What Is A Citation In Local SEO?

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Local SEO is a hugely important marketing tactic for local businesses of all types and sizes. The higher you rank in local search results, the more people will visit your website and the more people will visit your store.

One of the main Local SEO optimization tactics is creating citations. But what are citations and what do you need to know about them?

What is a Citation?

A citation is a reference of your physical business online. These are usually made on business directories, but you can also get citations from platforms like Facebook and Tripadvisor. They are a way for consumers to find you and get the information they need about your business.

A citation must include at least three important details of your business:

  • Name
  • Address
  • Phone Number

It can also include your URL, opening times and other pieces of information. But it is critical that they include the three bullet points above.

 

Getting Your Citation in the Right Places

Part of the trick with citations isn’t just creating them, it’s creating them in the right places. Most citations will be added to online business directories, which are essentially the yellow pages of the internet.

Some of these websites will be national or international, but many will be dedicated to a particular geographic area, city, or industry.

Because of this, you shouldn’t submit your citation to every single directory that you can find. Some of the more specific ones won’t be suitable for your business and can confuse Google.

You should also consider the authority of a website when creating citations. The higher the authority, the better. It may not be worth creating citations on very low authority websites

Confused as to where to create citations? Start with these ten websites:

 

  • Google My Business
  • Facebook
  • Apple Maps
  • LinkedIn Company Directory
  • Yelp
  • Bing
  • Better Business Bureau
  • MapQuest
  • Foursquare
  • HubSpot

 

Optimizing Your Citation for Search Engines

For the most part, online directories will require you to provide your business’ NAP (it’s name, address and phone number). As we have said, these are the most important pieces of information to include.

When you write them, you need to do so consistently every single time. Every single citation should have the exact same information as every other, written in exactly the same way.

Some directories will give you the opportunity to add more information to your listings. This can include:

  • Business hours
  • Email address
  • Company description
  • Multimedia (i.e. photos, videos)
  • An overview of your products and/or services

 

When these additional pieces of information are offered, you should jump on them. The more information that you can add to your citation, the better. Not only will it help Google to get a better idea about your business when it scans the web, but it can also help the customers that use these websites to get more information about your business.

That’s all there is to citations. Now you just need to go out there and create them!

The Top Issues Wrecking Your Local SEO

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Is your business ranking well in Google’s local results? Are you one of the three businesses listed in the map pack for your keywords? No? Then there is a good chance that you are doing something wrong, particularly if you are carrying out local SEO work on your own without the help of an agency.

 

Working out what is wrong can be difficult, however. Especially so, if you aren’t a local SEO expert. Don’t worry though, we have your back. Here are the most likely things that could be ruining your local SEO efforts.

 

Website issues

Your website is the cornerstone of your online present. That’s why a lot of SEO efforts are directed towards it. If you don’t have a website, you’re really going to struggle to rank, even locally. Even if you do have a website, it’s no guarantee that you are going to rank. There are a lot of issues that could go wrong with it.

Here are the most common problems that make websites bad for SEO:

 

  • No location pages. If you want to rank well, you need to have location pages for every store or office you have, even if you just have one
  • Website is not accessible. Your website needs to be responsive if you want to rank well in Google. If people can’t use it on every device, they aren’t going to use it at all and that’s going to cause your rankings to drop.
  • Not optimized. If you haven’t optimized your content, titles and headings for your main keywords, Google isn’t going to rank your website for those phrases. You need to tell Google what you want to rank for.

 

Bad citations

One of the main ways that people try to boost their local SEO rankings is to create citations on business directories across the web. If done properly, these can work effectively. But they can ruin your local SEO efforts if they are done poorly.

When creating citations for your business, keeping them consistent is crucial. You want to use the exact same Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) every single time. Even something as small as writing the address with road spelled out instead of “Rd” can make a big difference.

Keep your citations consistent!

 

No or poor reviews

Reviews are one of the most important parts of Local SEO. The more reviews you have, the better. If you have more positive reviews than your competitors, there’s a good chance you’re going to outrank them. But many businesses don’t make getting reviews a priority. This can lead to businesses having a handful of reviews at best.

Not only that, but the reviews have to be positive. Bad reviews are going to be a huge turn off for potential customers and are going to tank your local SEO efforts. If you start getting bad reviews you need to improve your product or service and get in touch with reviewers. If you can find out what went wrong and fix it, there’s a good chance that the reviewer will upgrade their review.

Why Reviews Are Important For Local SEO

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Online consumers love reviews. It can be hard to know what to trust when buying online and whether a product will live up to the hype. But reviews give you a great idea of what products are really like from people who have actually used them. They are such a useful tool for making great purchase decisions.

There are so many choices available to consumers that they need to find a way to quickly narrow down their options. Nine times out of ten, they’ll turn to reviews as the tool to do this. As a result, consumers will be drawn to businesses with lots of good reviews and ignore businesses with bad or average reviews.

It’s not just consumers who use reviews, either. Google also uses reviews when ranking businesses in its search engine. The more high quality reviews you have, the higher you rank

In this article, we’ll explain why reviews are so important.

 

Why Reviews Are Effective

It’s hard for online shoppers to interact with products online. They can’t pick them up, they can’t touch them and they can’t try them out. That means it’s very hard to get an idea of what a product is really like. The only information they have available to them is from product descriptions and photos.

But reviews provide a way to find out information from people who have actually used the product and understand what it’s like. As a result, they can fill the void left by the inability to physically interact with the products. Good reviews are a huge seal of approval for consumers and can fill buyers with confidence.

 

Why Your Business Needs Reviews for Local SEO

It’s not just ecommerce stores that need reviews, local businesses need lots of reviews, too. That’s because online searchers are looking for reviews of local businesses just as much as online shoppers are looking for reviews of products.

There are several ways that reviews can impact your business. The first is that it can make customers much more likely to try out your product or service. When they see loads of positive reviews, it becomes much easier to commit to buying from you. On the other hand, they’ll be turned off if they see loads of negative reviews.

Secondly, reviews impact the way that Google ranks your business in local map pack results. Reviews are one of the biggest ranking factors for local SEO and Google places a lot of emphasis on them. The more five star reviews your business has, the higher it is going to rank in Google local results.

So how do you get reviews for your business? We’ll tell you in the next section.

 

Integrating reviews into your local SEO

The only guaranteed way to make sure that reviews boost your local SEO is to create a Google My Business account and make sure that all reviewers post their reviews there rather than on other websites. While Google does use reviews from other websites, it will definitely use reviews on its own platform, so better to be safe than sorry.

Why Location Pages Are So Important For SEO

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Did you know that Google gets over 60,000 searches every single second. That equates to over 5 billion searches every single day. Did you also know that almost half of these searches are for local-based queries. That’s how large the local SEO market is — it’s vast.

This is why so many businesses invest heavily into local SEO. When you optimize your online presence for Google and local SEO in general, you’re able to drive visitors to both your website and your store. There are a number of ways to do this, including creating citations, setting up a Google My Business account and getting reviews.

All of these strategies are important. But they are not everything. There are several other things that are important if you want to rule local search results. One of these methods is location pages.

 

What is a location page?

A location page is a page on your website that is dedicated to detailing everything possible about one of your business locations. If you have more than one store or office, you will need to create location pages for every different store and location. These pages will contain information like the following:

  • The address of your store
  • Contact details such as your phone number
  • Opening hours
  • Anything else that customers might need to know such as directions

You can also include information about what is on offer at that store or office, who works there, how it is different to your other locations and pictures of the premises.

If you have a very large business, you may want to turn each location page into its own microsite. This can be useful if you cover a very wide area and have a lot of very specific information about each area. That way, you can create specific blog posts for each location and host them on the location page.

 

Why location pages are important for SEO

There are dozens of factors that Google considers when it comes to ranking local businesses in organic results and the map pack. Your website is one of them. It’s not enough to just put your address on your website, especially if you have more than one location. Google can’t get the information that it needs from that alone. But by creating a separate page for each location and filling it with loads of information, Google can find what it needs to decipher what your business offers and where it is located.

Location pages also give you another chance of ranking in search results. They won’t just help boost your chances of appearing in the map pack, but they can also give you another link in the organic results. When you create a separate page for each of your stores, you provide Google with another URL to rank. This means that for a single search, you could have as many as three listings in Google: one in the map pack, your homepage in organic results and your location page.

So what are you waiting for? Get started creating location pages for your business today!

Mistakes To Be Aware Of When It Comes To Local SEO

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There are a lot of guides that tell you what to do when it comes to SEO. Whether they are step-by-step guides or a series of quick tips, you’ll find no shortage of articles that tell you what to do.

But there aren’t as many guides that tell you what not to do. The truth is that when someone does local SEO on their own, they are going to make mistakes. As such, you need to be aware of the most common mistakes. If you’re doing your own SEO, here’s what not to do.

 

Mistake #1 – Poor NAPs

NAP stands for your business’ Name, Address, and Phone Number. These are the key parts of your citations, which help you to rank in Google. But they are easy to get wrong. Every citation that you create for your business needs to be exactly the same every single time you write it.

Too often, business owners aren’t strict enough with their NAPs and that can lead to inconsistencies. This confuses Google and will result in lower rankings and less traffic for your local business.

 

Mistake #2 – Unclaimed Google My Business

Google My Business is the home of your local SEO efforts. But so many businesses still haven’t claimed their online listing. This is a big problem. When you don’t claim your business, you aren’t able to personalize any of the information. It’s this personalization that helps you to rank above your competitors. No personalization and no additional data, no ranking. Don’t make this mistake, claim your Google My Business page immediately and start filling it in.

 

Mistake #3 – Missing on-page local signals

A lot of local SEO optimization happens away from your website. But getting your website right is still important. It’s the first thing Google will look for when ranking your website and it’s important to have the right signals in place. These include the following:

  • Name, Address, and Phone (NAP)
  • Use of title tags, meta tags, and meta descriptions
  • Backlinks from local sites
  • Content quality and structure
  • Local keyword optimization

Without these signals, Google won’t easily be able to tell what your website is about and what it should rank for.

 

Mistake #4 – No online reviews

Reviews are probably the most important local SEO ranking factor there is — once you have your Google My Business page in set up, of course. Yet many people don’t have any reviews for their business in place. This is a big problem. The more positive reviews that you have on your Google My Business page, the higher Google will rank it. It proves that you offer a great service or product and are trustworthy. Start getting reviews ASAP to make sure that you don’t make this mistake.

 

Mistake #5 – Ignoring results

SEO isn’t a set and forget process. You need to keep an eye on what happens so that you can react and change your strategy. Measuring what works and what doesn’t is essential. So is taking notice of what Google Analytics says.

How To Do Local SEO For Multiple Locations

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Search engine optimization is essential for businesses of all sizes. With the right strategies, you’ll be able to increase traffic to both your online store and your physical store. Local SEO is the practice of ranking your brand in a particular area. But did you know that Local SEO doesn’t have to be limited to one location? Plenty of businesses have stores in more than one city. All of those stores can rank highly with the right local SEO strategy.

Here’s how you optimize for multiple locations

 

Set up pages for each location

When you’re ranking for one location, it’s best practice to include your location at the bottom of every page on your website. This helps Google to know exactly where you are based. But that doesn’t work if you have multiple stores.

Instead, you’ll want to create a page on your website that is dedicated to each location. These pages should be high in detail and include specifics about where your business is located, its phone number and how customers can get there — the more information the better.

 

Optimize for each location individually

You can’t rank locally in Google if you don’t optimize for each location individually. When it comes to single location local SEO, you would normally create citations for that business along with a Google My Business page. You’ll need to do that if you have multiple store locations. The only difference is that you’ll have to create multiple citations and a Google My Business profile for every single location.

You’ll have to provide a unique name, address and phone number (commonly known as NAP) for every location that you have. Note, that even the name has to be different, so instead of “brand name”, you call each location “brand name [location]. If any of these pieces of information is the same for any of your locations, Google may struggle to rank you locally across each store.

You’ll also need to create a unique Google My Business account for each location. These can be managed from one single account but every location must have a separate and unique page with different details.

 

Build links to your location pages

Link building is an important part of organic SEO, but it also plays a role in local SEO, too. As such, you’ll need to build links to each of your individual location pages. Part of this will be achieved by your citations, particularly if you include a URL when you create them. But you’ll also need to write blogs and guest posts, offer sponsorships and run other link building techniques to achieve this.

 

Manage and improve your reviews

With a separate Google My Business page for each of your locations, you’ll need to gather, manage and improve reviews for each of your business locations. It starts with encouraging reviews at all of your locations. Make sure that everyone who comes into your individual stores knows that they can go online and leave a review. You’ll also need to respond to each of the reviews, particularly the negative reviews in the hope that the reviewer may upgrade your review.

 

How Reviews Impact Your SEO

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Word of mouth from friends and relatives was traditionally used by consumers to decide whether or not to buy products or services. That or they had to buy a product for themselves to try it out.

That’s not the case anymore. People aren’t so inclined to make risky purchase decisions. That’s because buyers can now easily access online reviews, which will help them find out whether or not they should buy a product or a service.

An overwhelming percentage of consumers say that their purchasing decisions are influenced by online reviews. That’s why it’s so important for your business to start paying attention to customer feedback and make an effort to get more positive reviews. Even more so given that reviews can also impact your SEO.

 

How reviews impact SEO

Reviews can either impact your business positively or negatively. Keeping track of your reviews can help you to stay in tune with your customers wants, needs and experiences. Not only can they help you to get more business, but they can also help you to improve your existing products or services. And they can help you get more traffic.

Here are 4 ways that online reviews affect search engine optimization.

 

Reviews build your authority

As we said, reviews act as today’s word of mouth. The only exception is that reviews spread much further and much faster than real world of mouth. That means a good or a bad review have a much bigger impact on your brand’s authority. They are also used by Google to determine how reliable and good your business is. The more positive reviews you have, the higher you rank in Google’s local pack.

 

Reviews influence conversion rates

Reviews have a big impact on whether or not consumers buy from your brand. A load of positive reviews can make it much more likely that consumers purchase from your brand. Negative reviews can put consumers off from purchasing from your business. It’s no good having lots of traffic from your SEO efforts if you have terrible reviews that damage your conversion rates.

 

Reviews affects your rankings

Online reviews are one of the most important local SEO ranking factors. As well as your Google My Business profile and your business directory citations, reviews play a role in helping you optimize the following:

 

  • The Google Local Pack. These are the top three results displayed for local queries. The more reviews your business has, the more likely your business is to show up in these results
  • Google Map. Better reviewed businesses are likely to be displayed more prominently and more regularly in Google map results.
  • Reviews can even help you optimize your organic SEO presence.

 

Reviews are crucial to your SEO efforts. Not only can they help you to rank higher on their own, but they can also have a negative impact on your SEO efforts if they stop people from converting. If you need more reviews, speak to our team today to get more positive reviews as quickly as possible.

How To Get More Reviews For Local SEO

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There are a host of reasons why businesses use SEO. One of the main objectives is customer conversion. You get as many people as possible to visit your store and website and convert them into customers. It even works with physical stores. A huge amount of people who carry out a local search on Google end up visiting a nearby store.

One way that can help to acquire users and to convert them into customers is positive reviews. Most consumers read reviews before making purchases. People are trusting reviews more and more so having positive reviews is becoming increasingly important.

But getting reviews can be tough. That’s why we’ve created this guide to help you get more reviews.

 

Launch an email campaign

If your business has a list of customer emails than you’re already way ahead of your competition. Even if they aren’t all customers, this is a huge opportunity to get some fresh reviews for your business.

The first step is to sign up for email marketing software so that you can start sending out emails. You’ll also want to create a landing page and an offer to get more consumers to sign up for your email list.

Once you have your list added to your email marketing software, start sending out emails ASAP. You’ll also want to set up automatic review emails every time a customer buys something from your online store.

 

Ask for reviews

You should be asking all of the customers who visit your store and buy something to leave a review online. They may not think about it if they are buying in person but their reviews are just as valuable.

You don’t have to ask them in person if you don’t want to. Creating an advert at checkout that directs people to a URL where they can leave a review is a great option. You can also use your social media pages to encourage people to leave reviews, too.

 

Engage customers

Not all reviews are going to be positive. There will always be some bad ones whether they are warranted or not. But that doesn’t mean you should ignore them. Instead, engage every customer that leaves a review, good or bad. That way, at least you show you are a communicative owner.

Responding to bad reviews can even help you to turn those 1-star ratings into 5-star reviews. Talking to someone about their experience and finding a way to improve it can often lead to customers changing their reviews.

You’ll also want to thank customers who have left good reviews so that future reviewers are encouraged to leave a review in the knowledge that their words will be acknowledged.

Spread the word

You should try and share your very best reviews on social media and your website. Again, this might be a great way to encourage even more positive reviews in the future. When people see the great things that people have to say about your business, they’ll be encouraged to try you out.

Why Citations Still Matter For Local SEO

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Citations do still play a big role in local SEO. Fact.

In fact, if citations didn’t exist, local SEO would be much more challenging than it already is.

It can be impossible for new businesses to compete for the top 3 spots in Google’s Map Pack, especially if those businesses work in competitive industries. If you’re competing with more than a dozen businesses, ranking is going to be tough. Nailing citations, however, can give you the boost that you need.

 

The Importance of Citations in Local SEO

Near me searches and searches with local intent  have grown significantly over recent years. Most of this rise can be attributed to the surge in smartphone devices, the dependence that people place on them and the fact that they can use your location without you having to type it in to Google.

That’s because Google automatically uses your location data to find nearby places that are relevant to your search whether you like it or not. How they know which businesses to show is, in part, down to citations.

A citation is a summary of your business’ key information: it’s name, address and phone number. NAP is the acronym for those pieces of information. You can add more information to your citations but this is the bare minimum that you need to include.

The more directories that you submit citations to, the more likely it is that your business will show up in Google My Business results.

 

The Advantages of Local Listings for Businesses

Local listings such as Google My Business and Bing Places act as a mini Yellow Pages for the internet. They help users to quickly find real local businesses near them. Here are some of the advantages to using them.

 

1. You appear at the top of Google

Local results and Google’s Map Pack in particular appear at the very top of Google’s search pages, way above other organic listings. By dedicating time to creating citations on local business websites, you can help make sure that you appear above all of your competition.

 

2. Get more traffic

The higher you rank in Google, the more traffic your business website is going to get. It really is that simple. The vast majority of businesses never make it to the first page of Google. Even the businesses on the first page of Google don’t get a lot of traffic unless they rank in the top positions. If you want to guarantee relevant traffic to your website, you need to appear in Google’s Local Pack. Focusing on citations helps your business to rank higher. The higher you rank, the more traffic you get.

 

3. Increase store visits

People don’t have to click on your website to benefit your business. Some won’t even bother clicking on your link and will just get up directions ot your store and come straight to you. You don’t just guarantee web traffic by ranking high in Google’s Map Pack, you also guarantee store traffic, too.

 

Brand Recognition Is Critical to Getting More Page Clicks

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If you do a generic keyword search, for example “makeup”, the given results or the so called SERPs will give you brands like MAC, Sephora, and more. Results being displayed are either specific brands. Aside from these brands, you probably won’t see an unpopular product.

Thus, brand recognition is also important. It’s one effective way for websites to get more clicks and ultimately,gain more customers that will increase website sales.  Undoubtedly, it really is our nature to choose a product based on the brand, on the looks, and on the quality.

woman clicking the mouse of her laptop.

What makes a person click?

On a study conducted by Nielsen, consumers would really buy products from brands that are reliable and familiar.

None really would directly switch to a new product in a snap. For example, if you were to choose from Nike and Skechers, only a few would choose Skechers. Not unless if you are used to skechers, then, of course you’d pick Skechers. Aside from that, price would be a factor. Obviously, Skechers is cheaper than Nike.

But if you take away the constraints, the public would choose Nike! Without a doubt, they will choose a brand promoted by famous athletes such as Kobe Bryant, Lebron James and Jeremy Lin.

Trust is one factor in making purchases, and this is not that different when it comes to organic search results. In search, you will also choose what you know and what you trust.

Thus, it all comes down to branding. Most SERPs display similar content, but results differ from depending on “Brand Recognition”.

What does the numbers say?

A research from Search Engine Land and Survey Monkey proves that over 400 consumers gave a unanimous answer when asked, “What is the most important aspect  in helping you decide which results to click on in a search engine search?”

When choosing what to click on, 70% of the surveyed consumers said that the most important aspect for them is “known retailer”.  Well, the research proves that it really comes down to branding.

We can conclude that: the greater the brand recognition, the more searchers would be clicking on them. Thus, this would mean more sales for websites.

Why would people pick an unfamiliar brand over famous one?

  • They want more answers
  • Results being unclear thus trying another click might do the trick
  • Brands might be overrated
  • Brand is unreliable and shady

Well, you cant blame the consumers for giving the first click to the top search result. They will automatically think that the 1st option is the best.

To sum it up, this is exactly search engine optimization is important. You need to earn a digital spot in search engines for your brand to be known. In order to earn that, you need to develop your website and earn the trust of the public. Once you do, you can never go wrong because people will always choose the brands they trust.

Ultimately, they will choose websites that they are familiar with. Widen your search opportunity so that your website will be on the first page of the SERPs.

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