How to Build Citations and Brief a Developer
Claiming directory listings without creating a NAP contradiction, what to record, and a copy-and-send developer brief with an acceptance test.
Why citations carry so much weight
An answer engine recommending a business is making a claim on your behalf, and it prefers the claim to be corroborated somewhere other than your own site. A directory listing, a chamber-of-commerce entry, an industry association page, a review platform profile — each is a second independent statement that you exist, in the same category, in the same place, with the same phone number. One consistent listing is weak evidence. Several independent, identical ones are strong. Several that disagree with each other are actively harmful, because the disagreement is the signal a model notices.
The rule that decides whether it works
Name, address, phone, website, category — identical everywhere, character for character. This is the whole discipline. "Suite 4" in one place and "Ste 4" in another is a mismatch. A listing still carrying the number you had three years ago is a mismatch. Before building anything new, audit what already exists and fix the wrong ones first; adding correct listings alongside incorrect ones leaves the contradiction in place and spends the credit you were trying to earn.
If you are a service-area business
Do not invent a street address to fill the field. If customers do not come to you, the correct pattern is to list your service area and hide the address where a platform allows it — most directories and Google Business Profile support this directly. Where an address is mandatory and hiding is not offered, use the address you legitimately operate from and be consistent about it rather than varying it between listings. What must never happen is a different invented address on each site, which is a common and expensive mistake.
Working through a list without making it worse
Do the highest-leverage sources first, because they are the ones most likely to be read: Google Business Profile, Apple Maps, Bing Places, your industry's main directories, your local chamber or tourism authority, and the review platforms your customers actually use. Then the general business directories. Enter the details by hand from a single source of truth — a copy of your own verified facts — rather than from memory each time, because typing it fresh from memory is exactly how the variants get created. Expect each listing to take a few minutes and expect some to require verification by postcard or phone.
What to keep when you have finished
Record the listing URL, the date you claimed it, and any login you used to manage it. A citation built and then forgotten is a citation that will go stale at your next change of address or phone number, and finding the login six months later is much harder than recording it now. This is also the record that lets you prove the work was done, and that lets anyone helping you pick it up without starting again.
Send this to your developer
Copy the numbered list below, replace the bracketed parts, and send it as one message. It is written to be self-contained so nobody has to ask what you mean. 1. Create a static text file named llms.txt in the site's web root so it answers at [https://yourdomain.com/llms.txt]. Serve it with Content-Type text/plain, return a 200 status, and do not redirect it to another domain. Contents are attached. 2. Do not add llms.txt to robots.txt as disallowed, and do not put it behind authentication. 3. Add the attached JSON-LD block to the head of [the homepage]. If the theme or an SEO plugin already emits a LocalBusiness or Organization node, replace that node's values rather than adding a second block, so there is only ever one description of the business. 4. Confirm the published page has exactly one H1 and that subheadings use h2/h3 elements rather than styled paragraphs. 5. Add an internal link from [a relevant service page] to the new page, using descriptive anchor text. 6. Acceptance test: [https://yourdomain.com/llms.txt] renders as plain text in a browser with no download prompt; Rich Results Test and the Schema Markup Validator both parse the page with no errors; the new page loads in a private window; and page source shows one h1.
What a good hand-off contains
Four things, and leaving any one out is why hand-offs stall. The exact deliverable, attached rather than described. The exact location — which page, which path, which folder. Any acceptance test that lets them check their own work, so it does not need a second round trip. And a note on what must not change, such as replacing an existing schema node rather than adding a duplicate. If you can hand over something a competent developer can finish without asking a single question, it tends to get done the same week.
When it is genuinely faster to let us do it
Self-publishing works best for content and for anything your CMS makes easy. It works worst where the change has to survive a build, touches a template, or depends on a developer's availability. If a task card has been in progress for a couple of weeks because it is waiting on someone else, that is the signal to hand it back to us rather than keep it open — the card stays on your board either way, and a stalled card is only a stalled score. Reply to the task and say you would rather we handle it.
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