If you are running a business, then you understand the importance of getting online visibility. There is no doubt that having a website is not enough to get noticed by customers these days. Nowadays, there are tons of businesses competing for the same keywords and it becomes difficult for them to rank higher in organic searches. But if you want your business to be on top of the search engine results page (SERP) as well as on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter, then it’s important that you build up your local citations.
What are local citations?
Citations are a way for you to show that your business is listed on a local directory. Citations help you rank higher in local search results.
Local directories include Yelp, TripAdvisor and Google My Business.
Where do I find local citations?
To find local citations for your business, you need to know how the internet works. Specifically, you need to know where people are looking for information about businesses in their area. The short answer is: Google My Business (GMB) and Yelp. These two platforms cover over 75% of local searches in the US and Canada respectively. Yelp is a popular website where people review businesses and share recommendations with one another.
What are the different types of citations?
Citations are the way you can tell Google, “Hey, this company that has a page on your search engine is real and it’s in my city!” There are several types of citations, but the most important one is NAP Consistency.
NAP Consistency is what we call it when all of your citations have the same information (name, address and phone number). When you see a business with consistent NAP listings across the web — whether it’s Yelp or another site — it means that person or company is likely trustworthy and legitimate.
Encourage Good Reviews
One of the best ways to get customers to leave reviews is through positive experiences. If you’re in the business of providing a service, then make your customers happy by providing great customer service and excellent products or services.
Ask for reviews: You can encourage your customers to leave reviews by asking them directly. Just be sure not to ask too often — one or two times per year is enough.
Offer discounts: Another way to encourage reviews is by offering discounts based on the number of stars their review receives (i.e., 5-star reviewers receive 4% off next order). This works especially well if you use an eCommerce platform like BigCommerce or Shopify where people don’t have access to search engines from outside sites like Google or Bing; however, if someone finds a bad review online and wants help filing a dispute with PayPal (which happens frequently), it won’t show up in their history at all!
NAP Consistency
Next, you need to make sure that your NAP is consistent across all of your local citations. This means that if you have the same phone number listed on multiple sites and directories, it will show up as the same phone number in all of them.
If this doesn’t happen, a potential customer searching for your business could be directed to a different location than they were expecting based solely on which directory or site they clicked on first. If that happens too many times, those customers may give up on trying to find your business at all and simply go elsewhere!
How many citations do I need?
You’ve probably heard of the term “citation” before, but you might not know what it means. A citation is a reference to your business that includes your address, phone number and website URL. The more citations you have, the better off you are as far as SEO goes. But how many do you need?
It depends on your industry and how competitive it is—but generally speaking, 20 or so should be enough to get started with local SEO strategy in place. Be sure to include this information on all of your websites (including social media) so that people can find out more about what makes your business unique and special!
Benefits of local citations on Businesses
Local citations on your business help in getting more customers and leads, as well as building brand awareness.
Local Citations are important for SEO because they help in local search results, which is a new way of ranking businesses.
In addition to that, local citations help in building brand awareness.
Why are citation important for SEO?
Citations are a valuable part of your online reputation, and they help you get more traffic to your business. Citations build trust and authority in search engines, which helps them rank higher in organic searches.
Improved SEO: Citations allow search engines like Google to understand what businesses are nearby, so that when someone searches for something like [plumber near me], the results will include info about your business as well as other local businesses.
Trust Building: Google uses citations for ranking websites, but also for verifying their legitimacy—this is why it’s important to make sure that all of the places where you have been listed are accurate and up-to-date. If there is an error with one of these listings (or if they’re missing entirely), Google can flag it as suspicious behavior on your part—and this could hurt how highly ranked you appear in search results.
This is how you can build up your Local Citations
This is how you can build up your Local Citations
There are many places where you can get citations for your business. Some of these are free and some require a small fee. Here’s a list of sites where you can get local citations:
Google My Business (Google Maps)
Bing Places for Business (Bing Maps)
Facebook Place Page (Facebook)
Yelp Profile (Yelp)
You should also consider getting a listing in the following directories:
Yellow Pages Online – https://www.yellowpagesonline-usa.com/
White Pages Online – https://www.whitepagesonline-usa.com/
SuperPages Online – https://www.superpagesonline-usa.com/
Conclusion
If local citations are important for your business, you should start getting them now. It is much easier than you might think. You can start by finding out which websites have the most influence in your local area and then use their contact forms to submit the information they need. And that’s all there really is too it!
