What are Local Citations And How They Benefit Local SEO
-
David
-
February 27th, 2018
Local citations refer to mentions of your business on the World Wide Web. This can be mentions involving the combination of your company details like name, address, mobile number, website address, and zip or postal code of your company/business. Citations are very important local SEO that can lead to an increased visibility on local search engine result pages (SERP).
Local citations do not necessarily need to feature all your business details, in fact, they are available in several forms (of mentions) which include:
- Company name.
- Company name and website.
- Company name and phone number.
- Company name, phone number, and website.
- Company name, phone number, and address.
- Company name, phone number, address, and website and so on.
David Mihm coined the term citation in 2008 when he published the post Local Vs Traditional SEO: Why Citation Is the New Link.
For a citation to be regarded as a complete local citation, it should include NAP – Name of company, the address of the company, and phone number of the company. If a citation doesn't include all three of these, it can be called a ‘partial citation.'
Occasionally, NAPW or UNAP citations are often discussed. In these citations, the U (in UNAP) refers to the URL, while the W (in NAPW) refers to the Website. You also get additional value from the website link as it helps search engines better connect a citation to your business.
What to know about citations & links
A citation even without a link back to your website is valuable as the key value it brings is your business mention. Search engine giant – Google credits businesses with detailed NAP info when their business info is mentioned on the web. The reward for increased mentions of your business on the web is higher search engines rank especially your local rankings.
It’s important to note that most links from business directories are no followed links, so it doesn't really make a difference to your ranking. However, it doesn't mean that links are of no value. In fact, citations which have links are more valuable than those without links. The crux of the matter is that a citation would help your local search effort with or without links.
Let’s go into details about the types of citations and why they play an important role in local search domination
Citation types
There are two main types or categories of citations, the structured and the unstructured citations.
Structured Citations
A structured citation is the detailed business information (NAP) of your business/company on business listing directories. Most citation sites are business listing directories where your business can get a ‘mention' by submitting business information. A few examples of structured citation sites are:
- Yellowpages
- Yelp
- Superpages
- Facebook
- MapQuest
Unstructured Citations
These are citations of your business NAP on other websites which are not exactly business listing directories. The most prominent unstructured citations are Magazine/newspaper websites, blogs, wikis etc.
The importance of citation in local search rankings
As said earlier, citations play a key role in local search rankings. Let’s discuss some reasons why citations are an important element for local search rankings.
Prominence: It’s becoming a noticeable fact that the top search engines utilize citations for local search rankings, in fact, the recent local search ranking factors survey carried out by Moz indicate that citation related factors make up about 13.31% of all the top 50 factors for local search ranking. It is believed that the more online visibility (locations) of your business NAP, the more salient Google sees it be. What this means is that if your business is mentioned way more than the competition, it would be regarded as a popular business and as such given a nice boost in local search rankings.
Verification and Trust
Citations are an important verification element. They tell search engines that “yes that business exists.” Also, they tell search engines that your business is legit – this is by the accumulated mentions from multiple credible sources, all providing the same detailed information about your company/business.
Finally, having your business listed on prominent sites both national and local gives your business a sense of authority and a higher trust ratio. These combined have been known to improve the search visibility of businesses in the local search result.
Citation Consistency
Citation consistency has been hammered on as a major role player in local SEO. In fact, most posts about local SEO talks about this. Using a consistent citation (business name, address, and phone number) on all the important sites where you’d like to get a mention from is very important. Stick with only one citation that is both accurate and complete.
A few people are still getting worked up about citation consistency but that shouldn't be the case. As long as you are ready to put in an effort to have all the citations of your business profile across primary data sources, core search engines, and Tier 1 sites, you've got nothing to worry about. All you need to do is to avoid incorrect citations as they can have a negative impact on your local rankings.
You can get the perfect citation profile for Tier 1 by doing the following:
- Search for all mentions of your NAP variations
- Remove duplicates
- Update all inconsistent citations
- Maintain only one perfect citation which is both accurate and complete
Next is to clean up and perform an audit of your listing on Tier 2 websites. The Tier 3 and 4 are negligible so you can either choose to skip them or if you choose to, work on them, but it won't make any difference to your SEO.
Remember that search engines (Google, Bing) are smart enough to put business data in the right order, so you don’t have to stress yourself trying to put abbreviations and variations in place or in the right format.
Building Citations for Local Businesses – The Right Way to Do It
The process of citations building requires ample amount of time, so you either set out time to get this done perfectly or have it outsourced to a reliable service provider or freelancer. If you choose to have it done yourself, here are helpful tips to assist you.
- Make use of a registered business email (@businessname.com) instead of a generic email from such providers as Google (Gmail) or Yahoo. Doing this would make your listing more trusted.
- Remember that consistency is key, so keep your NAP – Name, Address, & Phone numbers the same on all sites. Formatting differences between sites can be overlooked.
- Choose the right categories and keep it consistent with all the sites you have your citations on.
- When listing your business, ensure you add as details as you can inclusive of photos, business logo, business description, social media links, operating hours, and so on.
- Finally, claim your listing. Many sites would ask you to verify your listing which you can do mostly by confirming email. However, places like Apple Maps, Google My Business, and even Bing would require the verification process be done via phone. This involves a call being put across to your business line while you are required to enter a provided pin to claim your listing.
Strategies for Identifying Citation Sources
We know that citations are very important for local businesses but the problem most business owners have is identifying local citations for their business. We have listed a few ways to help you get started.
- Seek out citation sources for your country.
- Next, tailor down citations based on your business category.
- You can also use your competitor’s citations to find local citations for your business. You can make use of White spark’s local citation finder which is handy for getting competitor’s citations. Proper utilization of the tool can get you a citation on your competition sites.
- You can also find citations if you carry out proper research of your own. All you need is perform a few basic search queries around your industry and your location and you might have citation opportunities on your browser screen.
If you are more interested in directly analyzing a specific competitors list of citations, then you can enter their business information into a business search, and look at all of their citation sources.
Not sure how to find specific citations based on city or keyword? Here’s a cue on how to perform these searches.
For city specific citation sources, try the following searches:
- (City) directory
- (City) business directory
- (City) business listing
For niche/industry specific citation sources, try the following searches:
- (Keyword) directory
- (Keyword) business directory
- (Keyword) business listing
Take away!
Local SEO isn't as difficult as it's made to look. In fact, you can start your optimization process by building strong citation for your business. For modern local SEO, citations are seen as beginner steps to get visibility on SERP. After successfully setting up citations for your business, you can begin the more tasking part of building visibility like creating content, building high-quality links, generating engagement and finally reputation management. There’s no need of further working on your citation profile except of course your business information is no longer valid. That’s in case of a change of name or location or phone number.
If you're interested in Phoenix SEO for your local business, don't hesitate to contact us.