Local Citations are business listings in directories and indexes with links back to your website. It’s a place where your business name, phone address and phone number (or NAP) can be found online.
The reason they exist is to help the business be found in searches on search engines, maps, GPS and personal assistant programs.
They appear on business directories (such as Truelocal), social networks (such as Facebool), or anywhere else a customer may be looking for a business such as yours. They
The other reason they are important is that they enable you to create your website’s online ‘footprint’.
So How Do I Build Local Citations?
#1 Submit to the Main Sites
The first step will be to list your business on the main sites. I will recommend to start with the following ones:
- Apple Maps
- Bing Places
- Yellow Pages
- Google Business Profile
- Yelp
A key thing to keep in mind is that you should always strive to have quality citations in mind. There is no point in creating a citation in every single site as it will not add any value.
In addition, always ensure to keep your NAP consistent across all your citations/directories.
#2 Flesh Out Any Other Sites You May Want
Once you have listed your business in these key citations, you can start including it on other sites. Here’s a list of the top 50 citation sites for australian businesses. As a rule of thumb, you don’t need to have a citation in all of them, so if you focus on the most popular ones that’s ok.
It typically means that if they are popular enough, your customers will have heard of them and may be already using them.
Furthermore, you will sometimes find that when you go to add your business to these sites, in some occasions there may be an incomplete listing that you can claim. If you end up claiming the listing, you will have a chance to actually include the correct NAP details and business descriptions.
After you have finalised with these core citations, you should then move to step #3.
#3 Submit to popular industry and local sites
The next step is to start ‘hunting’ your industry and ‘niche’ citation opportunities. These may include industry specific and location specific sites.
For example, if your business in in the accommodation industry you will want to make sure that its listed on TripAdviser. With regards to your location specific citations, you would want to consider registering in a Chamber of Commerce and other local business associations.
There are a few ways you kind find these citations but the easiest one is to simply head to Google and try searching for:
[location] chamber of commerce
[location] business directory
[industry] business directory
[industry] business listings
[industry/occupation] near me
These searches will show you some of the popular directory sites you should try to list your business too.
This is just one aspect of your local SEO strategy to consider. Generally speaking, building citations is a mix of using common sense and applying some creativity to enhance as much as possible the possibilities that are out there for your business online.
Once you start listing your business in this directories you will start seeing an increase in traffic and enquiries to your website.
So if you are having trouble building citations for your business, please feel free to contact us!
