How to get Local Citations & Directory Listings
Getting Local Citations is an important part of any local SEO campaign, most people doing SEO will set up analytics and search console and then look at citations you have, If for any reason you have not already got yourself on your local directories your SEO expert is likely to arrange to get this done for you. If you use an agency there is likely to be a process in place and there will be someone who will get your website listed on local directories, niche specific directories and anything else they can find that is relevant. This can be a time-consuming task, at times you also need to verify your listing too and you may also get calls offering you premium listings on these directories. The choice is yours if you want to get a premium listing in most cases I wouldn't bother as directories are very often rammed full of your competitors and not many people search directories when looking for your products or services, so a FREE listing is enough for SEO purposes.
Common Mistakes Made When Getting Citations
Many people when getting citations copy and paste their business description into all the different directories that they wish to get listed on, please note that this isn't going to help you in any way, yes it will allow you to get your listings done quicker, but the main purpose of you doing this is to ensure that your listings do get crawled and indexed by the search engines so that they, in turn, benefit your website. If they are full of duplicate content then your listing isn't likely to get crawled or indexed and it would be a pointless exercise so bear this in mind if you are doing the Local Citations by yourself, make the listings as unique as you possibly can.
Paid Local Citations Service
If you manage a number of websites and cant be bothered doing all of this grunt work yourself, there is also an alternative option called www.citationsbuilder.com a service from a chap called Robert Kirk who is based in Scotland. The service is low cost and they do provide a quick turnaround and more importantly the ensure that your business descriptions are spun enough to be unique which helps get your directory listing indexed, they do also submit each directory listing to their indexing tool so that the chances of your citations being indexed are pretty high. This is a service I have used personally and recommended to many others who all have a very high rate of citations being indexed.
Prices for Local Citations
The price of these citations are low cost, there are 3 packages currently available which you can see below and they also can provide you with a custom package if you want something unique to your business. 
You can see all of the packages available, they all get done in around 5 working days and this service does allow you to avoid doing this type of work manually so if you are interested in getting local citations then get in touch with www.citationsbuilder.com
Free Directory Listings you can get yourself
- Google Places
- Yell
- Thompson Local
- Free Index
- Yelp
- Scoot
- Hotfrog
- City Listings
- Business Magnet
- Brownbook
- UK Small Business Directory
- Cylex UK
- Applegate
- 192.com
- B2B Index
There are many other FREE business directory listings out there, you don't need hundreds try and make sure you get some generic ones mixed in with some niche specific ones and include local ones in your area too, this will give you a nice unique list of citations that will kick off your SEO campaign.