What Is Local Citation Management and Why Is It Important for My Business?

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Originally Posted On: https://www.pwmedia.com/what-is-local-citation-management-and-why-is-it-important-for-my-business

As a small business, you understand how vital it is that customers can locate and access your company’s information. Whether your business’s name, the products and services you sell, or your location, having accurate and up-to-date information available and easily accessible online is essential to success.

In today’s digital-first world, one of the best ways to help potential customers and clients find your business is through local citations.

In short, a local citation is any instance of a business’s information publicly listed on the internet. Local citations will often include NAP — also known as a business’s Name, Address, and Phone Number.

NAP is vital to ensuring that local citations boost your business’s online SEO and increases the chance that potential customers and clients will see your company when searching for your products or services. The better your local citations, the higher your business’s information will rank in local search results.

As you are developing a digital marketing strategy, local citations are essential to your business’s success in reaching potential clients.

One of the most critical elements of your business’s digital marketing strategy should be robust SEO. Shorthand for search engine optimization, SEO is an overall digital marketing strategy that allows your business to rank higher in search engine results when someone searches for your business, products, or services without using paid advertising.

SEO also includes local SEO, which allows local customers, who are most likely to use your services or purchase your products, to find your business. Local citations are invaluable for these efforts. Recent studies have shown that searches for businesses “near me” have increased exponentially over the past few years. Whether linked or plain text, every citation will lend your business credibility and increase the level of trust search engines have for it. And while this is important for all businesses, it’s even more so for competitive local niches like lawn care, restaurants, and the skilled trades that depend on local patronage for sustainability and success.

Local citations are one of the best ways to boost traffic to your business online and in-person. If your local citations are listed in various places, you can bet that potential customers and clients will make their way to your site and brick-and-mortar location.

By ensuring that your NAP exists in as many quality locations as possible across the web, you can take control of your business’s brand reputation and recognition online. This includes both accurate and complete local citations in leading directories, as well as review sites.

When you have eyes on your local citations, you can also take advantage of engaging with reviews on popular review sites. This will help build your brand reputation as a business that is engaged with customers and has taken an interest in building relationships and rapport.

When it comes to local citations, there are two types that users will utilize. Knowing the difference between structured and unstructured citations can help ensure that you use citations to their full potential.

The more formal of the two citation styles, structured citations will always include a business’s complete NAP information and are typically utilized by online directories that point visitors to location information. Structured citations are used in online directories such as the Better Business Bureau and Facebook and review sites such as TripAdvisor, Yelp, Google My Business, etc.

As opposed to formal, structured citations, the other style of citation is unstructured. Unstructured citations will often appear on third-party websites that are not business directories, such as blogs, review sites, or news sites.

While they may include NAP, unstructured citations may also have bits and pieces of referential information to your business. While structured citations are the gold standard for ensuring your business information is available to users on the web, unstructured citations offer a broader opportunity for reach through small, one-off instances of your data being pasted across the internet for consumers to find.

A note of caution: the more unstructured citations you have out on the internet, the more likely you may run into a citation with outdated and incorrect information that you may not have easy access to correct. It is essential to keep a working list of unstructured citations that your company has across the internet. You’ll thank yourself if the time comes for updates.

If you are ready to get serious about ensuring that your local citations are working for you rather than against you, don’t skip any steps along the way. Here is a helpful checklist for consistently building and maintaining your local citations.

1. Use resources such as the USPS to ensure that you have the exact NAP information for your business, including the proper address fields and complete ZIP code. Once you have this, place this information in a safe and secure place so that you have access to it for copy/paste citation creation and updating.
2. Before creating new citations, find where your current citations are located on the web by searching for instances of your business through popular search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
3. If you discover any local citations that are outdated or incorrect, make sure they are quickly corrected.
4. Utilize local citation data aggregators (e.g., Data Axle, FourSquare, Localeze, Factual) to locate all possible locations where your business currently exists, and online directories where your citations should exist.
5. To better optimize your listings, make sure that your citations include photos, relevant information, and respond to all reviews your business receives.
6. Create a system for tracking your local citations as you discover and build them. If your NAP changes or a mistake is found, you will need to ensure that all local citations are fixed and updated to match current information.

While we have focused on the benefits of local citations, it can be beneficial to considerin persons involved with not taking advantage of this business tool. If you aren’t taking an active role in local citation development and maintenance, you give up control of your business’s information, accessibility, and, ultimately, your reputation. The key to using local citations is to take an active role in local citation development and maintenance.

Without taking the proper steps to ensure that your local citations are updated, maintained, and kept accurate across the web, you may miss out on valuable business traffic online and in person. If potential clients or customers cannot locate your business’s NAP online, they may simply move on to the next best option.

Worse yet, incorrect and outdated information can spread from one site to the next. Discrepancies will cause customer frustration or confusion — ultimately reducing your brand’s reputation and integrity.

Without the practice and experience in using citations, the process can be overwhelming and time-consuming. For businesses getting their feet wet in local citations, partnering with a local citation expert can be the key to success.

With a trained and experienced local citation manager for small businesses, you can work in tandem to develop citations based on guidance or allow the team to automate the process for you. According to local citation manager Moz, an average enterprise’s local listings can have duplicates across the web, ranging from 3,500–10,000. You can spend countless hours working through those citations — or you can trust local citation management experts to handle the process for you.

Ready to take advantage of the benefits of local citations, but not sure where to begin? PW Media can help. Contact us today to develop and implement a comprehensive and consistent strategy that can increase traffic and conversions while reducing the amount of money you spend on paid advertising.