Citations have been a key factor of local SEO for some years now, and while they aren’t as effective as they once were, they’re still an important part of your local SEO strategy.
What Are Citations?
Citations are an online reference to a company that includes a name, address, and phone number (NAP) and often, as a bonus, a link to your site as well.
Most often these come in the form of online business directories, the descendants of the old physical directories like the Yellow Pages.
Why Are Citations Important?
The first reason is for the traffic you get from them. Often these online directories rank well in search engines, or they might be a person’s first port of call when they’re looking for a business.
In this case you want to be in front of your potential customers in the place where they’re looking.
Google My Business and Bing Places (two highly important citations for storage companies) are shown prominently for ‘storage in [location]’ searches on Google and Bing respectively. So if you aren’t on these directories you’re missing out on large amounts of traffic from searches on these search engines.
The second reason citations are important, is because search engines use these as an indication of how much they can trust that the information on your site is accurate.
Being in trusted online directories is a sign that you’re likely a legitimate business. If your information is consistent on all these directories it’s a sign the information is correct, and search engines can feel confident in displaying that information to searchers.
Which Citations Are Important For Storage Companies?
This can generally be broken down into three categories:
- General directories / sites like Facebook, Yell.com etc. – These are important because they are the more trustworthy citations, and citations that will bring in traffic.
- Location specific directories – These are citations which are only relevant to your local area, whether that’s a state, city, county etc. – These often come in the form of local newspapers with a directory section, or websites offering helpful information to residents.
- Storage specific directories – These are exactly what they sound like, and give search engines more confidence in categorising your site as a storage facility. These storage specific directories often rank well on storage related searches, so can also drive traffic through to your site.
Below we have listed some of the most important citations for storage companies, split between the US and UK, and also between general citation sites and storage specific ones.
Bear in mind that some of these directories will be paid. Obviously everyone will have a different budget and requirements, so we’ll leave it to you to determine whether it’s worth paying for a listing on each site.
We haven’t listed location specific directories, because these will only be relevant to facilities in those locations. For these directories you will need to perform your own research to locate the best places to get links from.
Key General Citation Sites
US
yellowpages.com
yelp.com
bbb.org
cylex.us.com
brownbook.net
facebook.com
maps.apple.com
bing.com
google.com
yellowpages.com
local.com
foursquare.com
UK
facebook.com
maps.apple.com
bing.com
google.com
yell.com
yelp.co.uk
192.com
factual.com
cylex-uk.co.uk
brownbook.net
foursquare.com
Storage Specific Directories
US
storagefront.com
selfstorage.com
usstoragesearch.com
sparefoot.com
storage.com
yourstoragefinder.com
onlineselfstoragedirectory.com
UK
storage.co.uk
whatstorage.co.uk
removalstoragecompany.co.uk
comparethestorage.com
