If you’re like most business owners, you’ve got your hands full managing the day-to-day operations of your company. With so many hats to wear and so many things competing for your attention, some of the more important elements of your business may slip through the cracks.
Consider how much time and effort your marketing team invests in attracting organic traffic to your site and what this means for your bottom line. Accurate and precise local business citations form an essential part of this process.
Walk with us as we explore why local citations matter and why you should consider investing in citation cleanup.
What Are Business Citations?
Whenever a business is mentioned on the internet, it is called a citation. This usually includes the name, address, and phone number (NAP), but many websites allow for much more. While citations are most commonly found in online business directories, there are other types of tools.
How Are Local Business Citations Helpful?
Local business citations are a brilliant way to increase your online visibility (for free), raise your search engine rankings, and boost brand awareness. They serve to:
- Increase website traffic
- Boost local foot traffic to physical stores
- Build trust with both new and existing customers
- Make it easier for people to find your business
- Ensure customers can contact you quickly and easily
- Highlight positive reviews for an enhanced reputation
In addition, local citations can help identify other businesses competing against yours for the same audience or customers.
How Do I Know if My Citations Are Complete?
Accurate online citations will never happen by accident. Therefore, if you are uncertain whether your citations are correct, complete, and working for you, you’ll likely need a business citation audit.
There are several paid tools available that can help you to collect and assess your business citations. The bottom line, however, is that there is no quick fix. The process of checking and entering your information requires manual intervention, even with the user-friendly Google My Business tool.
Cleaning Up Your Local Business Citations
A full citation audit and cleanup service through a reputable business is the quickest and easiest way to get on top of this critical SEO factor. This will include some or all of the following:
- A citation audit of your business
- Cleaning up unclaimed and unoptimized citations
- Ensuring correctness and absolute consistency of business NAP
- Optimizing your citations so they’re easier for people to find
- Claiming and verifying all of your listings so that you have control over them
- Identifying which citations are causing problems for your business
- Sending update requests to the companies responsible for updating problem citations
Search engines are in the business of providing accurate, verified, and up-to-date information. This makes optimized local business citations a key element in your SEO success.
Call in the Professionals
Calling professionals is wise if you don’t have the time or know-how to clean up and optimize your local business citations.
We understand exactly how vital the precise format of your company name and address is to Google. We know how to ensure the security of your data and the best way to propagate your business information online.
If you’d like to know more about maximizing your business citations, we warmly invite you to get in touch with our team.
