# Free Local Citation Checklist: One NAP Record, Four Tiers > A free local citation checklist: write one canonical NAP record, then work four citation tiers with a tracking sheet. Locksmith example included. Source: https://localseoaudittool.co/free-local-citation-checklist/ Site: LocalSEOAuditTool Updated: 7 September 2026 --- A local citation is any page on the web that shows your business name, address and phone number together. Your Google Business Profile is one. So is your Yelp page, your chamber of commerce listing, and the dealer locator on a lock manufacturer's website. This checklist walks the whole job in working order: write one canonical NAP record, set up a tracking sheet, then claim and correct listings in four tiers, starting with the ones customers actually see. This is the doing article, not the theory article. For how much citations really count toward rankings, and what inconsistent listings cost you, read [citations and NAP consistency](/blog/local-citations-nap-consistency/) first. The short version: citations carry roughly 6 percent of the ranking weight in the Map Pack, the block of three businesses above the map. So the work is worth doing once and doing correctly, and rarely worth a recurring monthly bill. We will follow a fictional locksmith shop, Beacon Lock and Key in Springfield, from blank spreadsheet to finished checklist. ## Step one: write your canonical NAP record Before you touch a single directory, decide exactly how every field reads. Not roughly. Exactly. Every listing you create or fix from here on copies from this record, character for character wherever the platform allows it. Here is Beacon Lock and Key's record: - **Business name:** Beacon Lock and Key - **Address:** 218 W Elm St, Ste 4, Springfield, IL 62704 - **Phone:** (217) 555-0148 - **Website:** beaconlockandkey.com - **Primary category:** Locksmith - **Hours:** Monday through Saturday, 8 am to 6 pm, plus the emergency line - **Short description:** two or three plain sentences, written once, reused everywhere Three of these decisions deserve extra care. **The name is what the sign says.** No LLC or Inc unless customers actually know you that way, and never a keyword bolt-on like Beacon Lock and Key 24 Hour Emergency Locksmith Springfield. [Stuffed names break Google's rules](https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177), and they guarantee that half your citations will never match the other half. **Pick one address format and stop thinking about it.** Google can tell that Street and St mean the same thing, so a small format difference will not sink you. Standardize anyway, because one agreed format lets your tracking sheet say yes or no on every listing without a judgment call. **The phone number is your real local line.** One number, a local area code, answered by a person. ### The call tracking trap Locksmiths live and die by phone calls, so many run call tracking numbers to see which ads pay. Use them on ads and landing pages all you want. Never put one in a directory listing. Campaigns end, tracking numbers get reassigned, and the directory keeps showing the dead number for years. Public listings always get the canonical phone number, no exceptions. ## Build the tracking sheet before the first submission Open a spreadsheet and create these columns: - Site name - URL of your live listing - Status: not found, claimed, submitted, live, needs fix - NAP matches the canonical record: yes or no - Login email used - Date last checked - Notes Paste the canonical NAP record at the top of the sheet so it stays in view. If you have more than one location, give each location its own tab. Each location has its own citations. Two habits make the sheet work. First, use one dedicated email address, something like listings@beaconlockandkey.com, for every directory account you create. Most citation chaos starts with logins scattered across the inboxes of people who left the company. Second, record the date every time you check a listing. You will forget otherwise, and next quarter's pass depends on knowing what you already verified. ## Work the tiers in order Do not try to be everywhere at once. Work down through four tiers and finish each before starting the next. The top tier takes an afternoon and covers most of the value. The bottom tier never really ends, and that is fine. Tier | What it covers | Examples | Pace | Tier 1 | Search engines and maps services | Google Business Profile, Apple Business Connect, Bing Places | All of them this week | Tier 2 | Major national directories | Yelp, Facebook, Better Business Bureau, Nextdoor | Over the next two weeks | Tier 3 | Industry sources for your trade | Trade associations, home services marketplaces | As you identify them | Tier 4 | Local sources | Chamber of commerce, city directories, local partners | A few per month, ongoing | ## Tier 1: search engines and maps services These are the listings customers see when they search, and the ones other platforms tend to copy. Get all three done before anything else. ### Google Business Profile If Beacon has no profile yet, [create the Google Business Profile](/blog/how-to-create-google-business-profile/) and [get it verified](/blog/how-to-verify-google-business-profile/). If one already exists, [claim it rather than starting fresh](https://support.google.com/business/answer/2911778). Then copy every field from the canonical record, and give the primary category real thought, because nothing else on the profile decides as much on its own. For Beacon that is Locksmith, not some vaguer service category. Whatever you leave blank on the profile is [what a GMB audit tool flags](https://gmbaudit.co/). ### Apple Business Connect Apple Business Connect is Apple's free listing manager, and it feeds Apple Maps and Siri. An iPhone owner standing outside a locked car asks Siri for a locksmith, and those results come from Apple's data, not Google's. Claim your place card, paste in the canonical record, and you are done. ### Bing Places Bing Places matters less but costs minutes, because it can import your Google Business Profile data directly. Import, check every field against your record, confirm. ## Tier 2: the major national directories Before creating anything here, find what already exists. Put your phone number in quotes into Google and search it. Do the same with any old number or previous address. Every result is either a listing to claim or a mistake to fix, and claiming an existing listing always beats creating a duplicate. Then work through the household names. For Beacon, the list looks like this: - **Yelp,** which still shows up high for service searches in many cities, whatever you think of the platform - **Facebook,** where the About section of your business page is a citation, so fill in the full record, not just the name - **Better Business Bureau,** a page customers check before they let a stranger open their front door - **Nextdoor,** because locksmith recommendations on neighborhood threads never stop, and a claimed business page is what those threads link to - **Foursquare and the other long running general directories,** quick to claim and cheap to maintain This tier also includes the data aggregators. A small number of data companies license business records to hundreds of smaller sites, apps and in-car navigation systems. Correct your record at the source and the downstream copies follow over the next few months, which beats chasing every tiny site one by one. Directory names and owners change over time, and aggregators merge and rebrand. Search each name before you rely on any list, including this one. ## Tier 3: industry sources for your trade Every trade has its own directories, and a listing on one tells search engines what your business is, not just where it is. For a locksmith, the obvious entry is the Associated Locksmiths of America member directory, which doubles as a credibility marker customers recognize. Home services marketplaces like Angi and Thumbtack also count. A complete profile there is a citation even if you never buy a single lead. Finding the rest takes no guesswork. Search your money keyword, locksmith Springfield, and read the first page of results. Any directory ranking there gets a row on your sheet, because if Google sends searchers to that page, your presence on it matters. Then think about certifications. The lock and safe brands Beacon is certified to install run dealer locator pages on their own sites, and those listings are citations most competitors never think to request. Ask every manufacturer you carry. ## Tier 4: local sources This tier is the slowest to build and the hardest for a competitor to copy in bulk. Chamber of commerce membership pages. The city's business directory. A local news feature about the shop. The sponsor page of the youth soccer team Beacon backs, which is a citation with a genuinely local address behind it. Neighborhood association vendor lists. The regional security hardware distributor's find an installer page. None of these arrive in batches. Add a few rows to the sheet each month, and treat every partnership, sponsorship and supplier relationship as a chance to ask for a listing with your canonical record on it. ## Your own website is a citation too Your site should state the canonical record more clearly than any directory does. Put the NAP in the footer exactly as written in your record, give the contact page the full details, and if you have several locations, give each one its own page. This is not busywork. A former Googler stated publicly at the Whitespark Local Search Summit that Google crawls contact and location pages to extract business details and associate them with your profile. A mismatch between your own site and your own profile is a self-inflicted wound. While you are on the site, add LocalBusiness structured data so the details are machine readable. Our free [local business schema generator](/tools/local-business-schema-generator/) builds the markup from your record in a minute. ## Fix the wrong before adding the new At every tier, correcting a bad listing beats creating a good one. Beacon's Ste 4 used to house a vacuum repair shop, and two directories still think so. An old phone number from years back lives on in a dozen places. Those quoted searches from tier 2 surface most of this, and a scan with our free [local citation checker](/tools/local-citation-checker/) catches more. The rules for fixing are simple. Edit the existing listing instead of creating a fresh one, because duplicates split your reviews and confuse the maps services. If the duplicate is on Google itself, follow our guide to [merging duplicate profiles](/blog/merge-duplicate-google-business-profiles/). If you have moved, [update the address on Google Maps](/blog/change-business-address-google-maps/) first, then work the sheet top to bottom with the new record. And close or mark permanently closed any listing for a location that no longer operates. A customer driving to a dead address blames you, not the directory. ## What to skip, and what not to pay for Skip the bulk packages that promise submissions to hundreds of directories. Those sites exist only to sell listings, no customer has ever used them to find a locksmith, and a blast of machine submitted records is how new duplicates and format errors get born. Skip any directory that charges for a basic listing unless it ranks for your keyword or demonstrably sends customers. And skip monthly citation maintenance retainers when nothing about your business has changed. The honest math backs this up. At a share of pack weighting that rounds to 6 percent, the difference between a clean core set and 500 junk listings is not a difference Google rewards. The real cost of a bad citation is operational. A customer locked out at 2 am calls the old number a directory still shows, gets nothing, and calls your competitor. ## Maintenance and measurement Put a quarterly pass on the calendar. 30 minutes, straight down the sheet, spot checking the listings that matter and updating the date column. Run a full pass immediately after any move, phone change, rebrand, or permanent change to hours. Those are the events that turn a clean citation profile into a mess. Measure the work honestly. Note where you rank on your main keywords before the cleanup, then check again a few weeks after. Expect movement to be modest and slow, because citations support rankings rather than drive them. Our guide to [checking Google Maps rankings](/blog/how-to-check-google-maps-rankings/) shows how to do that properly from more than one point in town, and [local SEO ranking factors](/blog/local-seo-ranking-factors/) explains which levers deserve the rest of your effort. ## Frequently asked questions ### I run a mobile locksmith service from home. Does this checklist still apply? Yes, with one change. Hide your home address on Google Business Profile and set service areas instead, and on directories that require an address, use the same hidden-or-listed choice consistently. Keep the city and phone identical everywhere, and never invent a storefront address to look bigger. Fake offices get profiles suspended. ### Is a toll free number okay for citations? Make the local number the primary on every listing. A local area code supports the connection between your business and your city, which is the whole point of a citation. Add the toll free line as a secondary number where a platform allows it. ### A directory shows the wrong details and I cannot log in. Now what? Look for a suggest an edit option first, then a support contact. If neither works, check whether the site takes its data from an aggregator, because fixing the upstream record usually corrects it on the next refresh. Log the attempt in your notes column and move on, rather than burning hours on one minor site. ### Should I delete listings on directories I do not like? No. Most directories will not fully remove a business anyway, and an unclaimed listing with wrong details is worse than a claimed one you control. Claim it, correct it to the canonical record, and let it sit. ### Do I repeat all of this for a second location? Yes. A second location gets its own tab in the sheet, its own Google Business Profile, its own rows in every tier, and ideally its own local phone line. Shared accounts are fine, but the records themselves never mix, because a citation for the wrong branch is just another inconsistency. ## Where LocalSEOAuditTool fits LocalSEOAuditTool covers the checking side of this checklist. The free [local citation checker](/tools/local-citation-checker/) shows where your business is listed and where the details disagree. The [NAP consistency checker](/tools/nap-consistency-checker/) spot checks listings against your canonical record, and the [local rank tracker](/tools/local-rank-tracker/) watches whether the map actually moves after your cleanup. One limit: it will not submit or edit listings for you, so every fix on your sheet still happens with your own logins and your own hands. If you want the scanning and tracking handled while you do the fixing, the [3 day trial](https://app.gbppromote.com/register) needs no card.