Local Citations & Linkbuilding
There are tons of components that go into a successful local SEO strategy. But for digital marketers and business owners, building citations is one of the easiest and most effective steps to building a comprehensive local SEO program.
In this blog post, we’ll provide a beginner-friendly guide on the process of building citations and links so that you can begin optimizing your website and draw more customers through organic search results. Read on to learn the basics of citation building as part of a successful local SEO strategy.
What are Local Citations and Why are They Important for SEO
Local citations refer to online mentions of a business’s name, address, and phone number (sometimes abbreviated as ‘NAP’) on various directories, review sites, and blogs.
Citations on reputable directories and review sites like Yelp, Open Table, and Angies List, signal to Google and other search engines that a website is trustworthy and relevant to a particular locality.
With local search becoming increasingly competitive, having a robust citation and link profile has become paramount in improving a website’s search engine rankings and driving more traffic to a business’s website.
How to Find the Best Citation Sites for Your Business
We’ve all heard of the big business directories. Angi, Yelp, etc. And there are tons of lists and resources out that can point you towards some of the lesser known, but still important, national directories.
But to really maximize the benefit for local SEO, it will be important to find niche or local-specific directories. How do you find these?
One of the best ways to find these directories is to simply Google the keywords that you’d like to rank.
For example, restaurants can Google “best restaurants in [town].” The results page will contain a mix of restaurants but more importantly the directories, and review sites that cater to your niche and location.
From here, you can begin to either claim your business profile if it already exists or sign up for the website and create a profile yourself.
Finding the right citation sites can take some time and effort, but it is well worth it to ensure your business is seen by the right people in the right places.
Creating a Consistent NAP Profile Across All Directories
One of the critical elements of citation building is ensure your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) are the same across all directories.
If your business has been around for a while, chances are that some of the information has changed. Maybe you’ve relocated or altered the services you provide.
Most aggregators and directories don’t spend a whole lot of energy keeping their listings up to date so it falls on the businesses themselves to ensure everything is accurate.
Doing so will solidify the authority and trustworthiness of your business and increase your chances of ranking for the keywords that matter to you.
Citation Builder Tool
Of course, most business owners are pressed for time as it is. So most folks don’t have the time nor the patience to scroll through SERPs and creating profiles and verifying emails.
That’s why there are many tools and citation building services out there such as SEMRush, Moz, BrightLocal and many more.
Services like these will recommend directories and other sites to create new NAP on. And many will even create these profiles for you.
Wrapping up
In conclusion, local SEO is an important tool for any business to stay competitive and gain visibility in the current digital marketing landscape.
By building local citations and links with consistent NAP profile, businesses are able to improve their visibility on search engine results pages.
With these best practices, businesses will be on their way to optimizing their local SEO rankings for maximum online success.