You are aware of the importance of having a strong online presence in your business to entice customers and increase sales.
It’s crucial to make sure your business is visible on search engines because every day there are billions of searches conducted.
Building local citations is one of the best ways to increase your company’s visibility and drive more website traffic.
By doing this, you’ll increase your chances of appearing in local search results and drawing in more business traffic. And more sales increase as a result–it’s that easy.
Benefits of creating local citations to increase visibility, attract more attention, and increase sales
We’ll go over the benefits of local citations for small businesses and offer five easy ways to do them quickly and effectively…
By the end, you’ll understand how local citations can help your company as well as how to get them in front of more potential customers on the first page of results.
What are local citations?
Local citations are online mentions of your business that include your name, address, phone number, and other pertinent information, such as business hours and customer reviews.
Directory listings, social media platforms, review websites, blogs, and news articles are some of the sources that can be found.
Small businesses must include local citations because they can significantly improve local SEO.
Local citations are used by search engines like Google and Bing to verify the accuracy of your business information and assess your company’s relevance and authority in relation to the local community.
Your company will likely show up at the top of local search results the more citations it has, which in turn helps to increase website traffic.
There are three main categories for local citations:
- Local listings
- Data aggregators
- Industry-specific/niche websites
Local listings include Yelp, Yellow Pages, and Google Business Profile as well as directories and websites that specialize in a particular geographic area.
Your business information is shared with a network of other websites and directories through data aggregator networks like Neustar Localeze and Data Axle for a fee. This is painless because BrightLocal offers a service that submits to five major data aggregator networks.
Finally, industry-specific or niche websites are websites that publish listings that are directly relevant to businesses in a particular industry, like Avvo for lawyers or Zillow for real estate agents.
Why is local citation building important?
For some reason, businesses are so crucial to creating local citations.
Helps with SEO
Citations are a crucial component of local SEO because they let search engines know that your business is legitimate and well-known in your area.
For instance, anyone could claim to have done lawn care for a specific city for several years without having any proof.
When someone searches for their lawn care needs on the internet for their needs, Google is persuaded to include citations in the form of listings and reviews.
Trust and credibility are bolstered by consistent and reliable information about your business collected from a variety of sources, increasing your search engine visibility and ranking.
Small businesses must ensure they have accurate and consistent citations if they want to appear in local search results and draw in more customers. The effort is worthwhile.
Build trust with prospective customers
Accurate and reliable citations can also help establish your company as an authority in your field, increase customer trust, and strengthen your standing with potential clients.
People respect reviews just as much as they respect personal recommendations. You can influence potential customers to try your business by monitoring your review sites and encouraging existing customers to leave their feedback there.
Increase visibility for your business
Building local citations can also improve your SEO and increase your company’s visibility online, as well as allowing your business to appear on more websites and in more locations.
For instance, you can draw customers to your business ‘local citations on directory listings by creating local citations on those websites, apps, and maps to find new businesses. Similar to how you can build local citations on community news websites to get to know more users who are looking for new businesses there.
You can increase your chances of getting found by your potential customers in more places online by identifying the appropriate local citations for your business.
Types of local SEO citations
Structured and unstructured citations fall under the two main categories for local citations.
Both types of citations can improve your local search rankings, but they have different formats and locations when they appear online.
Structured citations
Structured citations are found on websites like local directories and review websites in a particular format. Your company name, address, phone number, and website URL are included in the forms. Because of their names, addresses, and phone numbers, these citations are frequently referred to as NAP citations.
Google My Business, Yelp, and Yellow Pages are just a few examples of structured citations.
Structured citations help you maintain your business information in a consistent format, which in turn helps you raise your local search rankings. Additionally, they also help link building by providing valuable backlinks, which is a crucial local SEO ranking indicator.
However, they can take a lot of time to create and might require payment for a premium listing on some directories.
Unstructured citations
Unstructured citations, on the other hand, are business mentions that don’t follow a certain format and can be found on websites like blogs, news articles, and social media platforms.
Unstructured citations include blog posts, news articles, and mentions of your business on social media platforms like Twitter or Instagram.
Unstructured citations can help you improve your local search rankings because they are more flexible than structured citations.
However, some of your company information might not always be included in them, and they might be more challenging to implement, monitor, and track.
Additionally, there is a chance that an incomplete citation will confuse potential customers who are attempting to contact you.
In the following section, we’ll look at practical suggestions for creating local citations that can increase your online visibility and draw in more customers for your company.
5 local citation building tips
Use this advice to create and improve your company’s local citations.
Claim and optimize your Google Business Profile
To improve your chances of appearing in local search results, claiming and optimizing your Google Business Listing is an essential first step. Your Google Business listing appears prominently in Google search results and provides valuable information about your business, such as address, phone number, hours of operation, and customer reviews store.
To claim your Google Business Profile, go to the Google Business Website page and follow the steps to verify your business.
Now that you’ve claimed your listing, it’s important to optimize it by providing accurate and detailed information about your business.
Here are a few of them. Tips to optimize your Google listing:
- Choose relevant categories. Choose the most relevant categories for your business to help Google understand what your business is about.
- Provide accurate information. Make sure your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) are consistent across all online directories and websites.
- Use high-quality photos. Upload high-quality photos of your business to showcase your services and products.
- Create an engaging description of your business. Your business description should be concise, informative, and include relevant and main keywords.
- Encourage customer reviews. Positive customer reviews can improve your local search rankings, so it’s important to encourage customers to leave reviews on your Google listing.
By claiming and optimizing your Google My Business listing, you can improve your visibility in local searches, attract more customers to your business, and significantly improve your online reputation.
Use local directories and niche sites
As previously mentioned, adding your small business to local directories and niche websites is a wise move to increase your online visibility and increase your online visibility.
Local citations are crucial to the search engine algorithms that determine which businesses to display to users when they search online for goods or services. By listing your business in these directories, you increase the likelihood that potential customers will find your business there.
Use these well-known local directories and niche websites to create local citations:
- Yelp
- Yellow Pages
- Angi, formerly Angie’s List,
- TripAdvisor
Your business information, including your business name, address, phone number, website URL, and operating hours, should be the most important thing when listing your business in these directories. It should be accurate, up-to-date, and consistent.
Be sure to update your phone number wherever you go in addition to all of your citations if you change it later. Consistency is essential to avoiding confusion for both your customers and search engines.
Google might decide to not display you altogether to prevent users from having a bad experience if it discovers several ways to find you.
There may be industry-specific directories that are tailored to your business’s specific niche or geographic area in addition to the well-known directories listed.
These websites may have a wider audience, which makes them particularly useful for small businesses with a specialized product or service. For instance, businesses in the healthcare industry would like to list on websites like HealthGrades, Vitals, and others.
A quick online search should reveal a few suggestions for websites to use to improve your local citations. To assist with this, you can use listings management tools.
Utilize data aggregators
Data aggregators are websites that collect and send business data to various directories and search engines on your behalf.
This centralizes business data, making it simpler for search engines to display accurate information about your company, which will increase your online visibility and customer acquisition.
The most well-known data aggregators for local businesses to use for local SEO are:
- Data Axle
- Neustar Localeze
- Foursquare
- Factual
Take note that there are numerous other data aggregators available. Some companies may charge you for a listing, but others offer free listings. It’s crucial to research each option and select one that best fits your needs and business objectives.
Create Social Media Profiles For Your Business
That said, the social media profiles of your business are also local citations. Just head to the social media sites and create a profile by submitting accurate information like phone number, address, email, etc.
Monitor and update your local citations
It won’t suffice to go through your citations and call it a day. Once your citations are complete, it is crucial to keep an eye on and update them regularly.
Consistent or inaccurate citations can harm your local search rankings as well as lead to a poor user experience.
Use a citation tracking tool to help you keep your citations accurate.
There are many tools available, including Whitespark, Moz Local, and BrightLocal, that can help you keep track of your citations across various directories and websites and quickly fix errors. Use the LocaliQ Business Listings Grader to check where updates are needed and how your listings appear online.