Importance of Local Citation and How To Create It

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A citation is an online reference to your business’ Name, Address and Phone Number for a local business. To improve your local search engine results Citations are one of the most important Local SEO Ranking Factors. 

With the help of citations, users can easily discover local businesses. Local businesses actively manage citations to establish data accuracy. 

Complete local citations must include the three factors such as Company Name, Address and Phone Number. Generally, this one is referred to as your “NAP”. If any citations that do not include all of these three are known as a partial citation.  

You may also have about terms like NAPW and NAPU. NAPW stands for Name, Address, Phone Number and Website and NAPU refer as Name, Address, Phone Number and URL. 

Including a website URL in your citations provides extra value and help search engines to connect with your business online. Likewise, it also helps users to get more information about your business and can connect with you directly.  

Top Local Citation Sites

Local citation sites can differ from country to country and region to region. Here are some of the most popular and influential platforms which display citations.

• Google My Business
• Facebook
• Foursquare
• Mapquest
• Yelp
• Angieslist
• TripAdvisor
• Yellow Pages
• Better Business Bureau (BBB)

We can say that Google has own local citations in the form of Google My Business and it is the most important local SEO citation.

While searching for any local business online, you may get a lot of organic search results on the first page filled with online local directories.

This state the importance of getting your local business citations into popular online local directories. It can be tough for local businesses to rank on the first page of organic search results. But if your business is featured in one of these directories then there is a good chance of getting in front of potential customers who are looking for a business like yours. As there are many local citation service providers you can contact them to get a local citation.    

Types of Citations

There are two types of local citations

Structured Citations

A structured citation presents your business NAP (Name, Address and Phone Number) on a business listing directory. When you get a list of citation sites, there are always many business listing directories where you can submit your business and get a citation. 

Unstructured Citations

Unstructured citations are your business information – NAP (Name, Address and Phone Number) spread on any same web page, but they are not all together. That site is not a particular business listing directory. 

To build this kind of citation required a little more effort, but it doesn’t make less valuable them. Examples of unstructured citations are blog posts, forums, magazine or newspaper sites and so on. 

Importance of Citations For Local SEO

The citation can help you to get local traffic which means it helps in organic ranking. if you publish your business information in the most trusted website and the authoritative website you will stay ahead of from all your competitors.

Improve Local & Organic Ranking

As we already know, this is not quite powerful SEO ranking factor, but it will still have an impact on organic and local search rankings. 

Search engines trust online directories and business listing websites to provide accurate information. And those information i.e. NAP(name, address and phone number) are consistent everywhere then search engines will give more prominence. 

Links From Authoritative And Trusted Sites

We all aware about getting links from authoritative and trusted site is an important SEO factor. Nowadays, almost every business listing and online directories will contain the website URL field. 

And the good news about it that some of them display do-follow links. Search engines use them to pass the quality link to your website and ultimately it boosts your ranking. 

All Citations Are Not Created Equally

There is huge value differentiation in the different citations. Your business citation mention on any high trusted site is far more valuable than a mention on any spammy web directory which was created for only link building purpose.

Since citations are different in value, they are classified by their importance. As per the data sources they are differentiated as core search engines, primary sources, tier 1, tier 2, tier 3 and tier 4.

NAP Consistency

Having the correct name, address and phone number (NAP) on listing sites are important. Make sure you have only one complete and accurate listing on each important sites. 

When it comes to local search rankings, you really need to correct your incorrect citations. Update your incorrect citations and remove your duplicates once if there is any. 

Possibilities of Third Party Reviews

Prominence is an important pillar to rank well in local SEO pack. And this is defined by online positive reputation and positive mentions across the web. 

Many citations sites allow customers to share their local business experience. As long you get positive reviews for services, it will benefit your listing and grow your local ranking.  

How To Do Citation For Your Business?

Basically, there are three approaches to get local citations for your business. Let’s check out them. 

Manual Citation Submission

As the name suggests, this citation is one where you enter your business information to business listing sites by your hand. 

With this, you can target to get a citation in more niche directories. As you have your own eyes view, there are low chances of a submission error. The down part of this approach is, it could take a long time as you do it by yourself only.  

Automated Citation Submission

With this approach, the citation building system automatically fills in submission forms on citation sites. This one automatically submits business information on local business sites.

As you don’t build citations by your own this often leads to errors. Also, the automated system doesn’t have a wide reach as you would have if you built the citations manually.  

Data Aggregator Submission

This approach is far more accurate than automated citation submission. There are many big data aggregator out there. Each one is popular, widely used and have an automated process for submitting the citation to trusted partners. 

You won’t get all the citation sites you need with this approach, though, so it’s best to start with data aggregation before moving on to manual submission on the more niche sites.

Just submit your data once and the data aggregator will push the data to the main citation sites. Though you won’t get all citation sites you need so it’s best to start with data aggregator before moving on manual submission for important business listing sites and online directories.

Tips For Building Citations

Building citation is a time-consuming process, keep below tips in mind for fewer errors.

• Email: Use your business email that is associated with your domain. Do not use generic Gmail or Yahoo mail address. Listing submission is more trusted when you use domain-based email. 
  
• Consistency: Consistency is important, make sure your business name, address, and phone number are the same on each citation sites. 
  
• Category: Select the most relevant category which describes your business best and tries to keep your category consistent on the local citation sites.
  
• Details: Try to add all details as possible such as photos, logos, working hours, full business description, social accounts and so on.
  
• Verification: Claim your listing as its another trusted signal and also verified listing has more authority. This can be done via email and bigger sites like Google My Business, Bing, Apple Maps and so on through phone verification.

Conclusion

A local citation is a valuable part of local SEO. It plays an important role in improving SEO and local search engine ranking. As search engine algorithms continue to get smarter we have to get smarter. Find the local citation sites list or contact local citation services provider to get local citations.