A lot of people are familiar with various SEO techniques to grow internationally and put your name out there. Large international brands only need to focus on global expansion, but for local businesses, local SEO is among the most important factors in business growth! In case you aren’t familiar with local SEO and why it matters, don’t worry; we’re really good at this. Local SEO is what allows your business to attract local attention, meaning specific regional traffic, and this article is focused on providing you with an in-depth local citations guide! So, without wasting any time, let’s get into it.
If you run a local business, this is literally the most important thing you should address when creating a marketing strategy. But what’s the most effective way of boosting this local SEO?
Local citations are the answer! Local citations for SEO is an incredible white-hat SEO technique to get your brand’s name out there! If you aren’t familiar with what SEO citations are, look no further because this local citations guide is here to help!
What Is A Local Citation?
Local citation building is the process of creating an online business listing of your brand in reputable local directories to help boost your brand exposure! Think of local citations as a mention of your business in your particular region’s business directory. Local citations listings, or NAP citations, are essentially your business’s basic information, like an address, phone number, and your business’s name & description. What this does is put your brand’s information among other businesses where people can easily find it by running a search query. So, this is what a local SEO citation is; you put your business’s information on high-ranking reputable business directories, and your brand now has a local business citation!
You might be wondering, I see what local citations are, but why exactly do they matter so much, and can I get by without having a citation listing at all? Well, here’s what you need to know.
Why Local SEO Citations Are Important
Local business citations are among the most important steps in boosting your site’s local SEO figures. Why? Well, first of all, local search citations are great for brand exposure. This is because potential leads can easily find your business when they’re running a local search on any one of the local directories your brand has a NAP citation on! So, that’s one.
A local citation also helps build trust and authority in the eyes of search engines, as well as your audience. We will cover that in the next section about how local citations are great for local SEO. But from a customer’s perspective, your brand will look so much more credible and trustworthy if they see it listed among other reputable brands on a trusted business directory that they regularly visit. And that’s two!
Can’t forget about the most important part, can we? More leads! Once your brand’s visibility is enhanced, new audiences have a pretty compelling reason to trust your business; they are bound to explore your products and services! We all know what more leads mean; more revenue!
So, to sum up. Local citations give you:
Moving on with our local citations guide, let’s explore the question; what are citations in SEO?
How Do Local Citations Help With SEO?
Local citation building is an excellent method of boosting your site’s local SEO rankings. Local citations for SEO allow your site to gain credibility and authority in terms of search engine optimisation. How does this happen? Well, once you get your business listed in reputable, trusted, high authority, and high-traffic local business directories, search engines automatically trust your site as well.
What this does is put your brand’s name higher on SERPs! Citations for SEO are sort of thumbs up for search engines to trust your site.
Now that you’ve understood what local citations are, their importance, as well as the role they play in your site’s local SEO, let’s dig a little deeper.
What Are The Types of Citations
There are two types of citations you need to focus on when getting your business listed.
Structured Citations
Structured citations are proper NAP citations of your business that are listed in reputable third-party business directories that are purpose-built for this exact purpose. Users run targeted search queries on these sites, and based on your listing’s optimisation, your brand name comes up in that search result!
Common examples include Yelp, YellowPages, or any social media platform.
Unstructured Citations
These types of citations are mentions of your business in blog posts or forums. These citations don’t have a proper structure; they might even be mentions of your business in a press release. Meaning that it can be an image of your business with just your brand’s name under it, or a phone number, or anything really. Unstructured citations are also called ‘contextual mentions.’
So, that’s pretty much all there is to know about local citations in order to get you started with our ultimate local citations guide!
The Local Citation Building Process
We have created a simple but effective local citations guide for you! Let’s start with the first step!
Step #1: Get Listed!
The first step is to get your business listed in quality business directories. But we need to go over a few things with you first!
There are a few methods you can employ to get your business a citation for SEO; the first and most important is looking into data aggregators.
Data Aggregators
Data aggregators are large-scale data collection companies that distribute business information about brands to dozens of other websites. These sites are completely free to use, and they are very rewarding! The three most common and rewarding data aggregators include Data Axle, Neustar Localeze, and Foursquare.
But these data aggregators are not your only option!
Reputable Business Directories!
Getting your business an SEO citation in famous business directories can boost your brand visibility to exceptional heights! Some of the most common reputable sites include Yelp, Facebook, YellowPages, etc.
So, what’s next?
Submission
Once you’ve picked out the directories you want your citation to be listed in, you can either submit your citations by yourself or hire an expert local citation service like ours. We know getting your business listed in the right directories is a hassle, so let us do it for you! We are well-versed in getting businesses of all niches accurately listed in local directories.
Step #2: Absolutely Make Sure Your Citation Is Precise!
A grave mistake businesses often make is adding an incorrect business citation. This one mistake can deem your local citation completely useless! Think about it. If you get a potential lead, how will they contact you if your phone number is incorrect, your website isn’t linked properly, or just any business information that’s not correct? This can hurt your brand credibility as well because customers don’t trust businesses that have incorrect information listed in their citations; it’s just a bad impression, isn’t it?
Step #3: Keep Track!
You might be wondering; we’ve already taught you how to get your business listed, and an additional step that advises you to ensure your NAP citation is precise; what else could we possibly have to add? Oh, but there is.
More often than not, businesses are susceptible to make this oversight; outdated business information! Look, we know phone numbers get changed, email addresses get changed, and even your site’s URL might get changed. What matters is that you ensure that those updates reflect your business citations. Keep track of your citations and make sure that they’re optimised and precise.
That’s pretty much all there is to it, really. Local citations are a relatively easier way of boosting your local SEO, but it is very effective!
Conclusion
Local citations are a phenomenal method of enhancing your site’s SEO rankings; they amplify your brand’s exposure and improve your site’s reputation and credibility! You just need to ensure that you get rid of any duplicate citations and keep your live ones updated. We have done our best to provide you with everything you need to know on how to do local citations right with our local citations guide! Hopefully, now you can understand the importance of local citations and why they’re necessary for local SEO growth.
In case you don’t want to go through the trouble of following all these steps, well, lucky for you OutreachGirls is an expert in building optimised local citations for brands of all niches. We know where to get your business listed to enhance your brand visibility! Get in touch with us now.
