If you are a business owner and wish to expand your presence online, you first need to build local citations. Now, you may wonder, what is a local citation? According to Semrush, “a local citation is any reference to your business online that includes your basic contact information: particularly your business name, website, address, and phone number (NAP).”
Why Should You Build Local Citations?
Building local citations is a necessary step in developing your online business because it helps potential customers find you easily. Once you create citations to your business online around multiple verified websites, search engines such as Google are more likely to recognize your business as legitimate and recommend it to their users when they look for the services you offer online.
Different Types of Local Citations
There are two types of local citations: structured and unstructured. Structured local citations appear in online directories where all business and their information are listed in the same pattern. Unstructured local citations include blogs, social media posts, and press report mentions. As you learn more about building local citations, you’ll learn how to build unstructured ones.
A Step-by-Step Guide to Building Local Citations
1. Build a sophisticated online presence.
The first step in building local citations is creating a website that accurately represents your business details. While this step seems natural to many business owners, some take it for granted. Make sure to include accurate information about your business: Check your address and phone number and update them if needed. Attach your business email to the website.
2. Get your business website listed on the top data aggregators.
After building a sophisticated website, the next step is spreading the word about your business. You can submit your website information to the top data aggregators, including Express Update, Neustar Localeze, and Factual. Since getting listed on these databases helps your customers find you more easily, it also helps your business grow faster.
3. Submit your business data to other core sites.
Depending on which country you live in and how active some social media platforms are, you may also want to get listed on some other citation sources. In the following, some of these websites are listed: Facebook, Google Business Profile, Apple Maps, Bing Places, Yelp, Yellow Pages, and Local.com.
4. Don’t forget about popular local sites.
After building a strong presence online and spreading the word about your business through submissions to online directories and databases, you need to check out popular local sites. This is where you are most likely to find your targeted customers. By filling out a submission request, you can ask for your website’s information to appear on the popular local site and increase your business visibility.
5. Unleash the Giant Within with unstructured citations.
This is the final step to prove the legitimacy of your business to your customers and to stand out among your rivals in the market. If you are a restaurant owner, pursue that respected food critic whose word makes or breaks a business and invite them for dinner at your place. Engage with your customers online and ask them to leave a review after receiving services.
Once you follow the steps above, and follow them one by one, you can see your online business grow in no time. But is that all? Continue reading this post to learn more about the issues you may still face even after building local citations.
Additional Points
Congratulations! You have built a sophisticated online presence and a functioning and well-running website. Your website is listed in some of the most trusted databases out there, which increases the likelihood that customers will choose you next time they want to make a purchase or use a service similar to what you offer. You even have critics and bloggers vouching for you. But is that enough?
How Many Citations Does Your Business Need to Grow?
One of the key questions often missed by SEO specialists and business developers while working on their online presence is this: How many citations does my business need to grow and continue to do so? The most important point in developing a business online is “consistency” – you need to be consistent with your efforts. You can’t just submit to some online forums and hope they lead customers your way. Keep on targeting these online directories and databases.
You can’t just rely on a good review from a renowned food critic for your restaurant forever – you need to continue to spread the word about your business. Next time, you may need to invite a food taster or an influencer to your restaurant. The fact of the matter is that when it comes to unstructured citations, you can never overdo it. You can never stop spreading the word about your business.
Therefore, the first thing to learn about the effectiveness of the citations you have built for your business is to learn how many of them you need and how many more you must work for. For instance, if you run a local inn in a town of not more than 2000 people, one Facebook mention or post a week on your Sunday Special Meal might do the trick! But you may have to think bigger if you are running a multi-faceted company with a global reach.
Final Point: Keep an Eye on Your Website at All Times
One of the most important things about building citations for your online business is constantly checking them for inaccurate details or misinformation. If you have listed a phone number for your business on your website, ensure it always works. If you have listed a business email, check the customers’ emails frequently and answer them as often as possible – you may want to hire someone to answer emails.
Check the link and information to your website on business directories and databases to ensure the link works and does not lead customers to stray. At times, your rivals in the market may manipulate the link to your website to lead customers to another website, and you need to watch out for that as well.
Building a business is hard, and creating an online business might even prove harder because many things can go wrong. However, if you carefully apply the points delivered in this post, you are guaranteed to see your online business grow in no time. If you still need more information, check out this video to watch a complete guide about building local citations.
