Citations will help your business rank higher within local search. But what is a citation? A citation is when a website cites the contact information and or the address of a business. Think of a citation as an online review. When a third party website lists the name, contact information, and business address of your website; you just gained a citation.
Citations are important for your local business ranking within search engine maps. Citations help prove the validity of your business information. Thus the more citations you have the more Google and other search engines can be sure that your business is legitimate.
Why would search engines question the legitimacy of your business? Well it has become a well known SEO strategy to create a business listing with a fictitious address in order to gain a local listing where your business does not physically exist. For this reason search engines rank local businesses higher when they have many citations. Citations act as references for a local businesses physical location.
Great read: Local Business Strategy Guide
Get More Citations
The easiest way to receive more citations for your business is to create as many local business profiles as possible. Create business profiles on Yelp.com, Local.com, Yellowpages.com, Yellowbook, CitySearch, FourSquare, ThinkLocal, Biznik, CitySlick, MyCity, and MetroBot. By doing so you are in fact creating citations to support your Google, Yahoo, and Bing local listing as well as you are fostering customers and fans of your business to leave you online reviews. Although online reviews are not the same as citations (since a review doesn’t always include the business contact info), reviews do factor into your local listing rank position as search engines also reward businesses with many reviews.
The newest directory to gain online momentum is Thumbtack. Similar to Yelp, Thumback is an online directory and review site for local businesses and services. They do a better job of providing customers informed information to make a good purchasing decision by way of asking business owners a series of questions. Additionally Thumback is quickly earning higher rankings in Google for its smart leverage of link building. In fact business owners can increase their visibility in their directory only by gaining online reviews and linking back to their profile. Dinomite SEO is known on Thumback for providing Affordable- Premium SEO Solutions! Get a head start and get going on Thumbtack today!