Are you ready to take the next step for your business and start getting your name out there?
If you are a local business, this step is critical. It’s like adding gas to your car to get you where you want to be.
Let me explain further.
Any time that you are looking to add your business’ listing somewhere, you are looking to create a citation.
No, this is not like the time you were speeding out of town to get your vacation started and got a citation (oh, wait, that was me).
This citation is actually your NAP (name, address, and also business phone listing).
Some of these NAPs link back to your website. For the sake of Google’s search engine crawlers, this is not a necessity.
What is necessary, however, is that there are plenty of NAPs out there.
A part of Google’s algorithm that determines search engine rankings actually calculates the number of NAPs a business has.
Fail in this department, and you find your ranking results woefully inadequate.
So, what are the three citations that you actually want to have?
- Google Business. – With Google owning 70+% of the search share, you really need to have a spot there. This name has undergone some changes over the years, Google Plus Local, Google Places, and regular ole Maps. No matter what the name of the month is, just make sure you have an optimized listing.
- Local Business Listings. These are other types of sites that allow a user to search by industry and category. The biggies are Bing Business Portal, Yahoo Local, Yelp, SuperPages, Manta, HotFrog, and a few others. Check what comes up on the first three pages of search for your industry and city and make sure you are in all of those. Then try to add a few more every month.
- Citations from other sites. Here is what most business owners don’t know. You can get a citation from certain sites that you submit content to. This includes image-sharing sites, press releases, and best of all video sharing sites, specifically YouTube. Yep, that’s the big secret. When you add a video to YouTube be sure to add your citation in the description field. And guess what? Google owns YouTube so you think they will take notice? You betcha!
One of the main things to remember here is that you want the citations to match as closely as possible.
If you use Road in place of Rd. or suite in place of ste then stick with that.
Don’t fret over it if the listing forces one way over another but when you can, make sure everything is the same.
Try to copy and paste when you add your listings or use an auto-fill tool. Just make sure they are as consistent as possible.
Of course, the best citations are those that are not only accurate but also given by third parties.
Yet how do you know who has listed you? Can you check on the accuracy of your listings? Yes, you can.
There are a number of services that handle this part of the business for you.
For example, BrightLocal allows you to find and track your citations.
You also have the options of finding the outdated ones and then correcting them.
Take a peek at your closest competitors and see where they are listed.
Isn’t it high time that you got your NAP there, too?
Other options include Whitespark Citation Finder, which also lets you hunt for variant listings, Yext, which allows you to focus on local searches, and Moz Local, which also ensures that your listing is adequately displayed online across the Internet as well as in local directories.
Neustar offers real-time information, which is crucial when you run a targeted marketing campaign.
Axciom gives you plenty of control managing your NAPs appearances while Infogroup is a customer acquisition giant.
If you need help with your digital marketing efforts, schedule a complimentary strategy session.
