What are citation sites and their role in local SEO

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You might manufacture the best products or offer the highest quality of services in the world in your niche. You know this fact and so do the people you are in contact with. Will this be enough to achieve success in business globally as well as locally? No, it would not be enough. You need something extra. People should know about the products you manufacture. One way of engaging people is through the use of citations. Let us see what citations are and how citation sites can help in your local SEO campaign.

What is a citation?

In very simple words, a citation is any mention of your business on the web. It is a combination of your company name, address, phone number, and website address. It need not necessarily contain any link to your website.

We have seen that citations are one way to announce your presence in the market. There is a need to for people to know about the products or services you provide. Citation websites can help you a great deal in this respect. However, one should consider certain important points before using citations to promote their website.

Important points to consider:

One should be consistent with their citations. You would like to have a presence on the internet in your niche as well as the niches that have close connections with yours. Hence, this entails having your citations at various locations. Consistency is very important in this regard. Otherwise, you end up confusing the search engine bots to conclude they belong to different websites. This can divide your website traffic and leads thereby affecting your business overall. It is advisable to use the services of websites like Tribe Local to set up the right kind of citations useful to your business.

The role of citation websites:

What did you use to do to search for any business before the popularity of the computers and internet? Anyone would say that the Yellow Pages were the right solution. These pages contained the name, address, and telephone numbers of all businesses listed along with their niches. The local citations websites do the same activity. Hence, you can call the citation websites as the modern-day Yellow Pages.

What is the importance of citations in local SEO?

Anyone who does business knows that advertising or listing in quality citation websites is of paramount importance. Listing on quality citation websites increases the trust search engines have about your contact information and categorization.

Search engines like Google places great trust on these quality citation websites. Hence, the sites listed on such citation websites dominate the first pages of the search engines. Now, that is where the majority of the business comes from.

Major citation websites:

We furnish the names of certain popular and quality citation websites. We shall look at the role these websites play in local SEO.

1. Google Business:This is by far the most popular place where people search for business online. More than 75% of the population use the mobiles for searching for local business on the internet. A majority of people use android phones. Google is the default search engine in such phones. Therefore, a Google Business listing is a sure way of getting priority listing on the Google search engine.

2. Facebook: No one can deny the importance of social media in local SEO. Facebook is the most popular social media website. Listing your citations on Facebook can help reach a huge audience. You have a majority of people active on Facebook. Hence, these Facebook citations have great importance because of the higher reach of this social media website.

3. Yellowpages.com:People who have experience of searching for information on the physical Yellow Pages would find this citation website very useful. Yellow pages have a nice way of presenting information depending on the niches they belong to.

4. Bing – Places for Business:Not all mobile users access Google. You have people with iOS on their phones. They are more familiar with the use of web assistants like Siri. Siri relies on search engines like Bing to procure their information. Listing your citations on Bing / Yelp can help reach a huge chunk of people having access to iOS devices.

5. Yahoo Local:Yahoo is also a top search engine competing on an equal level with search engines like Google and Bing. This citation website has great popularity among certain sections of people. Having a listing on such websites can also help supplement your local SEO campaigns.

Inference:

We have seen the importance of citations and the advantages of using the services of citation websites. This is the best way of announcing your presence in the local market. The most important aspect of listing out citations is to maintain the consistency of furnishing information. This can help businesses to take advantage of the local SEO and thereby improve their ranking on the SERPs.

Shishir Kathurwar
Shishir Kumar Kathurwar is an ex-startup entrepreneur currently working on helping Business Owners in USA & Canada with their marketing needs. Kickstarted inbound marketing for multiple startups. Cracked the code of generating 750K monthly traffic in 10 months by using creative content. Launched inbound marketing of multiple Saas Startups in USA and Canada. Always up for challenges.

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