A local citation is any mention of a business online that has the business name, address, and telephone number (often mentioned as NAP).
But First, what’s a local Citation Exactly and Why Should I Care?
Most citations typically include a link to the business’ website or additional information. Common citation sources include data aggregators (i.e. Factual, Localeze, and Infogroup), directory sites, social media, review sites such as Yelp, plus Google My Business and Bing Places, etc. It’s important to notice that a mention of the business on its own website doesn’t count as a citation.
Local citations are a valuable component of local SEO optimization no matter whether or not they provide the business with a direct link. The advantages of citations go way beyond getting backlinks.
When it comes to marketing a local business online, local citations play a crucial role in improving SEO and boosting visibility in local search results. This is often very true in mobile search results. Most likely, this isn’t anything you haven’t read about before, but today this is even more significant.
As search engine algorithms evolve and get smarter, we have to get smarter as well and more focused on where we build citations for local businesses. We’ll discuss this point more as we get further down within the post.
Why Citations Are Important for Local Businesses
Search engines use citations (among many other SEO factors) to measure a business’s online reputation. Therefore the more quality citations a business has online, the higher the business’ placement will be in local search engine result pages (also known as SERPs).
The prevailing mindset over the past decade has been that having more citations is always better, but this is often not valid. In fact, low-quality citations, particularly people who link to your website, can negatively impact Google’s trust in the business. Instead of trying to enhance a business’s online reputation through sheer volume, OiO Digital focuses on identifying and targeting specific high-quality directories. We only submit local businesses to directories that meet the highest of qualifications, which we determine based on 23 different metrics, including domain authority (DA).
Another characteristic of valuable sources is that they distribute their data across other directories and networks, thus acting as a data amplifier for local business citations. At OiO Digital, we call this our Directory Engine Network.
Recommended Citation Sources for Local Businesses
Here’s a sample of citation sources that pass all our criteria and are submitted to our Local Directory Engine solution:
How to Get Cited
It’s pretty easy to get cited, especially on business directory sites. Many are free and will let the local business simply answer a couple of questions, verify they have permission, and upload a logo. As mentioned earlier, this doesn’t mean the business should be listed on every site possible. The process of optimizing a business’s listing on these sites requires time, attention, and understanding.
For example, ensuring the business citation is 100% accurate is essential. And once a business is listed, ensuring the listing remains accurate and maintains a consistent NAP can be tedious. Oftentimes, businesses are listed on directories without even being conscious of it. Having duplicate citations confuses customers, impacts trust among search engines, like Google, and hurts the business more than it helps. Bad data is a huge issue for local businesses. Here’s more about how bad data happens and how to repair it.
There are several companies that offer local listing management services like we do at OiO Digital. When choosing a local listing management company to partner with, it’s important to closely assess their business practices, the methods they use to submit listings, and the places to which they submit. Yext, for instance, submits to some low-quality directories. They also use a method that can create duplicate listings and override existing optimized listings with ones that aren’t optimized. When the business cancels Yext’s services, a number of the new listings disappear and existing ones revert back to the bad data that was there before purchasing Yext. Don’t take our word for it – check out this study conducted by Whitespark for yourself!
By now, you can see there’s a lot more to local citations than simply getting listed!
Are you ready to take action? I recommend you begin with generating an online visibility report. this will show you how many listings a business already has, as well as highlighting bad data issues, and recommending a few next steps.
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