TOP LOCAL CITATIONS
What is Citations in SEO?
Citations in SEO are an online reference to a business that features the business’ name, address, and phone number (NAP). Typically, when an SEO refers to citations, they are talking about a group of individual business listings on various sites.
Most citations take the form of an online business directory, but other types of citations exist.
While the minimum amount of information required for most citations is just a name, address, and phone number, most websites offer many more opportunities to add additional information.
Types of Citations in SEO
There are several different types of citation websites out there and many SEOs argue about which are more valuable than others.
However, for local SEO, the SEO community generally agrees that the following Citations are “must-haves.”: Google My Business (GMB), Bing Maps, Facebook and Yelp.
There are hundreds of potential websites to list a business online, but not all of them may be relevant for your business. That’s why citation categories exist.
There are many types of citations for many different types of businesses. Attorneys, healthcare, real estate, you name it; a category of exists.
While some citations have a higher domain authority than other, the category relevancy is more important than the domain authority. That’s why getting listed in these industry categories is critical.
Why Are Citations Important?
Improve Local Rankings – Citations are considered a ranking factor for local SEO. Having your business listed in trusted online directories sends signals to Google to improves their degree of certainty that your business exists.
The quantity of listings, the accuracy of your listings, and the quality of the online directories can affect how Google perceives your online presence.
This is why it’s important to pick your citations wisely.
Piggy Back Page One Results – Another underreported benefit of building citations is that some online business directories dominate page one of local search. Sites like Yelp and YellowPages tend to consistently rank high for most local searches.
So if you can’t beat them, join them! These online directories provide other opportunities to earn real estate on page one.
Earn Referral Traffic – Many people are loyal to different citations, such as Yelp for restaurants. Many foodies are trained to go to Yelp when looking for new restaurants before going to Google.
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