What Is Local Citation?
A local citation is any mention of your business on the web; it is any combination of your business details, such as name, phone number, address, website and etc. Citation plays a big role in SEO, as one of the key factors in improving your local search results.
By listing local citations, it enables users to discover your business or brand easily and probably will give some impact on your ranking on Google search engine results.
This business listing could be from a very niche local business citation to global business citation, and all serve the very same purpose, which is to improve your ranking as well as SEO. These are the citation platform that were often used:
- Google My Business
- Yelp
- Trust Pilot
- Trip Advisor
- Yellowpages
- Etc..
There are different platforms for your business to be listed online as well different types of citations. They are basically two types of citation.
- Structured Citation: Structured citation is your business information (NAP) on a business listing directory. The term “NAP” for your business represents the name, address and phone number for your business you find in other citation listing websites where you can easily change your business information.
- Unstructured Citation: Unstructured citation is your business information (NAP) on any other site that’s not specifically a business listing directory, which means that your business is mentioned in a website that does not serve as business directory. Such websites could be like blog websites, forums, or online newspapers or articles
Why Local Citation Matters?
1. Improve Local Ranking
Of course it helps with the ranking for your website, but how?
An online citation simply means is your website and you information about your website being mentioned online somewhere else on their websites. Having a local citation like Google My Business enables Google to verify the authenticity of your website through Google crawlers.
Not only Google My Business, you can build any local citation at other platforms as well like Facebook. When you’ve filled in your Facebook page with company’s information, it counts as local citation as well.
After all, the purpose of local citation is what Google uses to search the most relevant result to the searchers.
The more, the merrier. The more accurate the local citation your website has, the higher the chances Google take your business as a legit and reliable source. Citation assists Google to evaluate your website local authority by analysing and reviewing how many citations you have and how they relate to your
2. Cost Effective Local Citation
Citation building can be way more affordable than PPC advertising. Compared to PPC advertising or another advertising technique, it may be slower, but it helps you save a lot of money if you’re on a tight budget.
Compared to PPC advertising, local citation is much slower in process. Why? Because it takes time for Google to verify the authenticity of your business. Once your citation is verified, it will be a permanent link on the Internet. The more citations you have, the more the authority you earn for your website.
Apart from it, local citation is a small part of SEO, which requires some effort and time to slowly build it. The impact on your website may not immediate compared to standard advertising, but their effectiveness is long lasting.
3. Visibility Boost For Business
As we mentioned previously, one of the categories for local citation is local online directories. One of the main functions of an online directory is that it allows users anyone on the Internet to filter their result based on business field, location, service and etc.
How is that helping the business ? For instance, when a customer is choosing a service provider, even though they may end up choosing your competitor, they may also likely consider your business or company next time.
Even your company may be small and it’s impossible to compete with competitor far better than you, having a local citation may at least increase your exposure rate to your audience
4. Citation Strengthen Site SEO
Pretty sure this is what most of us aim for when building local citations for your business on site like Google My Business or Yelp.
According to Moz,
“Citations are defined as mentions of your business name and address on other web pages — even if there is no link to your website… Citations from well-established and well-indexed portals (i.e., Superpages.com) help increase the degree of certainty the search engines have about your business’s contact information and categorisation.”
Google trusts top citation sites or so called local directories to determine which site deserves to be on the first page. For example, if you planning to find a web design companies around you, most likely first page of your search result will turn out to be local directories and like Yellow Pages.
If you’d like us to personally help you, drop us a message here!
Prepared by: William
Published by: Charlotte
