submitted for indexing - https://inboundauthority.com/places-to-view-us-on-the-web/

Is it necessary to put the links into anchor text like you've done, or can you just put the naked link like: Inbound Authority in West Palm Beach, 1106 Florida Ave - Web Design in West Palm Beach - Opendi West Palm Beach

I'm a little confused over which is the correct way, or if it even matters?

Thanks.

@chicoelnino I tried it with a naked URL first when starting the experiment and I can't say for sure if it made a difference but it did seem to get the citations indexed faster with an anchor text link when I adjusted all of them to have anchor text. It probably would have worked even better if I made the page full of links have some content and put the links in context. Or as some have suggested, make this the "Review Us" page and have the links in context on the page so it has some real user value as well. Hope that helps.

 

[chicoelnino]

@chicoelnino I tried it with a naked URL first when starting the experiment and I can't say for sure if it made a difference but it did seem to get the citations indexed faster with an anchor text link when I adjusted all of them to have anchor text. It probably would have worked even better if I made the page full of links have some content and put the links in context. Or as some have suggested, make this the "Review Us" page and have the links in context on the page so it has some real user value as well. Hope that helps.

That all makes sense, mate. Thanks very much again. I'll see how I get on with testing both when I eventually get around to trying this method.