LLM Best Practices

Local citations and reviews

3 min read

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Overview

Google says local results rank on relevance, distance, and prominence. Citations and reviews are the off-site work behind prominence: the business name, address, and phone number appearing consistently across the web, and customers leaving reviews on the profile. This page covers that work once a business has decided local SEO applies and has claimed its Google Business Profile; the profile setup, LocalBusiness schema, and per-city pages live in local-seo.

Maintain NAP consistency across every citation

Name, Address, Phone (NAP) appearing consistently across the web helps engines and customers trust that listings describe the same business. It is hygiene, not the single strongest signal; Google names relevance, distance, and prominence.

  • One canonical NAP. Pick a phone number format, address format, and business name spelling; use them everywhere.
  • Consistent formatting: 123 Main St, Suite 4 versus 123 Main Street #4 is minor, but conflicting phone numbers or old addresses cause real confusion. Standardize anyway so audits are easy.
  • Audit with Moz Local, BrightLocal, or Whitespark. Fix mismatches; do not abandon old listings.
  • The website’s footer and contact page must match the Google Business Profile exactly. Drift here cascades to other citations.
  • The NAP in the site’s LocalBusiness JSON-LD must match too. See structured-data.

Build citations on the directories that matter

Citations are mentions of the business NAP on third-party sites. The signal is consistency, not volume.

  • Tier 1 (always): Google Business Profile, Apple Maps, Bing Places, Yelp, Facebook.
  • Tier 2 (vertical): Yellowpages, BBB, industry-specific directories (Avvo for lawyers, Houzz for contractors, OpenTable for restaurants).
  • Tier 3 (local): Chamber of Commerce, local newspapers, regional directories.
  • Skip paid citation services that publish to hundreds of random directories. Most of those sites are scraped and low quality.

The tiers are a practitioner prioritization, not a Google list. Start at Tier 1 and stop adding directories once the ones customers in the vertical actually use are covered.

Earn reviews on Google first, everywhere else second

Reviews drive both ranking and click-through rate in the Map Pack.

  • Google reviews feed prominence. Google says more reviews and positive ratings can improve local ranking; any star or count target is a practitioner goal, not a Google threshold.
  • Ask every customer at the moment of value delivery. A direct-link QR code beats a manual search.
  • Yelp and Facebook reviews matter for vertical visibility; do not prioritize them over Google.

Respond to reviews and never manufacture them

Reply to every review promptly, positive or negative. Google recommends replying; the practical win is trust with the next customer reading the thread.

  • Answer negative reviews with facts and a next step, not an argument. The audience is future customers.
  • Never buy reviews, write them for customers, or offer incentives for them. Google’s policies prohibit fake engagement and can lead to removed reviews or profile restrictions.
  • Never gate reviews (asking only happy customers to post publicly while routing unhappy ones to a private form). Google’s review policies prohibit selective solicitation.
  • Flag reviews that violate policy through the profile’s reporting tools rather than responding in kind.

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