Every entrepreneur knows how important digital marketing is in businesses. Taking your brand online can significantly improve brand awareness.
Doing so can also promote goods and services offered and increase sales and revenue.
One good way of doing this is through local citations.
Local Citations: What They Do And How It Works?
Local Citations help businesses get found on the internet.
By having your company mentioned on places online and in other websites, you get to improve your online presence and increase your rank in SERP.
Most importantly, it maximises your digital marketing efforts.
The other names for local citations are online directory listing and business listing.
Whenever your business is listed online, the details included are your business name, address, phone number, and website URL.
This is known as NAPW and is the building block of your local search engine optimisation.
Good Read: Local SEO: 5 Tips to Conquer Your Local Market
Local citations can also include other details, such as the following.
- Email addresses
- Phone number
- Fax numbers
- Business hours
- Business description
- Images or Photos
- Videos
- Taglines
- Social Media Profile links
- Reviews
Types Of Local Citations
There are two types of citations in local SEO – Structured Citations and Unstructured Citations.
Structured Citation
This type of citation is a result of submitting your details on business directories or websites such as Yelp, Yellow Pages and bing.
One needs to remember that claiming, filling out and optimising the information is what you need to do for a successfully structured citation.
Unstructured Citation
This type of citation refers to mentions on other web pages like blogs, business websites and even newspaper sites.
Think of blog posts, social media profiles, and even your youtube channel mentioning some details of your brand.
How Local Citations Influence Your Local Search Engine Ranking
Citations can significantly influence your standing in search engines.
When you receive many mentions from high-authority websites and Google verifies that the data found on your site is accurate, relevant and high-quality, the search engine giant will give your business a better rank.
On the other hand, you’ll have less ranking opportunities when you destroy your trust.
How Local Citations Influence Your Customers
The better your search engine ranking, the higher the chances of people discovering your business.
This, in turn, will drive traffic not only online, but through the phone and offline.
However, with inaccurate citations, this can lead to a loss of revenue since you will lose your reputation by having incorrect details that are no longer up to date.
By making sure your citation details are still active, correct and accurate, you get to increase your brand’s’ potential.
Get found, earn more customers and achieve better ranking with the help of high-quality citations.
How To Improve Your Local Citations For Free
When your online business listings are no longer valid or accurate, chances are your potential customers will find another business that can cater to their needs.
Thankfully, there are lots of ways on how you can improve your citations even with a tight budget.
Here are some excellent ways to clean up your citations the cost-effective way.
Know all the places on the internet where your brand is listed.
First thing’s first, is that you need to do is to check where you can find your local information.
There are tons of services that offer to list all your local citations for a fee.
However, you can use some tools that accurately records your citations without paying. Such tools are usually interdependent.
The good thing about this is that once you update your details on the top sources, your details in other sites will update their website.
Be Specific And Separate Conflicting Details
Before formatting your details, be specific when it comes to your entries.
Start with your business category. Be as specific as possible to eliminate competition.
When it comes to your business format, update the format you use in your page, and be consistent with your citation audit from then onwards.
Update Profiles And Accounts With Individual Petitions
There are third-party apps that allow businesses to create a profile on their site. Place updated listings and respond to reviews posted within site.
For stricter sites, you will need to check how you can update your listing in accordance with their policies.
Improving Local Citations With SerpSpace Audits
When you find that some of your business listings are outdated or inaccurate, it is a must that you start taking action.
For an effective way to improve your local citations, consider hiring citation audit services like SerpSpace Audits.
Why SerpSpace Audits Are Worth It?
Cleaning up a citation mess can take weeks of hard work, taking up a valuable asset you can’t afford, which is time.
While it is not impossible to do the cleanup yourself, the process is something you’d want to leave on expert hands.
Get to enjoy the following perks when taking advantage of SerpSpace Audits.
Cost-Effective
When you correct your mentions by yourself, it can take a considerable amount of time even if you only have a minimal citation error to take care of.
By hiring a team of professionals to do it for you, you get to delegate such task, focus on other aspects of your digital marketing campaign and still get the job done and on time.
Indexing And Crawling After Cleanup
All your efforts to correct your listings will go to waste if search engines won’t get to see the changes.
With the help of an excellent company who also offers free indexing services, you can be sure that search engine giants such as Google will recognise your efforts.
“Per Use” Process
Unlike other providers, Serp Space has a high correction rate – as high as 90% of sites can be corrected.
There is no need for a locked-in subscription fee with monthly charges. You get high-quality citation cleanup without breaking your bank.
Citation Analysis
It doesn’t matter whether or not you’re the one who listed citations in the past that needed correction or editing.
Every business which still operates and has business listings online needs to have the citations analysed.
This way, you’ll get to understand how search engines see you as a local business and check your performance knowing your business listings are now accurate and updated.
Wrapping Up: Winning The Citation Game With SerpSpace Audits
Not all of your SEO efforts will pay off if the foundation of your digital marketing strategy needs improvement.
Your business listings should always be accurate and up-to-date to achieve that.
You may have your brand listed on major sites and web pages, but if the details are irrelevant, incorrect or out of reach, your clients and potential customers will find it hard to trust your brand.
With the help of SerpSpace Audits, your listing will be on major sites. You can ensure all are accurate and high-quality.
With cleaned-up citation errors and indexing, you can achieve the best results.
No more wasted leads, only positive results and increased in revenue-making potential.
Recommended Read:8 Tricks that Give Your Website the Competitive Edge
