What is Citation? How important are citations for local SEO?

Posted by Girdhari Singh on October 13th, 2021

A citation refers to online mention of name, phone number and address of a local business. Citations may occur on websites and apps, local business directions and social platforms. Citations in turn assist users of the internet to find local businesses and also impact the local search engine rankings. There are various affordable SEO Services in India. Moreover, acquiring the right basic citations may assist you to rank accurately on Google Maps. Local SEO for small business is bound to manage several citations to ensure data accuracy.

Also you can check your citations by two methods such as: manually and automated local listing checks.

• Manually - There are appropriately 100s of local citations sources which you can check. Indeed while doing the complete manual audit of your citations, you should check all the sites of citations by hand. In reality, you would find only a few aggregators of data which you would likely want to check. These may include the biggest players such as Apple Maps and Facebook.

• Automated local listing checks - Also to make things easier, Moz provides a local listing tool for your business. You can even check the listings of your local business across the web for both accuracy and inclusions. Moreover, these listings include the major aggregators of data which influences the web result the most.

The core elements of a citation are the company\'s phone number, name and address. It also includes a link or a reference to the assigned page of the website of the company. Along with these important components, below are mentioned the other following elements:

• Business categories

• Driving directions

• Images

• Payment forms accepted

• Reviews

• Taglines

• Email address

• Alternate phone number

• Hours of operation

• Business description

• Videos

• Geo-coordinates

• Owner responses

• Reference to links and other forms of media

• Fax numbers

• Attributes

How important are citations for local SEO

Building citations is considered as online credibility for your business. It is the fact that citations are essential for search engines as they convey to search engines that it is safe to trust the business. It is important that your business is required to be listed in those applicable directories which are to be found by consumers. Also search engines watch these citations to be sure that they display the accurate information about the business whenever the consumers search for you. There are a number of local SEO for small business. It\'s essential for this information to be stable across directories so that the clients can search the correct information about the business.

If you require any fresher, local search is pretty important:

• Around 50 percent of the consumers who executed a local search on the phone visited the store within 24 hours.

• Approximately 50 percent of Americans have replaced local search for phone books.

How are citations important for local SEO?

1. Improve local rankings- Improving the citations are considered as the prime importance for local SEO. It turns out to be the ranking factor for local SEO. Having your business listed in the top trusted online directories addresses signals to Google to improve the degree of certainty which your business exists. The quality of the online directories, the accuracy of the listing, the quantity of your listing can influence how Google identifies the online presence. This is the reason to pick up the citations wisely.

2. Piggy back page one results- Another biggest importance of building citations is that few online business directories control page one of local search. Few sites such as Yellowpages and Yelp tend to remain consistently on high ranks for most local searches. Also these online directories give various other opportunities to earn real estate on page one.

3. Earn referral traffic- Most of the individuals are loyal to different citations for example Yelp for restaurants. Most of the foodies are instructed to go to Yelp while looking for new restaurants before visiting Google.

How to optimize Citations

Citation management is more than just doing business. To optimize the online presence, there are some factors which are required to be kept in mind.

1. NAP Consistency- NAP consistency means consistent address, name and phone number across every listing. There have been various independent studies which have come out to see that acquiring a consistent NAP listing can be considered as the factor to local SEO.

2. Descriptions- Business descriptions can assist in improving local rankings by adding in your top keywords. It may also assist search engines to better understand your business.

3. Website Link- Many businesses connect to their home page. However, a good approach is to connect directly to the location page. This brings down the steps for users to acquire the information they are searching for and which has the similar effect for search engines.

4. Business Category- Some citations for example Google My Business permits you to select secondary categories. This may assist you to rank for secondary targeted keywords.