In the UK, there are 5.6 million private sector businesses. Each and every one of these businesses need every advantage they can to stand out from the crowd. Beyond social media marketing and SEO techniques, local citations are a powerful tool for improving a website's search engine ranking. In this post, we'll explore what local citations are, why they’re essential for your business, and how our services can help you enhance your online presence.
What is Local Citation?
Local citation refers to any online mention of your business’s name, address, and phone number on directories, websites, or other platforms. Unlike social media marketing and SEO, which involve broader strategies, local citations focus specifically on improving your visibility in local search results. By ensuring that your business information is consistently and accurately listed across various directories, you increase your chances of being found by potential customers when they search for services in your area.
The Importance of Local Citations for Businesses?
Local citations play a crucial role in enhancing search engine rankings, especially for local searches. Here’s why they are important:
Increased Visibility: Proper local citations can help your business appear on the first page of local Google search results, making it easier for potential customers to find you.
Enhanced Trust and Credibility: Consistent and accurate business information across reputable directories builds trust with search engines and customers alike. This improved trust flow can positively impact your Google rankings.
Improved Website Traffic: Accurate local citations drive more relevant traffic to your website. As your business becomes more visible in local searches, you’re likely to attract more visitors and potential customers.
The Benefits of Manual Local Citation Management
While automated citation tools are available, manual citation management offers several key advantages:
Accuracy and Consistency: Manual submission ensures that your business information is entered correctly and consistently across all directories. This reduces the risk of errors that can occur with automated tools, which might affect your local SEO performance.
Quality Over Quantity
This is such an important benefit; we have had to give it its own section. In the realm of local citations, quality must always take precedence over quantity. While it might be tempting to accumulate numerous listings across various directories, the true impact lies in choosing high-quality, relevant platforms that genuinely benefit your business.
By manually selecting where to submit your information, it ensures that each citation is not only relevant but also from a reputable source that attracts engaged audiences. This focused strategy amplifies your online presence, making it easier for potential customers to find you and reinforcing your brand's credibility.
Partnering with a Digital Agency ensures the best tools are being used - ensuring strong domain authority and trust flow is kept throughout all citations. With experienced brains on the job, your citations will be in safe hands! Most importantly, constant monitoring and optimisation of these citations will be performed, resulting in you receiving the utmost value from your online presence and enhanced visibility in local search results.
Types of Local Citation: Structured vs. Unstructured
When it comes to local citations, they generally fall into two categories: structured and unstructured. Understanding the difference between the two and how they impact your local SEO efforts is essential for maximising your online visibility.
Structured Citations
A structured citation refers to a consistent listing of your business’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) across formal online directories such as Google My Business, Yelp, or Yellow Pages. These listings are structured because they appear in a uniform format on platforms specifically designed to display business information. These citations not only help search engines verify your business details but also increase your chances of appearing in Google’s local pack and other local search results.
Key Benefits of Structured Citations:
Improved Local Search Visibility: Search engines rely on consistent NAP details across directories to build trust and confirm your business’s legitimacy. This can directly impact your ranking in local search results.
Increased Credibility: Being listed on reputable directories like Google My Business or Yelp signals to both search engines and potential customers that your business is established and trustworthy.
Unstructured Citations
Unstructured citations, on the other hand, refer to mentions of your business’s information that appear in a more casual context, such as on blogs, news articles, or social media posts. These citations may not follow a standard format but still provide important signals to search engines about your business’s online presence.
For example, if a local blog writes a feature about your business or a news site mentions an event you’re sponsoring, these unstructured citations can add valuable authority to your brand. They may not always include a full NAP but can still contribute to improving your local SEO.
Key Benefits of Unstructured Citations:
Diverse Backlink Profile: Mentions from trusted blogs, media outlets, or social platforms add to your website’s backlink profile, signalling authority and relevance to search engines.
Brand Exposure: These citations often reach a wider audience, enhancing your brand’s visibility beyond just search engine rankings.
Both structured and unstructured citations are crucial for a strong local SEO strategy. By ensuring that your business information is listed accurately and consistently on both types of platforms, you create multiple pathways for potential customers to find you, while also boosting your online authority in the eyes of search engines.
The Impact of Local Citations on Mobile Searches
With mobile searches, especially "near me" queries, on the rise, local citations are crucial for ensuring your business appears in these results. Accurate and consistent name, address, and phone number (NAP) listings on directories like Google My Business can boost your ranking in geo-targeted searches.
Optimising your local citations for mobile users by including click-to-call options and ensuring mobile-friendly listings helps potential customers find and contact you easily. This drives more foot traffic and conversions from on-the-go users looking for local services.
Our Local Citation Services
At SEO Flatrate, we specialise in manually adding your business details to top local business directories. Here’s what our service include:
Manual Submission: We handle the submission of your business information to the most relevant local directories, ensuring accuracy and relevance.
Link Juice and Trust Flow: By placing your business in high-authority directories, we enhance your link juice and Google trust flow, which can lead to better rankings.
Detailed Reporting: You’ll receive an Excel spreadsheet report detailing all live links and the status of any pending links, so you can track your progress and see the results of our efforts.
Hopefully, you now know the basics, along with a deeper understanding of local citations and how they can significantly help your business. We are here to help you with the use of local citations and marketing services. Start today and contact us on +44 (0)1202 911141 or email support@seoflatrate.co.uk.
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Updated: Oct 28, 2022
There are four main pillars that underpin any online marketing strategy, these four pillars are:
Trusted location info, a diverse and quality link building strategy, a website which is locally focused and supplies relevant and unique content and finally reliable and trustworthy reviews. If you are looking to provide trusted information about your business location details, then you should be considering making use of local citations.
However, when using citations ensure that you concentrate specifically on accuracy across the high ranking and trusted citation sites, then your Google listing will be affected if your details including your business name, phone number, mail address and office location are not identical across all of them. Every business needs citation, because they offer a trusted and credible source of information about those businesses listed upon them and tend to rank well in the search engines.
Factors that influence local search results based on a Moz survey:
If a business combines citation signals with Google My Business (GMB) then it could make up to 32% of the finder ranking factors or local pack pie chart according to a Moz survey. These citations also have a huge impact on factors associated with localised organic ranking, filling around 15% of the complete pie chart.
It is widely considered that citations and Google my business (GMB) results if used consistently and published correctly using the correct name, phone number and address details can have a significant impact on a business’s local rankings and as a result could positively influence the rankings associated with local organic searches too.
Further benefits of citations:
Apart from increasing the local pack rankings as well as localised organic results, a citation can also help to achieve the following for any businesses that uses them:
1. Expands your footprint across the web:
With proper use of citation you can increase the number of your local customers as well as your online clients. This includes third-party sites such as Bing, Apple Maps, Foursquare, Yelp, MapQuest etc. and even niche sites.
2. Expands footprint on the organic results pages of Google:
Listings and websites containing citations are mostly ranked closer to the top search results of Google organically for brand searches as well as keyword searches. This is because search engines trust such websites as well as their published content to be of high relevance, ensuring you have a proper citation on such websites as well as on your Google my business account will help to get your business noticed.
3. Backlinks, both “do-follow” and “no-follow”: Most of the citation websites provide backlinks as part of their service offering. Most of these links are of type no-follow, but sometimes these links might contain do-follow links too, especially the paid listings.
4. Third party reviews:
Most websites that are used for citation purposes are also review websites. These websites provide valuable feedback on niche sites and also third-party generic websites. Such review sites have a considerable impact on local rankings for websites that use them as well as impacting the general search term rankings too.
5. Vertical and town specific directories:
Apart from data aggregators, the use of GMB and top tier citation websites is considered to play an important role in establishing an online presence for any website owner
The benefits of citation are so substantial, that they are considered to be one of the first and most important stages in building any online presence for a local business, get it right and the benefits are plentiful, however if you should get it wrong your website could be penalised for simple errors including duplication & content discrepancies.
Getting it right the first time is crucial, so no matter if you are a startup or a well-established online business, if you have little or no experience with online marketing we would always recommend seeking the advice of an award winning SEO company just like SEO Flatrate who specialise in helping small to medium sized businesses across the UK to raise their profile on the web.
