In this modern digital marketing era, Citation Building getting a competitive advantage in any industry has become almost impossible. Brands are willing to try just about anything that gives them a shot at getting ahead of the competition. Fortunately, there are various techniques, if executed the right way, that can help your business grow in this competitive world. One of those methods is to ensure that your business has proper local visibility in your targeted region. But how can you go about doing that?
What Is Local Citation Building? Why Does It Matter?
Local citation building is one of the most important aspects of local SEO building. Local citations are absolutely essential when you have to boost your business’s local visibility. If you aren’t familiar with local citations, don’t worry. Local citations are simply an online mention of your business in local directories. They include your business’s NAP data. NAP stands for basic business information, including the Name, Address, and Phone Number of your brand.
Consider these citations as mentions of your business in the yellow pages. Here, the mentions are local citations, and the yellow pages are your local directories where customers can look up businesses sorting by category, address, or anything really. So, it is necessary that your citation building is handled by professionals!
There are a variety of professional agencies that offer effective local citation building services. Local citation building agencies like these have years of experience in helping businesses like yours grow. Their meticulous attention to detail ensures that your NAP citations are 100% precise and updated. Premium local citation service providers also go through the time-consuming process of auditing local directories to ensure that no duplicates of your business citations exist. You can get one of the best local citation building services on the market here.
Now that you’re a bit familiar with what local citations are, the basic benefits of local citations, and what local citation websites are, you are ready to learn more about local citations and their types! Let’s keep moving, shall we?
Types of Local Citations
Local citations are of two types; structured and unstructured citations. Both of these work in their unique ways. Let’s get into them.
Structured Citations
Structured citations are local citations of your business containing your NAP data, name, address, and phone number, listed in specific, purpose-built local directories like Yelp, Google My Business etc. These local citation websites are made for customers to search for businesses like yours using categories, location, and so on. A major benefit of these purpose-built local citation websites is that search engines trust these sites, and your business gains credibility using that trust. These business directories are an excellent source of having your business listed among credible brands.
Unstructured Citations
Moving on to unstructured citations, these citations are mentions of your business on blog sites, articles or anything that isn’t specifically a business directory. An unstructured local citation example can be a blogger mentioning an Italian restaurant in their post and giving them a review. These citations aren’t professionally listed; they could even only include the name of your brand instead of a proper NAP citation.
So, these are the two types of local citations you can get for your business. Now, let’s move on to how you can get local citations for your business that work!
How To Build Local Citations?
Now that you’ve learned everything there is to learn about local citations, we can start talking about the best strategies and practices for building local citations for SEO. This is a guide to local citation building!
Step 1: Find relevant local business directories
The first step is pretty straightforward; you need to look for local directories that you think are appropriate to have your business listed in. Check the businesses that are already listed. Would you fit in? You also need to determine if your business stands to gain any traffic by getting your citation listed in that particular directory, meaning if it’s a popular business directory or not.
Step 2: Audit
Once you’ve picked out the local citation website you want your NAP citation to be listed in, you have to check if your business already has a citation there. In most cases, duplicate citations already exist for your business, and this hurts your brand. So, thoroughly audit your selected business directories and ensure that no duplicates exist.
Step 3: Create a NAP citation for your business
This stage is focused on writing an accurate, updated, and SEO-optimised local citation for your business. You have to ensure that your listing contains precise information about your business, including the address and phone number. If the NAP data isn’t correct, your potential customers won’t be able to reach you. Unfortunately, this is a very common mistake people make when building citations. Okay, so that’s accuracy sorted; what about optimisation?
If you’re wondering what is local citation SEO, it relates to the usage of targeted keywords in your business description. These keywords allow customers to locate your listing in a search query. This is what local citation optimisation means. Now, let’s move to the final step!
Step 4: Keep It Updated!
One of the most common oversights businesses make is not keeping their local citations updated. This deems your local citations completely useless if they contain an outdated phone number, email, or even address. Thus, ensure that your citations are always updated to secure maximal leads!
This was our guide to local citation building. Let the growth begin!
Conclusion
Local citations are a phenomenal method of boosting your site’s local SEO performance. There are several benefits of local citations, and all of them directly point to improved brand credibility! We have provided you with an in-depth guide about local citation building and taught you everything there is to know about local citation lists. If you don’t have the time to go through the process of finding and vetting the right local directories and then having your business accurately listed in these local citation websites, you can hire an expert local citation building agency.
