photo credit: damozeljane ☼
Citation Sources Canadians Can Use
Local Search in Canada isn’t nearly as developed as in the US, but we’re getting there at a fast pace. Due to economies scale, carrying out a good local seo campaign in Canada isn’t particulary challenging, but isn’t necessarily easy either. There’s a couple of good reasons for this, one being a complete and utter lack of Canadian specific local citation sources.
The Local Ranking Algorithm is generally centered around the regular on-page and off-page factors attributed to traditional or organic seo, in addition to an all important factor around local business citations. David Mihm provides a great explanation about why Citation is the New Link in Local SEO, and also provides a great resource in his BCS of Local Search Engine Optimization for our friends south of the border.
As local search becomes increasingly more social, user reviews and local business citations are becoming very important in securing top local ten-pack listings. Let’s look at some of the hand-picked citation sources I’ve researched that influence Canadian Local SEO on Google Maps.
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photo credit: nickel.media
Local Citation Sources for Canadian Hotels
TripAdvisor - TripAdvisor provides unbiased hotel reviews, photos and travel advice for hotels and vacations. It’s not only a great resource for travellers, but also a significant source of all of the reviews cited by Google Maps results for local search times such as ‘Toronto Hotels‘.
Virtual Tourist - Similar to TripAdvisor, Virtual Tourist hotel reviews pop up frequently on Google Canada Map results. Sign up, and leave an honest review of businesses you’ve dealt with.
Igougo – Igougo has vacation and travel reviews, and features third in line after TripAdvisor and Virtual Tourist on Google Map reviews for Hotels.
General Citation Sources
WCities – WCities has a North American base covering businesses of all kinds from restaurants, to night life establishments, and more. You can review businesses by navigating to your respective city and clicking on the appropriate business profile.
Toronto Life -Toronto Life isn’t a UCG site, but does count as a citation source in Google Local. The best way to get featured is for your establishment to offer something sensational, whether that be a unique dining experience, or world-class service.
Where.Ca -Like Toronto Life, Where.ca is not a user generated content network, but does figure prominently as a citation source.
Frommers.com -The perennial paper-back favourite Frommer’s guide is equally popular online, and covers everything a traveller needs to know about their destination, including hotels, attractions, restaurants and more. Leaving a review for an establishment is a matter of navigating to the appropriate business and adding to the mass of exisiting reviews.
Zip Local – Zip Local was recently featured on a popular Canadian TV network, Cable Pulse 24, and is ideal for hyperlocal UCG content. Want to find reviews for a trendy bar in the posh Yorkville neighbourhood of Toronto? Not a problem. From a small business standpoint, this is an ideal way to get cited as the neighbourhood go-to business for what you offer.
Yelp - Yelp was the original hybrid between Yellow Pages listings and UCG from what I can recall. While Yelp does have listings in the organic search results, they are a definite contender to be considered as a local citation source as well. Leaving reviews on Yelp is easy, and doesn’t even require a user login. That said, if you’re a small business owner, you can claim and modify your existing listings to include more information about your products or services.
Restaurant.ca – If you have a restaurant of any nature, you should have citations present on this site. Restaurant.ca covers all major Canadian cities and allows citations in the form of comments on each individual business listing.
Nota Bene: Don’t spam these listings or write nasty things about your competitors. While certain Local Search listings are taking positive or negative reviews into account, most star listings are present based on the basis of the number of reviews present for the business listings.
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http://www.citysearch.com is also a canadian citation source to consider!
[...] David Mihm’s “The BCS of Local Search Engine Optimization” and Dev Basu’s “The Canadian Guide to Local SEO Citations”, for Canadian specific citation [...]
[...] Experienced Local SEO’s no doubt already understand the tremendous importance of citations for ranking well in Local Search, but as far as I know, only one guide to Canadian citations has been published by Canadian Local SEO Dev Basu. [...]
A great compilation Dev….about the only “extra” ones we use would be links for LOCAL search only via the LBC, which would include Chamber of Commerce and BIA dbase inclusions….
Jim
[...] concept was initially started by our very own Toronto Local SEO expert, Dev Basu. David Mihm recently added to this list and I aim to contribute further and make the list of [...]
[...] Guide to Canadian Citations for Local Search | The Canadian Guide to Local SEO Citations | Local vs Traditional SEO: Why Citation Is the New Link | Local Search Ranking Factors | Google [...]
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[...] recommend: Visit my Canadian Guide to Local SEO Citations . For US based businesses, please submit [...]
[...] doing my Local SEO homework this evening (it never ends!) and came across Local Guru Dev Basu page The Canadian Guide to Local SEO Citations It's abit dated, but, because he's Canadian, I'd bet you'll find some jewels to help your Local [...]
Are there more “general” Canadian citation links? These seem to be more entertainment/travel related.
Hey Guido – I’m planning on releasing an updated guide in the next little while with more general citation sources. Stay tuned.
[...] practitioner who works out of the Toronto area, also updated the listings for Canadian citations right here…and they too were added to our own master list which we’ve updated here for all you DIY [...]
Great insight! Do you know of a Canadian service that offers to manually submit your local citations for you (in Canada)?
Hi Amy – There aren’t any data aggregators or syndicators in Canada like there are in the States so you have to rely on agencies or consultants to help you with this process. It’s something we handle regularly at Powered by Search (www.poweredbysearch.c0m)
Although this post is a couple of years old finding CAD relevant citations is still a challenge. That being said there have been a few major movements and improvements in this area.
In order of importance you really should be targeting the following:
YellowPages.ca
411.ca
Canpages.ca
ZipLocal.com
WebLocal.ca
Oddly enough Canpages bought ZipLocal and both were bought by Yellow Pages so its probably fair to say you should be seeing a concerted effort across all platforms but who knows.
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