Are citations the way to go even if there is no Google Places listing

[Gavo]

If there are no Google Places / Local listing for a keyword search term, for example... "web design vancouver", do building citations still help in enabling websites to move up the organic rankings?

[Asjad]

Yup It will But Do Add your Website Link whole building these listings. Adding NAP Only will not help much.

Thanks

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey,

Not sure if you aware of this but local search results do show up if you search this term: ‘web design in vancouver’...but hey thats not what you asked so lets get on with the answer:

Creating citations simply to improve your website ranking will work, but your on-page optimisation needs to be at its best. My first tip would be to fill every citation with as much detail as possible. Make sure you add photos and videos and have a unique description for each citation site, but remember to include your keywords in the description. The Name, Address & Phone Number (NAP) will need to be kept consistent to get the full benefit of creating these citations.

For on-page optimization, I can recommend a few small changes that can go a long way! My first step of advice would be to add a schema markup of your address into the footer of the website. A schema markup allows google to recognise the address as a formatted address, instead of viewing it as a piece of text. Another useful tip is to make sure you are getting the full benefit from your page titles. I tend to structure page titles like this:

target keyword | Business name

so for a web design company in vancouver called Funky web design, I would do something along the lines of this:

Web Design In Vancouver | Funky Web Design

Hope this helps!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Gavo,

While what Marcus points out is true (you can prompt local results for web design companies by adding 'in' to your query), it's important to understand that Google does not view web design companies as being truly local, hence their lack of inclusion in the results for the most common service + city or city + service queries. To my understanding, Google's thinking on this is that most web design (and SEO) companies operate virtually (don't meet with clients face-to-face).

So, you can add your web design company to Google's local index, and you can build citations for it, but it's likely that your overall organic rankings will hinge more on other forms of marketing in which you engage. Think content development, earning links, social outreach, etc.