I've been reading that citations is what you should do in local seo but don't know wether the citations work for actul websites or if it's just for GMB listing?

In local search... EMD is alive and kicking.. if you can in LOCAL search only I would suggest this highly. What I tend to find is an EMD that is redirected to a more cautious Domain name.

For local you want to do citations Yelp, Yext, YP, local directories, Chamber of commerce you name it... Some of the stuff you read people here talk about not doing such as directories you will actually get a positive effect in Local search.

The difference between a "Citation" and a backlink is pretty simple for the most part Citations will be the business name, the address and the phone number that is listed.. no linking. A backlink as it appears you already know.. would be a link. A site such as YP will actually give you a link as well but it will be no-follow. There are however true local directory sites that may give you the text based citation as well as a follow link.

Hope that Helps!

I've got websites with locations in their domain name to out rank big boys in generic terms, likewise I've got my bum kicked by regional domains for generic terms. There is more to it, but I really recommend if you can, go for an exact match.

Put that term at the start of your homepage title and the first h1 in the page, then get good backlinks with that anchor text and you're on your way.

It's not 100%, but it's a good start. Keep building those links, try and get that Twitter handle etc, try and get articles into newspapers in your area, even offering an article a week. Offer clients a little something to link to you / follow you. If you are a dentist put graphic images of bad teeth on your site to gain links ( link bait ), have a blog section for this or create a blog at wordpresss dot com for that purpose - it's free. Remember to link to your site, other platforms such as Tumblr, Blogger can work to get traffic but they're Nofollow links these days.

Create a list of sites you can get links from and keep posting, if your site is Joomla or Wordpress create an account and ask questions with a link in your signature, that's where EMD can also be handy as you cannot use anchor text.

Hope that's useful.

Exact match domains will rank faster for instance like you said dentisttampa it will rank faster but a branded website name like GentleDental or something along those lines in the end will end up having a reach outside just the city name in the domain name as Google will not just stick you in Tampa if that makes sense. I typically still recommend getting a domain with keywords if it's available but really depends on what you are trying to accomplish long term because big corporations don't use exact match and lately they have been getting better results.

Thanks for your help guys, i really appreciate your help.

As far as citations goes, will it help the page i am about to create if the page is a landing page, which means the business got its own page and i am creating a separate page for them calling in dentisttampa.xxx ? as you described above citations are posts with the address etc, will it help the landingpage i am building or will it help their actual page/google+ page?

Yes you would do a floridawebsite.com/tampa or whatever and as savidge4 said it's important to setup GMB if possible.

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Hi,,,,

Local SEO is a lot different from your average SEO campaign, and the local search results are changing more rapidly than any other.
Thank you,,,

Happy working

Local SEO is basically for the local business. It allows the local business to get noticed by the local searchers when they are searching for related products/services within a certain proximity or area.
Knowing the definition will not help you in anyway. You can only succeed in local SEO once you are updated with every aspect of it. There are some checklists of Local SEO that has been set for 2017 and beyond that. So, you should be aware of it. I have come across one more interesting angle of local SEO in Techmagnate blog regarding understanding the consumer behavior. This will help the advertisers to understand how consumer psychology works in case of local searches, so they will be able to design better local ads.You can also refer to that.

Hi
To get rank you should keep your NAP clear and in the footer of your landing pages. If you list your business in all local quality site then you must use that address in all site to keep all things clear and it will help a lot to rank your business. Hope for the best...
Thanks