One of the most effective ways of making your business register its presence and getting recognized is citation submissions. You can build citations of your business by mentioning the business name, locality, and other contact details on other webpages. Business listing directories like Yelp and Yellow Pages are prominent sources for submitting citations, bringing attention and exposure to your website, either mentioned with or without links to your website.
Importance of Citation Building
Local SEO today is a dominating factor that drives most of the visitors to websites. More than 20 percent of Google searches are for a local business. Citation building is one of the most critical aspects of Local SEO, boosting the rank and popularity of your website in search results.
- The ranking algorithms of leading search engines consider citations as a key element while generating results.
- Websites with a higher number of citations appear higher in SERPs, fetching more customers than the ones with fewer citations.
- High-quality citations with consistent information on reputed directories like Yelp and Yellow Pages help strengthen the conviction of search engines on your business name, its category, and contact details.
- A proper use of citations can also significantly influence the stature and rankings of small service providers (even without websites) in niches with low competition. For them, search engines count on any information they come across.
- Citations are reliable sources for finding authentic businesses in a particular category, thus citation building drastically improves your rankings in local SERPs.
- Effective use of citations and other local SEO strategies can sometimes outshine the visibility of bigger groups by smaller organizations on a local search basis.
Submitting Citations: Best Practices
Follow these best practices to ensure your citation submissions are effective and beneficial:
- First and foremost, know the 5 kinds of sites on which you will need to get listed:
- Data aggregators – sites creating the basic business database for local search directories (e.g., LocalEze).
- Horizontal directories (e.g., Yelp).
- Industry-specific directories (e.g., Avvo).
- Region-specific sites (e.g., Denver.com/places).
- Sites providing “unstructured” citations like blogs, newspaper websites, event listing websites, job websites, government sites, etc.
- Be consistent and complete with your business listing. Make sure to submit identical business information, including name, category, address, zip code, phone number, and other required details everywhere.
- Verify that your HTML NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) matches the NAP submitted on various citation sources. A mismatch may confuse search engines and your potential customers.
- Find high-quality and reliable citation sources determined by their domain authority, i.e., the number of linking root domains, indexed pages, domain age, page rank, etc.
- Before creating new citations, check for any variations in your existing listings, claim them, and fix them immediately. Remove any duplicate listings that you bump into. Give preference to quality over quantity.
- Thoroughly check for any existing listing on a site before making new submissions to avoid duplicities.
- Check for duplicate entries of your business name in Google MapMaker. Also, Google your phone number and address and correct any issues.
- Monitor your competitor’s listings. Add citations on directories that you are missing out on.
- Read and strictly follow the submission guidelines of each directory.
- Strengthen your business authority and local listing by creating a verified Google Plus page.
- Certain citation sources like LocalEze and Acxiom require owner-verification in the form of phone or postal verifications before listing your business. Ensure to complete all these verifications.
- Do not solely rely on automated citation services like Yext. Although it is a good tool to update your listings, it can sometimes leave duplicate and inconsistent citations.
- Keep a cloud backup of your citation reports and login credentials.
- Providing alternate phone and fax numbers do not mess up the NAP consistency.
- Remember, getting listed may take a month or two. So do not panic if you don’t find your business listed immediately.
- Observe your citations periodically to find and settle down needed fixes.
Conclusion
Citation building is a crucial element for improving local SEO and enhancing your business’s online presence. Accurate and consistent citations help search engines trust your business, leading to higher visibility in local search results. By following best practices—such as using consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) information, targeting high-quality directories, and regularly monitoring your citations—you can strengthen your local search rankings and attract more customers. Focus on quality, consistency, and relevance to see long-lasting results from your citation efforts.
