How Citations can help your local Business?

Citations are nothing but the mention of your business name and address on other web pages, even if there’s no link to your website. For instance, an example of a citation could be an online yellow pages directory where your business is listed, however, not linked to. One can also find Citations on local chamber of commerce pages, or on a local business association page that embraces your business information, even if they aren’t linking at all to your website. Citations are a vital component of the ranking algorithms in Google and Bing. With other factors being equal, businesses with a greater number of citations will possibly rank higher than the ones with fewer citations.

Citations from well-established as well as indexed portals help enhance the degree of certainty the search engines possess about your business’s contact information and categorization. Citations are specifically vital in less competitive niches, such as plumbing or electrical, where several providers don’t have website themselves. Not having much other information, the search engines depend heavily on any information they can locate. Citations also confirm that a business is part of a community. It’s not easy for someone to create a fake membership in the chamber of commerce or a city or county business index, or being written about in a local online newspaper or popular blog.

Citations can have a great impact on a local SEO company in Mumbai and beyond, as the listings help build a profile of your business across the web. Naturally, search engines expect to see that a company’s business details are consistent wherever they’re being displayed online and keeping your citations up-to-date makes sure that potential customers are finding the correct information about your business. When it comes to enhancing your competitiveness for keywords that target a particular geographic region, optimizing citations is a major component of well-rounded SEO services in Mumbai.

Locating a Company’s Citations

When you consider several places online where you’ve set up an account or listing for your business, the list can begin to feel endless. Some of the most common websites where your citations show up include.

• Google local (Google Maps)
• Yelp
• Bing Business
• Foursquare
• Chamber of Commerce Websites
• Facebook Business Page
• Niche Online Directories

A free tool is offered by Google which lets businesses view as to how their Google Local listing is being displayed. You could be at risk for losing your Google My Business account verification if you haven’t recently logged into your Google My Business.

Optimize Citations and Strengthen SEO

Whether you’ve gone through a rebranding campaign, shifted to a new location, or changed your contact information, it’s necessary to check up on your citations to ensure they’re offering current information about your business. As you ought to review your local citations, make sure that the following details about your business are optimized:

• Name of the company
• Contact Address
• Phone number• Category/Industry
• Hours of operation
• Description of business
• Link to your website
• Business photos
• Verified account

If you don’t have the most precise and up to date information about your business, weak citations can really hurt your chances of expanding your business.

Bal Rai is an Internet Marketing Consultant at eTrack Media, a leading SEO company in Redditch, UK.