This recent online marketing technique is the ultimate solution to almost 90% of local business owners who are seeking ways to brand their businesses in the local market and enhance local SEO results without violating any search engine protocols.
Simply put, local citations refer to online mentions of your business name alone or with your address and phone number on local directories, classifieds, blogs, email newsletters, or websites.
These mentions may or may not have any links. If performed strategically and diligently, local citations can add immense value to any business.
Why are local citations powerful?
Several reports and surveys show that local citations play a major role in determining the local SEO ranking of any online site, accounting for a 25% boost in the ranking of most websites.
Types of Local Citations
There are two types of local references – structured and unstructured. Structured local mentions are those that are added to business listing sites, such as local classifieds, review sites, and yellow pages.
Unstructured local references are those which are added to blogs, websites, and government sites. Both structured and unstructured local citations play an essential role in improving your local business rankings in the search engines.
The more times your business gets mentioned, the higher it will rank. You can analyze the patterns with a local citation analysis tool to help you create powerful mentions for optimal results.
1. Know the difference between links and citations
One common mistakes most business owners do is confuse local citations with links. These two are different – citations are basically intended for branding, while links are for conversions.
Citations do not have to carry any link, although links may be added to them, and they are used primarily for increasing online prominence. On the other hand, links are particularly intended for cross-linking other websites with yours.
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2. Make sure all information are correct and use a consistent format
It is important that your SEO citations contain accurate information about your company and that they appear in the same format in all the different business listing sites.
Seeing consistency on your local citations in popular sites will give your target audience an impression of professionalism and committed approach.
3. Avoid duplicate listings
Focus on building identical citations for your business across different listing sites. Remove any duplicate listings of your business on other sites. Having more than one citation showing different addresses, phone numbers, or names can cause uncertainty and affect the credibility of your business.
Perform regular follow ups with the listing sites and update your listing with accurate information or delete duplicate listings to ensure better user experience.
4. Choose the right categories
The key to success for any business is in selecting relevant citations that will lead target customers searching for your products or services straight to your business.
When you incorrectly tag your services or products under the wrong categories, your rankings get hurt. Instead of being visible to people who are searching for your products or services, your target audience only sees your competition.
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