Backlinks vs. Citations for Plumbers: A Simple Guide

When it comes to showing up in Google, most home service businesses want the same thing: to be seen by people nearby who are ready to hire. That’s where local SEO comes in. At Orchard, we look at local SEO through three lenses—location, prominence, and relevance.

• Location is about making sure Google knows exactly where your business is.
• Prominence is how well-known and trustworthy your business seems online.
• Relevance is whether you match what someone is searching for.

Two tools that influence these signals are citations and backlinks. They sound similar, but they do different things—and knowing when to use each can help you grow faster.

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Start with Citations: Lay the Foundation

If you’re early in your SEO journey, citations are where you want to start. A citation is just a mention of your business’s name, address, and phone number (often called “NAP” for short) on another sites. Most commonly its on directories like Yelp, Angi, or BBB.

Here’s why citations matter early:

• They help confirm your location to Google by showing consistent business info across the web.
• They build basic prominence by getting your name listed in trusted places.
• They make it easier to show up in the Map Pack - that box with 3 local listings that gets the most clicks on the page.

They’re also relatively easy to get. You can submit them manually or use tools to push your info out to dozens of sites at once. Once you’ve covered the major directories and ensured your info is accurate and consistent, you’ve checked off one of the key early steps of local SEO.


Here's a list of Directories we focus on at Orchard:
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Pro Tip: If you're looking for a quick way of getting accurate citations there are a few inexpensive services that will sort them out for you. We've had the best expeience with brightlocal.com

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Then Build Backlinks: Expand Beyond Your Core

Once your citations are squared away and your local rankings are stable, it’s time to go deeper. That’s where backlinks come in. A backlink is a clickable link from another website that points to yours. These links are a much bigger deal in terms of building long-term prominence and expanding your visibility outside your immediate area.

Backlinks help you when:

• You want to rank beyond your main location.
• You’re targeting more competitive keywords, new services or expanded service areas.
• You’re creating blogs or service pages that need help getting to page 1.

They also show Google that others trust your site enough to link to it . This builds your authority, which makes it easier to rank for everything else down the line.

Backlinks are harder to earn, but they pay off long-term. You’ll usually need to create useful content, partner with other businesses, or get featured in articles to pick them up.

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Citations vs. Backlinks: A Side-by-Side Look

To make the difference clearer, here’s how citations and backlinks compare:

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What to Do with This Info

If you’re just getting started, here’s how to approach it:

1. Start with citations. Make sure your business is listed consistently across the main directories. This builds a strong location signal and gets you into the map pack faster.
2. Optimize your Google Business Profile. Add services, photos, and keywords to build relevance and prominence.
3. Clean up your website. Make sure your name, address, and phone number are consistent and that your pages clearly show what you do and where you do it.
4. Then start thinking about backlinks. Once your local visibility is solid, start building content or relationships that help earn links. This is how you grow beyond your core market.

Final Thought

Citations and backlinks both matter but not at the same time, and not in the same way. Think of citations as your local foundation and backlinks as your engine for expansion. Start local. Grow outward. And always make sure you’re giving Google the clearest possible picture of where you are, what you do, and why you’re worth showing first.

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