[DON WEDE]

DON WEDE

The follow is two correspondence I made with my VA the last two day. Shocking and down right criminal I feel. Please everyone’s thoughts are welcome.

I just got off the phone with Andre from YPC Media. They were trying to sell me a package to clean up inconsistencies in our citations. They fix and add citations to the top 200 citations that Google scans. He show me Heartland Funding Inc. There is allot of inconsistent data. In some we have the company listed as Heartland Funding, Heartland Funding Inc. and even my Name Don Wede. Some places we have the phone number as —– and others —– Some address are incorrect in that they have the P.O. Box rather than the street address. I was trying to write down some of the citations that we had missed, for example Yahoo, Topix, City Squares, but he was scrolling rather fast and could only write down a few. I know we can not get them all.

He said he could fix them for $4,000.00. I said I would pass. He then said since I am a new customer that he would do it for $2,000.00. I said no. Then he said why don’t I name a price. I said my VA would handle it, but thanked him for pointing these flaws out. I know it is allot to ask but I believe we need to go back and make sure that we are consistent with our citations. I know we cannot have every one of the 200, but the ones we do let’s make sure they are consistent. He also said that they put a list of keywords into the citations.

Thanks for all the great work and patience you showed this week. It is odd those Heartland Funding citations out there. I would not be surprised if yext.com created them just to try to drum up business. Do you think that you would be able next week go in and clean up those citations next week? How did Google get the 8——phone number listed? If it is something you can do you can do it slowly a little every day if you wish. That is your call if you even want to do it at all. Do you have any suggestions?
Have a great weekend.
Don

Next week when you get back to work I think we should proceed cautiously. I have a sneaky suspicion that these citations have been created erroneously. If you and I didn’t create them. Then someone has, and my guess is that the company contacted me is the one doing this. Let me do some investigation and you can do the same that these aberrant citations are even real. They’re on their website so we don’t know if they made them up just to show them to us. Seems like a scam to me. I will investigate with investor carrot and even Jackie see what they think. I think it may be a way to just use their service and them to make some money. Something seems wrong here you didn’t put them up I didn’t put them up so how’d it go up. I think they’re ghosts.

WHAT IN THE HELL IS GOING ON?

Don

[DON WEDE]

DON WEDE

Sorry I forgot to mention. My VA went back and checked all the citations he built. They were all fine and consistent. He never created any under Heartland Funding. These were about 90% of the errors that YPC showed to me.
Don

[Jackie Lange]

Jackie Lange

HI Don

two things

1. I deleted your phone number from this public forum. You should never post your phone number or email is a public forum

2. 99.9% of the people on this forum have no clue what a “citation” is. You might explain that first.

Yes, it is possible that someone could screw things up then ask you for money to fix it. That’s why I only recommend companies I trust and have personally worked with. Sometimes if you think you are saving money by using a different company, it can end up costing you even more to fix the problems they create.

[david brown]

david brown

you are correct Jackie…what is a citation? (in this context)

[DON WEDE]

DON WEDE

Jackie and David,
Sorry Jackie, I forgot about the phone numbers. The thing is I do not even know these people. I have not hired them or am even knowledgeable that they existed before they contacted me. They were not hired or have ever did any work for me. My big question is if they actually built false citations or did they just pretend to so I would bite on their services?

I do not know if I can do a good job at describing a citation so I will steal from the internet. LOL

Let’s first answer the question: “What is a local citation?”… A local citation is any mention of a local business out on the web, with or without a link. It can come in various forms:

Company Name, by itself.
Company name & phone number.
Company name, phone number, & address.
Company name, phone number, address, & link.
etc.
Even just the phone number by itself can be a local citation. Hat tip to Nyagoslav Zhekov. See his comment below.

A complete local citation should include the company name, address, and phone number. A citation that does not include all three of these is sometimes referred to as a partial citation.

Why Do Local Citations Matter?

Local Citations are a key factor in local search rankings. Citation related factors make up 25% of the top twenty factors in David Mihm’s Local Search Ranking Factors.

In a recent presentation at LocalU Advanced in Baltimore, David Mihm presented the following breakdown of local ranking factors. He added a disclaimer that this is based solely on his opinion, but as one of the most prominent thought leaders in Local SEO, we take his opinion seriously around here.

For more information on why citations are important for local search rankings, please see this excellent article on GetListed.org: Why Citations Are Important to Your Local Business Listings.