Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Local SEO: Can you add citations too fast?
-
Should you spread adding citations out over several weeks or can you add them all at once?
-
Bob,
William and Chris have both provided great insight on this. Review velocity has certainly come up as a possible trigger for filters, but so far, citation velocity has not been investigated or pointed out as an issue by anyone I know in the Local SEO community.
Does this mean it couldn't become an issue in future? I wonder about this. In the 10 years I've been working on the web, I have watched the rise and fall of directory submissions as a powerful tactic in traditional SEO. I am not sure if velocity had anything to do with that, actually, or if it was simply the Google decided that these types of links were not a great signal of relevance.
Obviously, right now, directory-type listings are the core tactic of Local SEM, and it's hard for me to imagine that changing any time soon, though Google appears to be trusting social signals more and more as relevance indicators. But as to the specifics of velocity, your guess is as good as anyone's as to whether Google will, at some point, create a filter that relates to this. We'll all have to wait and see.
-
In my experience, no.
Whitespark says on their FAQ page, "We don't currently throttle our citation building because we know how Google merges data with their Places index in chunks. We have tested building hundreds of citations in one day vs spreading them out over time and have not found a difference. We don't believe citation velocity is currently something that Google is considering."
-
Hey Bob,
It's not something you hear much about and certainly not something I've considered in doing work for many local clients, but I think I hear what you're saying. Typically, I'd go to UBL.org, choose a package for the client, let the citations start flying, and be glad that it getting done as quickly as possible-- without even thinking about velocity.
I went over to David Mihm's 2012 local search ranking factors, and looked specifically for info on that and interestingly, that's not mentioned as a factor (which might be why I'd never given it a thought.)
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Does Autoplay video effect SEO?
I'm trying to find out if autoplay videos (muted) on the homepage effect seo in anyway? Currently our site ranks around position four on the first page, but we have noticed one competitor we monitor have long auto playing videos on their sites and were wondering if they are a good or bad factor? Any info you would like to share would be great. Thanks
Image & Video Optimization | | 5TW0 -
My wistia videos are not being index by Google. Does anyone know what can be happening?
I have the wistia site map on my robots.txt file and I also manually submit the site map to google. It shows that my videos were submitted successfully but they are not being indexed. Thanks
Image & Video Optimization | | bedbugsupply0 -
How can I get around creating multiple Gmail accounts with the same phone number?
You know how, when you setup a Gmail account, Google asks you for a phone number to verify the account? I've run into a problem where Google is not letting me create anymore accounts with the same phone number. I set up an account for every new client we take on so that we have complete control of the inbox for verification purposes. Is there a way to get around this verification issue? We tried an app called Burner Phone but found out Google won't call the number because it's not supported by any major providers (e.g. Verizon, AT&T, etc.). Any suggestions? Thanks for your help!
Image & Video Optimization | | copyjack0 -
Practice Name vs. Dr. Name in Local Search
I wanted to get some opinions on an interesting situation for local search. Many doctors and dentists are found in one of two ways online: Their name and title, e.g. Dr. James A. Smith, MD Their practice name, e.g Smith Plastic Surgery, P.C Often sites like Healthgrades are providing data on the doctor him or herself, and the information can be tough to switch out. At the same time, there's a tendancy on the Dr's part to want to be listed as their practice name. Their site is often set up that way. How are you handling this kind of setup? Have you found a way to reliably associate (and format) a practice and doctor's name in a listing, in such a way that doesn't violate Google's quality guidelines? I know the drill for handling a doctor within a hospital, but this is a slightly different situation...
Image & Video Optimization | | BedeFahey0 -
Does displaying a mobile number for business hurt local SEO?
Perhaps a silly question but could someone please clarify if displaying a mobile number in the main site or Google places etc would hurt local SEO? Is having a regional landline/fixed telephone number a ranking factor? EDIT: This is for a UK site, does anyone have experience of this is UK please?
Image & Video Optimization | | Clicksjim0 -
Local SEO: How to optimize for multiple cities on website
Hi, I couldn't find any reference to this, so if the answer is already here, I would appreciate a link to the answer. That said, my question is this: When a local business services a large geographic area, I wanted to know how to optimize for the multiple towns? I already have the main city in my title tags, but there are at least 40 areas that surround this town. Should I have a "Services Area" page, and place all the towns there, or should they all be in the footer? I saw this one guy - in the same niche who put all the towns in his meta keyword section - but I think that's incorrect, especially since Google doesn't look at that particular meta tag. Any help would be appreciated.
Image & Video Optimization | | jayestovall1 -
Best tools for checking competitors citations.
I am using whitespark and brightlocal to run citation checks for my clients. I was curious if there was a good tool to compare competitor citations + other local metrics easily without paying per report.
Image & Video Optimization | | waqid0 -
Dynamic image serving SEO
We often use images from a dynamic image server, to cater for image asset management, multiple sizes etc. Similar to Adobe's Scene7, although that came out after we chose our product. So widgets.com may have all its images with a URL like myimageserver.com?src=widgets/catalogue/productname.jpg;width=100;height=100;angle=90, instead of widgets.com/images/productname.jpg. A potential client wants to capitalise on traffic from Google image search. We could build an image sitemap, listing the images on each page. What should we place in the image:loc field? The code: myimageserver.com?src=widgets/catalogue/productname.jpg;width=100;height=100;angle=90 Apparently we have to verify the hosting site in Webmaster Tools, but I can't see where. I have a single Webmaster Tools account, where most of our sites are defined. Would I have to verify it for each site using the dynamic imaging program? Love to hear from anyone with solutions for getting images indexed when they are hosted at third-party dynamic imaging programs.
Image & Video Optimization | | ozgeekmum0