http://www.localseoaustralia.com/local-citation-finder-software/

They refuse to listen to me and remove the sons of guns!!!!!!

1. I’ve read that consistency in formatting is important (i.e. 555-555-5555, or (555) 555-5555) but I honestly find it hard to believe that Google wouldn’t be able to handle that sort of inconsistency. That being said, I always try to post citations as 555-555-5555 (though certain sites force it one way or another – nothing you can do about that). Consistency in addresses may be slightly more important, simply because more variation is possible to begin with. Obviously, the most important thing is that the numbers and addresses themselves are the same whenever you post them.

2. I’m a big fan of linking to your citation page. A big listing site might have hundreds or even thousands of businesses in your niche industry and in your specific location, so a link to your specific profile page could help separate it from the chaff and get it indexed over the others. It’s also not a bad general business practice to link to your reviews – builds credibility.

Hope this helped!

1. Since consistency is important (and makes sense logically algo – wise) what is the (potentially negative) effect of the inherent inconsistency of the submission interfaces on different citation sites? ie address form is presented in a different order, phone number does not have brackets around area code, etc. This has puzzled me as to the level of consistency required and how much varied listings degrade local ranking?

2.How much value is there in using a “linking to your citation page” strategy in order to get them indexed for local? While this is SOP in regular search, I’m just trying it for local… any feedback on whether it helps get those citation links that have been built to be “valued” by Google Places?

I’ve put you on my blog roll and will follow with interest! Thanks

Thanks for mentioning the Local Citation Finder on your blog. I totally hear you about showing the citations for the top 200, and we’re working on that. We’re actually working on a long list of improvements to the tool that we suspect will blow you away. I’ll be emailing all registered users once we have the improved version launched.

If you have any other suggestions for improvement, I’d love to hear them.

Darren

You’re right it’s not a perfect tool, but not for the reason you said. There’s actually a problem in Local Search with call tracking numbers – the search engines penalize a companies that use call tracking with multiple numbers for not having a consistent citation record. It’s likely this will change in a year or two, as there’s no good reason to penalize those companies, but for now, it’s unlikely a company like that will show up in the top 7 at all.

Here’s the problem, laid out: http://searchengineland.com/be-wary-of-call-tracking-numbers-in-local-search-26895

And here’s a possible solution that hasn’t been implemented yet: http://www.naturalsearchblog.com/archives/2009/09/28/canonical-phone-tag/

It is a nice trick but not fool-proof. Nowadays when it is so easy to get local VOIP numbers for every local market and variable numbers are used to integrate into different marketing campaigns as a way to measure and to analyze success, this will not work for a business with a sophisticated marketing campaign which can include hundreds (or more) of phone numbers.