Find out if your local citations need updating with our local SEO citations scan tool.
Local businesses must work hard to maintain competitive online visibility while appealing to potential customers and generating sales. One of the many things you need to maintain your online reach is your local citations.
While local citations are a small part of your online presence, they are still important in bringing in new customers while also influencing your website’s rankings on search engines.
To help keep your local business citations up-to-date, Searchbloom provides a simple, easy-to-use Local SEO Citations Scanner. In addition, you can learn more about local citations and their effect on your business’s local SEO by reading more below.
What are Local Citations?
Local citations are any piece of online information about a business, particularly its name, address, and phone number — also known as its NAP data. You can find them in many different sources of online information, including:
- Local listings on websites like Yelp, Yellow Pages, and Google.
- Industry-specific directories or niche websites relevant to specific businesses.
- Data aggregators that distribute business info across their affiliated networks.
These are just a few examples of where they can be found. Additionally, local citations come in many forms and are split into two types: structured and unstructured citations.
Structured citations
Most users will see these types of local citations when looking up a local business online, as structured citations are often short-form listings found in local directories and third-party websites. They typically show the name, address, and phone number of your business, as well as any other essential pieces of business data.
Structured citations across different businesses are also largely the same format, so there are few ways to stand out besides high ratings and an extended number of years in business. Despite that, they also help users easily find your business in local search results and provide you with a valuable backlink to your website.
Unstructured citations
As their name suggests, unstructured citations come in less organized formats but still display business information. These types of citations appear in the form of news articles mentioning your business and blog posts on relevant websites or social media platforms. These help increase a business’s online visibility through viral content.
However, some cases may occur where they contain wrong or misleading information that can lead to frustrated customers who have difficulty finding your product or services. Unstructured citations are also harder to monitor and implement — unless you are working with a team of experts in citations and listings management.
The Benefits of Local Citation Building
Building citations for your business offers several benefits, as it is a subtle but effective factor in how local search engines and potential customers view it. Here are some of the essential advantages of creating and maintaining your business’s local citations:
Raises Online Visibility
Improving your local citations increases your business’s online visibility. By having your business information available across different platforms like online directories and review sites, your business will appear more often in various search results pages relevant to your industry or services.
Establishes Trust
Imagine a business in today’s world that appears in one or two online directories with very few reviews, no profile picture, and perhaps a phone number that doesn’t connect. This would likely appear to be an untrustworthy business to potential customers, yet the only problem is that its local citations are mismanaged! Simply manage business listings more accurately, and online users will immediately see your business as one worth trying out to fulfill their needs.
Helps Exceed Competitors
Building and maintaining local citations is a small task that many businesses tend to forget about, especially since they have to retain their consistency and accuracy across multiple directories and sites, not just a few. This creates an opportunity to get a competitive advantage over your more neglectful competitors. By keeping your local citations up-to-date and encouraging customers to leave reviews across different directories and review sites, you’ll have a more appealing online presence and high rankings online.
How Citations Help Improve Your Website & Google Business Profile Rankings
For search engines to list and display your business in top search results positions, they need to know whether or not your business is legitimate and trustworthy for their users. Local citations are one of many ways to signal that your business is what they’re looking for.
By maintaining accurate and consistent information about your business across numerous business directories and websites, including through an optimized Google Business Profile, your business website and name will appear higher among key local search results pages.
You can quickly and easily evaluate the current state of your current local SEO citations with Searchbloom’s Local SEO Citations Scan Tool.
Why You Should Have an Agency Manage Your Local SEO Citations
The process of keeping track of your business’s local citations can be demanding as you work to run and expand it. That’s why many local businesses employ the expertise and consistency of an experienced agency. Working with a team of digital marketers who regularly manage local SEO citations for numerous businesses provides many advantages. Here are a few to consider:
Ensures Accurate Citations of Local Business Information
After thoroughly collecting every detail of your business information, an agency will ensure your NAP data and all other aspects of your local citations are accurate and precise. Keeping them accurate ensures search engines can verify your business’s legitimacy online, ensuring your listings and website receive higher search engine rankings.
Provides a Steady Frequency of Confirmations
An SEO agency will also have the tools and resources to track the frequency of your local citations being used to produce successful leads and conversions. In addition, they will also ensure your listings receive fewer to no reports indicating that your citations are wrong or inaccurate. By increasing the frequency of confirmed and successful use, an agency will show you are making a consistent and legitimate effort to help online users find your business.
Maintains Consistency Across Business Directories
With many different directories, websites, and networks available, agencies can help your business by managing listings so that each one consistently provides the same business information. Maintaining consistency across directory listings and websites is crucial, as having incorrect information on different sites can lead to a significant sense of distrust among potential customers. It also signals a lack of legitimacy and trustworthiness to search engines, affecting your search engine rankings.
Check to ensure your local SEO citations are accurate, consistent, and frequently used with Searchbloom’s Local SEO citation scan tool.
Why Agency-Managed Citations Are More Accurate Than Manually Submitted Citations
For several reasons, working with an agency ensures your citations across directories and sites are more accurate. First, manually submitting every citation often leads to inaccuracies due to human error. On the other hand, SEO agencies have the expertise and tools to implement many citations with a higher degree of accuracy and in less time.
Agencies are also better at managing the accuracy of a business’s citations because they’ve developed and implemented strong quality assurance and monitoring processes. This means they ensure the accuracy of your business information before each citation submission is made, then implement the means to track and verify that each citation remains accurate and up-to-date over time.
Simply put, an agency managing your citations will result in fewer errors, accurate citations across many more directories and websites, and more peace of mind for you and your business. Searchbloom is a seasoned search engine marketing agency that can keep your citations accurate and much more.
How Searchbloom Helps Local Businesses With Our Local SEO & Citations Management
For nearly a decade, Searchbloom has been a top agency in local SEO services, helping local businesses broaden their web presence, generate traffic, and increase their revenue through effective local SEO strategies, including expert citation management.
Every business has unique needs, goals, and target audiences. That’s why Searchbloom collaborates with you from the beginning so we can develop customized local SEO strategies tailored to the specifications of your business and industry. This way, we maximize the effectiveness of our online marketing efforts and drive positive results for your business.
Moreover, local SEO is a specialized form of search engine optimization, one that our team of content creators, SEO specialists, and web development experts are well-experienced in. In addition to performing thorough local citation management for your business, we will:
- Optimize your Google Business Profile and website.
- Implement keywords to raise your most important pages to the top search results rankings.
- Connect with high-quality websites to increase your site’s authority.
Through a wide array of combined local SEO techniques and tools, Searchbloom will ensure your site ranks high, boosting your organic traffic and visibility and creating a steady flow of customer leads and revenue for your business. On top of that, we promise every one of our partner clients that our efforts will produce a positive return on investment (ROI).
