What are citations? Citations are powerful links that give
credibility to a website. They are especially powerful in local
marketing.
Listen to Interview Here
According to DMoz
Citations Create Success for Local Businesses
"Citations are defined as mentions of your
business name and address
Citations are a large component of online ranking algorithms such as Google and Bing. Businesses with greater numbers of citaitons can rank higher than larger businesses with fewer citations.
The citations should be from well indexed portals like Merchant Circle, Superpages.com, Yellow Pages.com, Yelp, etc. These citations help consumers and the algorithms confirm you are who you say you are.
Citations are really improtant in niches, like construction services such as plumbing or electrical, where many service
providers don't have websites themselves. Without a web site, search engines rely on what information they can find.
Why should I care about citations? They are free high Domain
Authority links to your site. Some of the DAs are in the 80 and 90
range.That is a lot of link juice going to your website.
Where do I start? Start with your web page. Is it
accurate? Would you like to change anything such as punctuation or
abbreviations? This is the time to change it. Next claim the Google
business listing. Complete the listing with a bio, hours of operation,
pictures, address, descriptions.
Now here is where the magic comes in - take that same exact
information in the Google listing and the Website (they should be exact) and
put in other business directories.
So you say exact does that mean abbreviations and phone number and
Am I done after I list it in Yelp, Google, Yahoo, Bing and Manta?
If you think 5 or 10 is enough you are off base. There are many business
listing directories. There are directories based on geography, for type of
business, membership sites Chamber of Commerce or Pittsburgh Technology
Council, and there are general ones as well. I have seen over
160 citations for certain businesses.
They are all free listings and links? Oh yeah It is the
least expensive most powerful linking strategy for local businesses. Period.
So if I get messed up and have a few with different addresses and a few with different phone numbers that won't matter will it? Don't
forget Google is about relevance and if your citations vary with phone number
and addresses Google has a difficult time knowing which one is correct.
Google wants to show what is relevant and give its users a good
experience.
If Google served up a page with a bad phone number its
customers would not trust them as much.
Are there other places for citations? Citations can also be
bylines for answers or guest posts. It can be in video comments and
descriptions, forum signatures and press releases.
Don't forget to claim the listing in the directories. It
adds relevance.
Listen to Interview Here
Check out my by-line below and also Rich's, when you are a guest blogger, when you post in forums, you should always use one.
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This blog post can be reproduced in its entirety with the following information:©Joanne Quinn-Smith 2014, Monday Morning Marketeer™ 412-444-5197 Listen at: http://tinyurl.com/MondayMorningMarketeer
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This was reported as a reproduction of Monday Morning Marketeer™ done by Joanne Quinn-Smith.© Joanne Quinn-Smith 2015 All rights reserved.
