Whitespark Skill — Citation Discovery and Building Campaigns

LocalSEOData’s citation_audit endpoint identifies where a business is listed and where NAP inconsistencies exist. BrightLocal manages ongoing citation monitoring and reputation tracking. Whitespark occupies a different niche: discovering citation opportunities you don’t know about and building citations at scale through their managed service layer.

The whitespark-tool skill connects Claude to Whitespark’s citation discovery and building capabilities. When the local-citations strategy skill needs to find new citation opportunities or plan a building campaign, dispatch routes to Whitespark.

What This Skill Does

The whitespark-tool skill enables Claude to run citation discovery scans (finding directories and platforms where a business should be listed but isn’t), analyze citation building opportunities by category and industry, track citation building campaign progress, and pull Whitespark’s local search audit data.

Prompt: "Find all citation opportunities for a personal injury law firm
in Chicago. Where should they be listed that they aren't?"

Skills fired: dispatch → local-citations + whitespark-tool
Data pulled: Citation discovery scan, industry-specific directories

Output:
Citation Opportunities — Personal Injury Law, Chicago

Found on 34 directories. Missing from 28 recommended directories.

High-priority missing (industry-specific, high authority):
  1. Avvo (lawyer directory, DR 78) — not listed
  2. FindLaw (legal directory, DR 82) — not listed
  3. Justia (legal directory, DR 80) — not listed
  4. Super Lawyers (DR 71) — not listed
  5. Martindale-Hubbell (DR 74) — not listed

Local directories missing:
  6. Chicago Bar Association directory
  7. Illinois Trial Lawyers Association
  8. Better Business Bureau - Chicago
  ...

General directories missing:
  15. Apple Maps — not claimed
  16. Bing Places — not claimed
  17. Foursquare — not listed
  ...

Estimated building time: 3-4 weeks for all 28 directories
Priority order: Legal-specific first (highest relevance signal),
then local, then general.

Citation Discovery vs Citation Audit

There’s an important distinction between what LocalSEOData’s citation_audit does and what Whitespark’s discovery does. Citation audit checks where you ARE listed and whether the NAP is correct. Citation discovery finds where you SHOULD be listed but aren’t. Both feed into the local-citations strategy skill, but they answer different questions.

The audit question is: “Are our existing citations accurate?” The discovery question is: “What citations are we missing?” A complete citation strategy needs both — fix what’s wrong, then build what’s missing.

Whitespark’s discovery is particularly strong for industry-specific directories. Every industry has niche directories that general tools don’t always surface. Legal has Avvo, FindLaw, Justia. Medical has Healthgrades, Zocdoc, Vitals. Home services has HomeAdvisor, Angi, Thumbtack. Whitespark’s database covers these niche directories comprehensively.

Building Campaigns and Progress Tracking

Beyond discovery, Whitespark offers citation building as a managed service. The skill tracks campaign progress — which citations have been submitted, which are live, which are pending. This is the execution layer that turns discovery into completed citations.

Prompt: "Check the status of our Whitespark citation building campaign
for [Business Name]. How many are live vs pending?"

Skills fired: dispatch → local-citations + whitespark-tool

Output:
Citation Building Campaign Status — [Business Name]

Total directories targeted: 28
  Live and verified: 18 (64%)
  Submitted, pending approval: 6 (21%)
  Not yet submitted: 4 (14%)

Recently completed:
  - Avvo: Live as of March 12
  - FindLaw: Live as of March 15
  - BBB Chicago: Live as of March 18

Pending (estimated completion):
  - Super Lawyers: 5-7 business days
  - Martindale-Hubbell: 7-10 business days
  ...

When to Use Whitespark vs LocalSEOData vs BrightLocal

LocalSEOData (citation_audit) answers: Where are we listed and is the NAP correct? Use for initial audits and ongoing accuracy checks.

Whitespark answers: Where should we be listed that we aren’t? Use for citation discovery and building new citations, especially industry-specific directories.

BrightLocal answers: How are our citations performing over time? Use for ongoing monitoring, reputation management, and citation health tracking across the portfolio.

The three tools serve different stages of citation management: LocalSEOData audits the current state, Whitespark discovers and builds what’s missing, BrightLocal monitors the ongoing health. Many practitioners use all three at different points in the client lifecycle.

Connecting Whitespark to LocalSEOSkills

  1. Whitespark account with API access
  2. API key from Whitespark dashboard
  3. In Claude Code: Settings then MCP Servers then Add Server
    • Name: Whitespark
    • URL: Your Whitespark MCP endpoint with API key
  4. Restart Claude Code
  5. Verify connection

Get Started

"Using Whitespark, run a citation discovery scan for [Business Name],
a [business type] in [city]. Find all directories where they should
be listed but aren't, organized by priority."

If you see a list of missing directories organized by industry and priority, the integration is working.

Learn More

To learn what this skill can do for your local SEO workflow, see the skill overview.