Who it is for
Reviews, citations and links are three different jobs
Reviews live on your Google Business Profile. Citations are your name, address and phone number repeated on directories. Links are other websites pointing at yours. Mixing them up wastes a month. Easily done, though.
Start with the first two. They are free and fast. A link then adds weight on top, which is why our salon timeline puts links in week three, not week one.
Plenty of offers blur the line, selling you directory submissions as if they were editorial placements. Our teardown of a typical $99 package shows the pattern, and how to spot it in five minutes.