Citations are basically mentions of your website or business on another website. This could be on a forum, directory or social media site. Citations are seen by search engines as people talking about your website or business. This is different from people linking to you they are just mentioning you.
Citations apparently help your rankings in the local search listings on search engines so they are very important.
MOZ is also a great place to get a citation and is also great to get involved in discussions about SEO topics and show off your skills. Here is my profile page on MOZ – http://moz.com/community/users/429280
Forums are also a great way to get your name out there whether that is a simple mention of your company or to get involved with other forum members helping them out with your expertise. The UK business forums is a great place to get your business name know – here is Powerstar advertising their business on there.
I really like Pearl Trees which allows you to organise all your favourite places on the internet in one place, here is an example. This is Suitsmen on Pearltrees , Mini Beans and Lojix.
Issuu is also one of my favourites and here is Bradfield Storage on there.
find Lojix on Artfire. as well as Travel Empire, PowerstarTX on artfire and Bradfields on Artfire
Directories are a good way of getting your brand out there and here is an example of Powerstar on Skaffe.
Wikidot allows you to create your own mini website on a subdomain. You need to know a little about web design but it isn’t difficult as they provide user guides and support. Here is Lojix on Wikidot.
Mix allows you to link to all your favourites articles on the internet and have them in separate collections.
Feedly allow you to share news stories from around the web and sort them into boards.
Spotlight is another great site where you can list any business related to casting and music – here is Select Recording Studios on Spotlight
Follow Us is a great site that allows you to keep all your social links in one place – see Schoolmates on there, MB on there, also Lojix on followus, MB on Followus, Matthew Stephens on Followus, Suitsmen on Followus, Powerstartx on Followus, Eagle Platforms on Followus , Trade Furniture and JW Simpkin on Followus and Lojix on Followus
Business directories are another great way to get more online exposure, here are a few examples; Powerstar, Acrobat Marketing and PowerstarTX.
All my favs is a great place to save all your favourite places on the internet. Or if you have lots of social media accounts you can have them here all in one place just like these ones. Also Dzone is a good one.
Folkd is also a great place to save all your favourite sites – here is an example – this is Powerstar on Folkd, this is Trade Furniture on Folkd and this is Mini Beans on Folkd.
Another good one I have found recently is Four Square and this is a profile we did for Select Recording Studios who are based in London.
another profile site I like is Steepster where you can rate your favourite tea! Here is Damp2dry on Steepster.
QBN is another really good site. This is Lojix on there.
I also like to use Webwiki and here are profiles for Shrewdd Marketing , Wakefield Acoustics and Lojix. WordPress is another one and here is a good example.
Below is an example of one that I use and I particular like this site as you get more than one link:
http://www.webstatsdomain.com/domains/www.lojix.co.uk/
Linkedin is a great website for getting your business out there. You can connect with people or groups but you can also create what are called show case pages. This allow you to show off some of your products or services. This is an example of one we have done for our own website: Lojix responsive website design services.
Folkd is a great place to bookmark your links. This is my profile on there.
Other social media sites that are great to get your name out there and help with backlinks to your products or services include Slideshare and Pinterest. Pinterest is one of my favourites as it is easy to use and you can create boards such as this online marketing board I setup to showcase some of our blog articles. This is suitsmen on Wakelet which is a great social media site to use for getting your name out there.
500px is another great one and here are a few examples: Matthew Stephens and PowerstarTX
Video is becoming more and more popular and other sites are taking on Youtube for traffic. Vimeo is quite popular and very easy to use.
I hope you get the idea now. As well as citations and local business directory listings another good way of improving your local listings on Google is to encourage people to review your products and services.