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Core structured citations

Search engines, local business directories, and apps offer a specific structure for building out listings. There’s a core set of quality platforms on which nearly any type of local business can get listed. These would include:

Acxiom

Apple Maps

Bing

Citygrid

Facebook

Factual

Foursquare

Infogroup/ExpressUpdate

Localeze

Superpages

Yahoo!*

YP

Yelp

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What are Online Business Listings for Small Businesses?

Showing up in search engine results is crucial to a local small business. With your best prospects walking around town with a handy device that allows them to discover all the services or products you offer with one quick question; your business can be found instantly. However, if you aren’t making the effort to ensure customers can find you, you’ll miss out. Online business listings, commonly known as “local citations”, offer you an easy and affordable way to create an SEO footprint for your business on the web.

Online business listings (also known as “local citations”)

Basically, local citations are web-based listings for your business, commonly in online directories. They are the foundation for your local SEO strategy because they create your business’s initial online presence which includes important details like your website URL, description of services, and hours.

Why is NAP important for SEO?

Most importantly, these listings include your business name, address, and phone number (often referred to as “NAP” – name, address, phone). This info allows search engines to know where your business physically exists and helps your business appear better in online searches in your city or local area.

When you get your business NAP in the right places online, your initial SEO falls into place. As a result, you can begin to appear in local Google and Bing search results — and in the local maps pack (maps listings).

The Importance of Online Business Listings for Local SEO

Now that you have a basic idea of what online business listings are, you need to understand why they are important for your SEO. In a nutshell, they create the initial online footprint for your local business. Right out of the gate, your small business needs to use local citations to survive because today, everyone uses their phones for their “near me” searches.

‘Near me’ searches are the queries we all make on a regular basis. “Where’s the best pizza near me?” “Where’s the closest gas station near me?” “Where can I find a dry cleaner near me?” Although the big brother aspects of cell phones can creep some people out, when consumers use geolocation on their phones/computers they make their lives easier because their searches become locally driven.  

Your online business listings will impact your rankings. The more local citations you have, and the more accurately and consistently they appear, the easier it is for search engines to find you. Google, and other search engines, will amass your NAP data and when accurate, decide they can trust you. It validates your data that in turn strengthens your ranking power. On the flip side, when you have a lot of inconsistent and inaccurate NAP info, your ranking can decline.

Since your citations can work for or against you, you can help both customers and search engines find you with a little effort up front and reap the rewards moving forward. Accurate online business listings equal higher rankings, more trust, and more phone calls. Business listings support your rankings, reputation, and revenue letting search engines know you exist.

Where to Get Your Business Listed

Building your online business listing empire is actually pretty easy as long as you know where you need to appear. Here’s how to get started:

Google My Business

This is the most important citation because all roads lead to Google. When you develop and manage your Google My Business (GMB) listing, you will benefit greatly because basically, almost every other web-based listing uses Google to collect your NAP.

Core Quality Platforms

Next, you want to go to the core set of quality platforms including:

Acxiom

Apple Maps

Bing

Citygrid

Facebook

Factual

Foursquare

Infogroup/ExpressUpdate

Localeze

Superpages

Yahoo!

YP

Yelp

Make sure you don’t have any duplicate listings and that every listing is consistent. Write out your NAP and copy it verbatim every time so there are never any differences from listing to listing.

Niche Business Directories

Some local and industry listings can really help build value for your online presence. If you are a hotel or restaurant, cites like TripAdvisor.com become important. For professionals like doctors and lawyers or specialty services such as contractors, it is worth looking into local opportunities. This can include things like your local chamber of commerce website, your local tourist website and also community sites.

Be wary of listings that charge. It makes more sense to see how you manage with the free well-known listings before you decide to spend money on listings, even niche listings. Also, search engines tend to trust links from nonpaid listings over paid directory links.

Niche listings are important because:

They tend to rank well in Google terms more specific to your business which means customer intent is geared towards a purchase as opposed to just “tire kicking”

They’re good to build up your online reputation as they often include reviews

Their links are more likely to be counted by Google to improve your SEO, as opposed to paid directory links

They cater to a more specific audience, which can often increase leads and/or conversions

Unstructured Citations

Look for opportunities to get mentioned on other citations that are not as obvious. This might be relevant for social media platforms, newspapers, blogs, sponsored groups, etc. Your own content on your blog and social media can also help build unstructured citations. This approach makes more sense than just contributing to an endless list of less valuable, low-quality directories. Unstructured citations work harder for you and are more likely to reach the right audience to drive more local traffic to your location or website.

Your Website

You’d be surprised at how many businesses miss the mark when it comes to their NAP on their own websites. Your NAP should be consistent throughout your website on every page, header, and footer where it appears. Your entire site should be audited to make sure it is consistent and if anything changes, do the audit again to make corrections.

Basically, your goal is to ensure you are providing the correct information, consistently anywhere your NAP appears on the web. I recommend you start with 25-50 citations and 10+ niche listings. However, the more your listings you can get in various directories, the better!

The Importance of Consistency

Although your customers will still find you whether you list your address as 123 Main Street or 123 Main St S (see image below), search engines are more fickle. In fact, NAP is one of the top five ranking factors according to the Moz Local SEO Ranking Report.

NAP consistency is a must for the following reasons:

Consumer trust:

According to Bright Local’s 2018 Local Citations Trust Report, more than 9 in 10 consumers are frustrated by incorrect information shown on online directories. After all, if your info is incorrect you could send a potential customer on a wild goose chase.

Lost customers:

The report also noted 9 in 10 first time visitors will look up your address so they can find you. If your address is incorrect, you just lost a customer.

Better referral traffic:

When you are consistent, you are trusted and will get more referral traffic.

Appear in voice search:

Google says voice search has become more popular. If someone is driving and gets a hankering for a burger, they’ll use a hands-free search. You want top ranking because they won’t have the option to scroll to look at other choices when driving.

Reliable map experiences:

Accurate NAPs equal accurate maps, so people find you more easily.

When your business listings are consistent, you rank better and also send your customers directly and easily to your bricks and mortar location.

4 Common Citation Problems

Citation problems can keep you up at night if you aren’t taking the time to manage your listings on a regular basis. The four most common issues include:

1. Old NAP information:

If you change your address or phone number and don’t update it, you will frustrate customers trying to find you. Your information has to be updated across all listings so you don’t send people to the wrong location or list a phone number that will make it impossible for them to reach you. Of course, as a small business owner it takes time to make changes to all citations, not to mention remember where your business appears. A good rule of thumb is to a) keep a list of all your listings and b) immediately update information on the biggest listings. The major listings will eventually filter down to the other listings.

2. Typos and mistakes:

It just takes a single typo on a single citation to throw your entire efforts out of whack. You have to read everything very carefully, so you avoid making mistakes.

3. Duplicate information:

Always check to make sure you don’t have any duplicate listings. By this, I mean two listings on the same directory. Not only is this confusing, but it can also make it harder to track if you have to make a change. Once missed you could be spreading incorrect info across other directories.

4. Using call tracking numbers:

Call tracking numbers are often used for businesses trying to see which of their marketing tactics generate the most leads and sales. Never use them on your citations as they can throw Google off.

The good news is there are tools available to help you track your local business citations to avoid these issues.

How to Check Your Online Business Listings

If you’re now in a bit of a panic about consistency for your business citations, don’t worry. There are tools that can help you check your business listings. Yext is an excellent choice. It allows you to scan your business and provides an easy to review visual so you can check for inaccuracies.

As data management tools go, Yext is perfect for tracking your NAP across multiple directories. It helps you align your NAP as well as other important information like your hours and what you offer. It automatically audits business directory listings and will update or replace incorrect info.

Another option is Moz Local.  It too is an automated listing management tool that allows you to improve your visibility on search engines. Your NAP will be consistent with a collective audit that allows you to improve your ranking.

How to Get Business Listings

I’ve provided the 4-1-1 on online business listings, so hopefully, you’re now on board and wondering how you can get your citations out there. You have some choices:

Do It Yourself:

Simply check out this directory list and click each one to get started. As mentioned above start with Google My Business to help get other citations populated correctly.

Citation Services:

Some popular citation services for small businesses include:

Brightlocal:

This is my favorite because there is a one-time fee for each citation and they manually build each citation. So, a real person sets each one up, not an API. However, this approach might take a little longer, but it is worth the wait.

Moz Local:

Moz continuously re-submits your listings and monitors them so your info remains accurate. It will delete duplicate listings permanently and they also offer listings alerts so you are aware of edits. Unfortunately, the dashboard only lets you respond to reviews on Google, which means you have to go to each citation to respond. Small businesses have access to less features and you might also find they are kind of pricey.

Yext:

I like this one as well. It is a very common and recognized tool since they’ve been around for some time. If you’re in a hurry, they are fast, and you can manage everything from one dashboard. This means if you update your address, phone, etc, it will automatically update all your listings in roughly 48 hours. On the downside, they require a monthly subscription, which is why I personally don’t use them or recommend them. I kind of prefer the idea of only paying for what I need!

Business citations are the foundation of your online efforts. This is especially true if you want to improve your organic rankings. With accuracy, consistency and attention to finding the best niche citations available for your industry and location, you will begin to see your local business appear closer and closer to the top-ranking position. With the addition of voice searches becoming more popular, you can improve your odds of being the top choice for “near me” searches for people out and about in their cars looking for your particular product or service.

https://youtu.be/ztrMmpYaZ30

from Michael Quinn Agency | SEO Specialist & Digital Marketing https://www.michaelquinnagency.com/what-are-online-business-listings/

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Local SEO for Small Businesses

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Local SEO for Small Businesses

The organic search results are already a tough place to fight for top rankings. Local search results?

Even harder.

Besides traditional SEO, there are a variety of local SEO ranking factors that small businesses and even larger franchises have to worry about when jockeying for the top positions for localized keywords.

These factors include:

Google My Business – category, keywords, location, etc.

Mobile Signals – mobile friendly site, clicks, check-ins

On-page optimization – title tags, meta descriptions, NAP, content

Link building – trust flow, authority, amount of links linking to

Off-page local signals – citations, listings,

Reviews – quantity, quality, source strength, variety

Social signals – localized facebook profiles, twitter and instagram accounts, etc.

Personalization – your search history, likes, previous reviews, etc.

In a nutshell, Google has compartmentalized these into three main local ranking factors:

Distance

Relevance

Prominence

So, how do you separate your business from your local competitors?

Some people lend more weight to different ranking factors, but as a safety net you should ensure that all of your boxes are checked.

Start with Google My Business

Start by heading creating a Google My Business (GMB) profile.

GMB pertains to each of the three local SEO ranking factors for businesses that Google outlined above, so this is really ground zero for your local SEO efforts.

Ensure that all of your information is correct and the category you use to describe your business is the most accurate.

You only need to create one GMB profile for your business and from there you can add additional locations if you’re a franchise.

Your address will dictate where you appear in localized search results as well as contribute to your business’ appearance in local packs and local teaser packs.

Since the closure of Google Map Maker, it’s extremely vital to get all of your business’ local information correct here as I would argue proximity is one of if not the biggest local ranking factor as you can see below.

The further away the searcher is, the harder it is to rank highly. Despite this, it’s important to track keywords in surrounding local areas so you know where your business has the most SEO clout.

The rest of the GMB information is pretty self-explanatory, but just to be sure you should run through this checklist:

Accurate addresses across all locations that are consistent with local directories

Local numbers for each location (don’t use 800 or 888 numbers)

Business hours

Category

High-resolution images of your products and locations (you can geotag them as well for an added local punch).

Get reviews from different sources

Once your Google My Business profile is up, you should find it in the SERP results for branded queries.

Google Posts

Businesses can now take advantage of Google Posts. Google Posts is a feature which enables businesses to share relevant content, updates, or offers on their GMB profile in the SERPs.

The content can come in the form of videos, images, links, or just textual updates that are designed for quick engagement with users.

For small local businesses, they provide a great way to post about special offers and information to users searching with branded queries.

Name, Address, Phone Number (NAP)

NAP is one of the strongest ranking signals that tells search engines your website and business is a possible solution to a localized query.

Given that your NAP will cover Relevancy and Distance – 2 out of the 3 most important factors – it’s extremely vital that you are consistent on these fronts.

NAPs are what will appear in citations around the web when other websites (like local listings) mention your business.

For businesses with one location, ensure that your NAP information is consistent and place it into as many local listing sites as possible.

If you have multiple websites then it’s a good idea to keep a database of every location you have and ensure that every detail is catalogued somewhere.

You can simply add in a new location as noted above with your Google My Business account.

Do not attempt to increase the breadth of your business’ reach by allocating your business to a larger area; they already know where you are.

You can create your NAP with the Local Business Schema.

Local Listings: Where to list your business and how to check consistency

Barnacle SEO will play a big part for small businesses in sending local signals to Google that other people have reviewed your business and that the information you’ve listed is consistent in different places.

The listings specifically will help with identifying your website as a local solution (distance), within the right categorical listings (relevancy), and they will help you garner more positive reviews (prominence).

The most popular citation sites include:

Facebook

Yelp

BBB

TripAdvisor

Yahoo Local

Yellowpages

And more

Once you’re present on a variety of different citation sites, you should run a check to make sure all of the information is correct on each one.

You can use tools like Yext to identify which local listings your business is showing up in and correct any mistakes you find.

Appearing in as many relevant local citations as possible will send good local signals to Google that your website is a solution for related queries in the corresponding areas.

Don’t just shoot for the top listings though; city specific listings are important as well as the national or worldwide directories.

It’s important to keep your own database of where your business has been listed so you don’t duplicate any of your local listings. This can cause the search engines to index the wrong data and affect your rankings for localized queries and local pack appearance.

A good way to avoid this is to run checks for your business’ name, address, and phone number individually when inputting your business into a new local listing.

This includes old phone numbers, previous businesses names, and former addresses. Even abbreviating something like Pine Tree Avenue to Pine Tree Ave. could cause you to miss a previous listing.

Once you’ve ensured that everything is consistent, you can double-down on your listings with each store location to garner more reviews and help your website’s prominence.

Reviews: Increasing Your Website’s Prominence

Your website’s prominence is how prominent or well-known your business is to your local community.

You and your friends probably have a list of your favorite restaurants you like to visit and recommend to anyone who will listen. Google does its best to emulate that with it’s prominence ranking signal.

Essentially, Google scours the web to see how people have rated your business and what they say about it. The more positive reviews you have, the more prominent your business is.

Some citation websites are more prominent than others, with the top 5 in the U.S. being:

Google My Business

Bing Places

Apple Maps

ExpressUpdate

Axciom

There are numerous places that Google will pull reviews from. However, some listing websites are more prominent than others.

Having high scoring reviews will not only help you rank for Local Packs, but they can also be featured in normal organic results as rich snippets reviews, which help with your click-through-rates.

Both review types will help convince customers to pay your business a visit, and the higher quality reviews you have, the more prominent ranking signals you’ll send to Google for local results.

If you’re collecting email addresses from in-store customers via your app, special offer signups, or redeemable gifts, you can automate reviews by sending out special offers in newsletters or in-store to customers who review your website online.

But remember, quantity isn’t everything. You have to really give them a positive experience for the reviews to shine.

Don’t be too afraid about a few bad reviews either, as they let Google know that the people reviewing your business are human and no business is perfect.

On-page Optimization

There’s a common myth floating around that once you optimize for Local SEO, your on-page optimization and content doesn’t matter as much.

This is wrong.

Valuable SERP real estate exists outside of standard Local Packs and your well-optimized content is your ticket to take up that space.

It’s a good idea for small businesses to extrapolate anywhere they can to send more localized ranking signals whenever possible to increase the breadth of their relevance to queries.

Headers and Titles

Make sure your homepage H1 and/or title tags feature your business name and city as they’ll lend weight to your local ranking.

Don’t just stop there though. You’ll need to be consistent with your SEO across your entire domain, so make sure to reference the larger metropolitan area if you can (if applicable).

Your appearance in Local Packs will depend on your actual physical address; however, you can still rank for traditional organic results by placing the larger metropolitan areas you typically service in your content.

Location Descriptions

Too often I’ll see a webpage that just lists store locations and stops there.

Instead of opening each location up to its own webpage, the links go straight to Google Map directions.

This takes away an extra opportunity for small businesses to rank for localized keywords with location descriptions.

A good location description would look like the following:

Located just off the 405 freeway in the beautiful Brentwood Area, our customers enjoy our finely brewed European coffee in the heart of West Los Angeles’ burgeoning college community. Sit outside on our patio and watch the sun set just behind the Santa Monica pier or get your coffee to go as you make the short walk to Hollywood Blvd.

Images

Small businesses can also add more photos of each location when each has it’s own page. This allows them to optimize the alt tags and filenames with city and state to rank for images.

Some businesses will geotag their images for more exact location matches, but it’s not a must as Google has gotten exceptionally good at recognizing the locations where images were taken.

URLs

To maximize their appearance in local searches, small businesses should create the relevant pages or subfolders for each location.

With the city and/or state in your URL, you’ll send stronger local ranking signals. If you’re going to change your URL structure, make sure to set up 301s to the new URLs so you don’t lose any traffic or link juice.

Meta Descriptions

Optimizing your meta descriptions with local keywords will help drive CTRs for people looking at your business in the organic results.

Meta descriptions are not direct ranking factors; however, a well written meta description can entice users to click and build up your on-page metrics, which do affect rankings.

Local Link Building

Building links from other local peers can build up your sites relevance and prominence ranking signals.

Small businesses should be looking for links that are from:

Locally relevant sites

Industry relevant sites

Highly authoritative sites

The goal is to push your website up the SERPs from obscurity to relevancy, and the more local signals you have the more locally featured your website will be.

Many small businesses don’t have the time or budget to hire a content creator. Most of the time they need to rely on loca articles and publications to feature their businesses for a variety of reasons.

How do they do this?

Small business owners can reach out manually to a few different local publications such as:

E-magazines

Local papers

Review blogs

Schools to sponsor kids

Local event hubs

These websites spend time and effort to give valuable content to their readers, so if a small business provides value and interest, they will feature it.

You can also post in job directory sites if you’re hiring. The links aren’t super valuable, but with enough they can give you a small boost.

Local Packs

Ranking in Local Packs is akin to winning the local SEO lottery.

This is where all three main local SEO factors come into play:

Prominence – user reviews are compiled here

Relevance – the category of your business is in conjunction with the query

Distance – displaying local results that are close to the searcher.

When a searcher has their location settings turned on for queries that contain near me, close by, closest, etc., Google will typically show the closest results.

However, when I searched for “pizza near me” on a desktop device with my browser’s location settings with allowed permissions for Google, I received a Local Pack result with three pizza restaurants.

As a direct search for restaurants in close proximity to me, I should expect that these may be the three closest pizza restaurants.

This was not the case.

There were approximately five other pizza restaurants closer to my exact location than the 1st local pack result.

When typing the same query from the same position on a mobile device, I got the exact closest three results in real time.

Location settings on mobile devices are more user friendly in terms of the user’s knowledge about whether or not they’re turned on.

Thus it’s more atypical that a searchers direct location is known by the search engines and they return more results based on a business’ direct proximity and not prominence.

When local queries are entered without the “near me” or “close by” keywords, more of the traditional local SEO factors come into play such as:

Address proximity – how close is it to the searcher

Citation consistency – having all citations listed exactly the same

Citation authority – how strong are the citation domains referencing a business

Your domain strength – it’s SEO prominence is a big factor here

Business category – its overall relevance to the query

On-page factors – bounce rate, time on page, etc.

You can track your appearance for the Local Pack SERP feature in any Unamo SEO campaign so you know when upticks in web or foot traffic may be incoming.

Social Media Profiles & Listings

Don’t forget that social media channels like Facebook act as their own citation sites.

Sections like Facebook’s Places list their own reviews, descriptions, and locations of listed businesses. Make sure you create individual listings for each location so you can separate business hours, special offers, and more.

Always link to and from your site with your profiles to foster more engagement and reviews. While the biggest ROI for small businesses usually comes from search, social media platforms have their own role when the search engines are overcrowded and competitive.

Remember, people still visit your website from your social profiles, which help with your on-page metrics.

If your business is on Twitter or Instagram, take advantage of local hashtags that your business can be found on.

Optimize as many social media profiles as possible for each business location you have to increase your local signals and engage with potential customers.

Conclusion

Small businesses attempting to solidify themselves as top ranking domains for local searches need to ensure that their local seo efforts are as coordinated as their traditional SEO efforts.

There have been too many documented cases of local businesses being buried in the search engines due to bad keyword optimization, inconsistent NAPs, poor business categorization, a lack of industry related links, or just poor service in general which leads to too many bad reviews.

Execute your local SEO as flawlessly as possible and you’ll at the very least ensure that you’re one of the top ranking domains in terms of categorizational proximity.

Monitor your SEO efforts for local and national results and optimize your website in the areas that require the most improvement.

This is another great pure SEO spam tool that still works in 2017

from BHSEO GUY's Feed http://ift.tt/2y7MznZ via IFTTT

[elenaturnerge]

Ranking your local business part V: Citations for local search

This is the fifth post in an 8-part series on how to rank your business for local searches at Google. Previously, I’ve listed the most important aspects that influence your local ranking, discussed how to get the most out of Google My Business, covered best practices for on-site optimization, and given you some ideas for building inbound links. Here, I’ll focus on another core local search ranking factor: building citations for your business. Learn why and how to do that!

What’s a citation?

Key citation attributes

Where to get citations

Data aggregators

Consumer directories

Industry directories

Local directories

Advanced citation building

Unstructured citations

Longer-tail industry and local directories

Paid citation services

Rule of thumb[print]

The place of citations in the local algorithm of the future

Summary

Get the Local Premium bundle and fully optimize your local site! »

Buy now » InfoI’d like you to think back 12+ years ago to early 2005. (Scary for a guy who’s 35 to acknowledge, but some present-day readers may still have been in elementary school!)

The Internet was a very different place. MySpace, not Facebook, was all the rage, and Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram weren’t even close to launching. There was no iPhone and there was no Android.

In a nutshell, the world was far less digital. When you searched at Google, it returned “10 blue links” of webpage results. The authority of those webpages was largely determined by inbound links.

But the launch of Google Maps in early 2005, and the subsequent release of the 10-pack in May 2007, portended something entirely different. Google Maps and the 10-pack ranked business listings, not websites, which required a completely different algorithm – an algorithm which remains distinct to this day.

After studying this algorithm in detail and discussing it extensively with colleagues like Mike Blumenthal, I wrote in May 2008 that “citations are the new links.”

Google now obfuscates much of the evidence that prompted my theory. But the underlying foundation of that Maps/10-pack algorithm still seems to be in place today in the Maps/3-pack interface that has succeeded it.

What’s a citation?

My premise in that May 2008 column was that while inbound links were the dominant ranking factor for “10 blue links” results, Google’s listing-based results couldn’t rely primarily on inbound links to determine rankings.

The reason? At the time, many businesses in Google’s business index didn’t have websites (some still don’t). Without a website, there’s nothing for other sites around the web to link to. So Google had to develop an alternative ranking algorithm that wasn’t dependent on links.

Based on information in a couple of Google patents highlighted by Bill Slawski, I thought about this secondary Google algorithm. I theorized it focused on the number of times Google’s spiders found references to a business across the web largely through mentions of its Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP).

I referred to these Name, Address, Phone number mentions as “citations”. This term appeared extensively in Google’s patents, and that term has largely stuck to this day.

Your NAP is basically your digital thumbprint – it’s how Google knows that a website is mentioning your business as opposed to someone else’s. The more times Google sees your thumbprint on reputable websites, the more confident Google is that it’s displaying a reputable business in its search results.

Key citation attributes

The core citation attributes are your Name, Address, and Phone number, along with your website. These attributes must be consistent anywhere you expect Google to pick up your thumbprint.

It’s why using tracking phone numbers is such a risky practice. It’s great to know where your incoming phone calls are coming from, but implemented incorrectly, tracking numbers can pollute your thumbprint. As can stuffing your business name with keywords because you think it will help you rank for those terms. 

Make sure your customers find your shop! Optimize your site with our Local SEO plugin and show your opening hours, locations, map and much more! »

Buy now » Info

The reality is that mixing and matching your NAP leaves makes it much harder for Google to match mentions of your business. Subsequently it’s more difficult to give your business credit in the form of rankings. It can also lead to duplicate listings if those mismatches appear in prominent enough sources. This is a headache that no business wants to develop (see Troubleshooting GMB Issues).

NAP consistency – which appears twice in experts’ top 10 individual local ranking factors – is especially important between your own website and Google My Business. The Yoast Local SEO Plugin makes this two-way consistency easy.

Where to get citations

Unless you’re blatantly spamming, there really isn’t a bad website on which to acquire a citation. But as with inbound links, certain citations are more valuable than others. Let’s take a look at the most valuable citation types below.

Data aggregators

In most developed countries around the world, Google has licensed existing databases to build its local business index rather than starting from scratch. In many cases, the licensors are the largest traditional yellow pages companies in each market. For example, Paginas Amarillas in Latin America, YPG in Canada, and Telelistas in Brazil have all licensed (or appeared to license) data to Google over the years. In the United States, the primary licensors have been Infogroup, Acxiom, Neustar/Localeze, and Factual.

Why did Google choose to license data from these companies? Because they tend to vet business information more stringently than the average web directory, through phone and mailing address verification. So Google has high confidence in the fidelity of the information they license.

These aggregators also license business data to other directories and mobile apps featuring local businesses, in addition to Google. In turn, Google crawls those websites looking for citations.

The Local Search Ecosystem

These aggregators are not perfect, however. Because they’re the original data source for so many websites, an incorrect Name, Address, Phone, or website attribute can be amplified many times over. This creates all kinds of incorrect and mismatched thumbprints. To reiterate, these mismatched thumbprints actually look like different businesses to Google. So it’s critical to get your information correct at the source – the data aggregators themselves – if you want to get credit for all of your thumbprints.

Many aggregators allow businesses to correct improper information (or submit missing information) via online portals. This includes Infogroup’s ExpressUpdate and Acxiom’s MyBusinessListingManager. Others are either not publicly-accessible (Factual) or are prohibitively expensive (Neustar/Localeze), in which case it’s best to use a citation submission service (more on this below).

Consumer directories

In addition to licensing data, Google does what it does best – crawls the Internet – looking for local business citations as well. Citations from authoritative consumer directories (such as Yelp or YP.com) carry much more weight in terms of helping your rankings than those from weak directories you’ve never heard of, like USCityNet or ABLocal.

For U.S.-, U.K.-, Canada-, or Australia-based businesses, Darren Shaw and Nyagoslav Zhekov of Whitespark have put together great resources. These resources delineate the top consumer directories on which you should list your business.

The key point here is that the quality of the citation source matters far more than the quantity of sources on which you’re listed. Despite the marketing of certain business listing services touting “dozens” or “hundreds” of directories, the reality is that there are only a handful of cross-industry consumer directories on which you really need to be listed. At that point you should move on to industry and local directories – which are largely outside the network of major listing services. It won’t hurt to be listed on longer-tail directories, but they’re just not worth your time or money.

Industry directories

As with inbound links, citations from industry-relevant websites help build the authority of your business. They also give Google a sense of the types of keywords for which your business is relevant.

Chances are that U.S.-based businesses can rattle off the important vertical directories in their industry. Sites like Avvo and Findlaw for Lawyers, Houzz and HomeAdvisor for contractors, WeddingWire and TheKnot for photographers, etc. Basically, these are the directories that rank regularly for the keywords that you want to rank for.

Businesses with an optimized thumbprint on these directories stand a better chance of ranking in Google for industry terms than businesses with a messy or missing thumbprint.

The team at Whitespark has also put together a list of the top industry directories. This is a great starting point, no matter what kind of business you are.

Local directories

Citations from local directories also increase the authority and credibility of listed businesses. As I mentioned in my inbound links column, the member directories of your local chamber of commerce and neighborhood business association are great places to start.

There may also be business listing websites that are popular with local residents. In my hometown of Portland, Oregon, the Oregonian newspaper maintains a strong directory at OregonLive.com. Travel Portland and Supportland also maintain robust directories, just to name a couple.

Seek out listings on similar sites in the towns and cities where your business operates. 

Optimize your site for search & social media and keep it optimized with Yoast SEO Premium »

Buy now » Info Advanced citation building

One of the advantages of citation building over other SEO tactics is that it’s relatively non-technical. Any business owner with enough time can be just as effective as an agency or expert SEO consultant. It’s simply not that complicated to get your business listed on major data aggregators, consumer directories, vertical directories, and local directories. There are a couple more advanced techniques that you can use to either go beyond the basics or outbuild your competition, however.

Unstructured citations

The four types of directory citations I covered above are all what SEO professionals call “structured citations” – sites on which NAP attributes are presented in well-structured format by the sites on which they appear, perhaps even in schema.org.

But mentions of your business name or phone number in general web content (such as a blog post or media article) may be just as valuable. Provided that there’s enough context for Google to identify that it’s indeed your business being mentioned.

In terms of identifying good prospective sources of these unstructured citations, many of the same linkbuilding suggestions I gave around finding interviews and guest columns apply here.

Longer-tail industry and local directories

If you’re lucky enough to operate in an industry and a geography covered by Whitespark’s lists of top citation sources, you can probably stop reading here. But if your business is in a country or market in which Whitespark has not yet done research, you can perform similar research yourself.

Simply search Google for [your keyword] and [your city] and note the directories that appear in the top 20 (or so) organic results. You can even get more specific and add the word [directory] to the end of your string, or [submit] to the beginning.

These are websites with a reasonable degree of credibility in Google’s eyes, on which it would be helpful to place your NAP thumbprint.

Through a different, but equally effective, mechanism, Whitespark’s Local Citation Finder can automate much of this research for you.

Paid citation services

For those local businesses with a moderate budget, there are automated submission tools. These can help get your thumbprint on many important directories in a matter of days (or even minutes in some cases).

My former product, Moz Local, remains an excellent baseline citation submission service for U.S. businesses.

Whitespark’s service is a great option for those businesses with slightly larger budgets or more tailored submission needs.

Rule of thumb[print]

Make sure your customers find your shop! Optimize your site with our Local SEO plugin and show your opening hours, locations, map and much more! »

Buy now » InfoIt’s important to be represented as cleanly and as completely as possible, as many places as you can be online. However, it’s important to weigh the benefit of citations against their cost – whether in time or money.

My overriding rule of thumb[print] when it comes to thinking about citation building is “be where your customers expect you to be.” That is, if you run a deli, and every other deli in your city is on Yelp, you probably need to be on Yelp, too. If you’re a guitar instructor, and every other guitar instructor in your region is on Thumbtack, you probably need to be on Thumbtack, too.

Being where your customers expect you to be also means you’ll be where Google expects you to be. Citations beyond these obvious websites provide diminishing returns, so be wary of that fact as you evaluate signing up with new products or services.

The place of citations in the local algorithm of the future

Citations are a rudimentary ranking factor in what is an increasingly sophisticated local algorithm. Because they’re relatively easy to build, most successful small businesses will already have a strong citation profile.

In other words, citations have basically table stakes in the Local SEO poker game. You need a strong citation profile to compete. But if your business already has a strong profile, it’s unlikely that building a few more citations will move the needle much on your rankings.

Increasingly, Google is able to assess the veracity of a business’s thumbprint from users of Maps, location-enabled Android devices, Waze, and other mobile collection devices (such as StreetView cars). Thus, the future competitive differentiators are likely to be different from the structured citations of today.

My colleague Mike Blumenthal has rhetorically posed, “are words becoming the new links?” Google’s algorithm gets smarter and smarter at detecting entity mentions that appear in natural language (such as those in interviews or media articles). This could blend the disciplines of citation building, link building, and social media even further.

Summary

Citations are your business’s digital thumbprint. “Optimizing” that thumbprint via business name keyword-stuffing or tracking phone numbers carries substantial risk to your local rankings.

Your thumbprint should appear on data aggregators, as well as prominent consumer portals, industry directories, and local directories.

My rule of thumb[print] for citations: be where your customers expect you to be, and you’ll be where Google expects your business to be.

Unstructured citations are likely to become more important in the future. More and more local businesses achieve the “table stakes” of basic directory presence.

Read more: ‘Ranking your local business at Google: Introduction’ »

http://ift.tt/2w7qHbG

[rodriguezthas]

Ranking your local business part V: Citations for local search

This is the fifth post in an 8-part series on how to rank your business for local searches at Google. Previously, I’ve listed the most important aspects that influence your local ranking, discussed how to get the most out of Google My Business, covered best practices for on-site optimization, and given you some ideas for building inbound links. Here, I’ll focus on another core local search ranking factor: building citations for your business. Learn why and how to do that!

What’s a citation?

Key citation attributes

Where to get citations

Data aggregators

Consumer directories

Industry directories

Local directories

Advanced citation building

Unstructured citations

Longer-tail industry and local directories

Paid citation services

Rule of thumb[print]

The place of citations in the local algorithm of the future

Summary

Get the Local Premium bundle and fully optimize your local site! »

Buy now » InfoI’d like you to think back 12+ years ago to early 2005. (Scary for a guy who’s 35 to acknowledge, but some present-day readers may still have been in elementary school!)

The Internet was a very different place. MySpace, not Facebook, was all the rage, and Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram weren’t even close to launching. There was no iPhone and there was no Android.

In a nutshell, the world was far less digital. When you searched at Google, it returned “10 blue links” of webpage results. The authority of those webpages was largely determined by inbound links.

But the launch of Google Maps in early 2005, and the subsequent release of the 10-pack in May 2007, portended something entirely different. Google Maps and the 10-pack ranked business listings, not websites, which required a completely different algorithm – an algorithm which remains distinct to this day.

After studying this algorithm in detail and discussing it extensively with colleagues like Mike Blumenthal, I wrote in May 2008 that “citations are the new links.”

Google now obfuscates much of the evidence that prompted my theory. But the underlying foundation of that Maps/10-pack algorithm still seems to be in place today in the Maps/3-pack interface that has succeeded it.

What’s a citation?

My premise in that May 2008 column was that while inbound links were the dominant ranking factor for “10 blue links” results, Google’s listing-based results couldn’t rely primarily on inbound links to determine rankings.

The reason? At the time, many businesses in Google’s business index didn’t have websites (some still don’t). Without a website, there’s nothing for other sites around the web to link to. So Google had to develop an alternative ranking algorithm that wasn’t dependent on links.

Based on information in a couple of Google patents highlighted by Bill Slawski, I thought about this secondary Google algorithm. I theorized it focused on the number of times Google’s spiders found references to a business across the web largely through mentions of its Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP).

I referred to these Name, Address, Phone number mentions as “citations”. This term appeared extensively in Google’s patents, and that term has largely stuck to this day.

Your NAP is basically your digital thumbprint – it’s how Google knows that a website is mentioning your business as opposed to someone else’s. The more times Google sees your thumbprint on reputable websites, the more confident Google is that it’s displaying a reputable business in its search results.

Key citation attributes

The core citation attributes are your Name, Address, and Phone number, along with your website. These attributes must be consistent anywhere you expect Google to pick up your thumbprint.

It’s why using tracking phone numbers is such a risky practice. It’s great to know where your incoming phone calls are coming from, but implemented incorrectly, tracking numbers can pollute your thumbprint. As can stuffing your business name with keywords because you think it will help you rank for those terms. 

Make sure your customers find your shop! Optimize your site with our Local SEO plugin and show your opening hours, locations, map and much more! »

Buy now » Info

The reality is that mixing and matching your NAP leaves makes it much harder for Google to match mentions of your business. Subsequently it’s more difficult to give your business credit in the form of rankings. It can also lead to duplicate listings if those mismatches appear in prominent enough sources. This is a headache that no business wants to develop (see Troubleshooting GMB Issues).

NAP consistency – which appears twice in experts’ top 10 individual local ranking factors – is especially important between your own website and Google My Business. The Yoast Local SEO Plugin makes this two-way consistency easy.

Where to get citations

Unless you’re blatantly spamming, there really isn’t a bad website on which to acquire a citation. But as with inbound links, certain citations are more valuable than others. Let’s take a look at the most valuable citation types below.

Data aggregators

In most developed countries around the world, Google has licensed existing databases to build its local business index rather than starting from scratch. In many cases, the licensors are the largest traditional yellow pages companies in each market. For example, Paginas Amarillas in Latin America, YPG in Canada, and Telelistas in Brazil have all licensed (or appeared to license) data to Google over the years. In the United States, the primary licensors have been Infogroup, Acxiom, Neustar/Localeze, and Factual.

Why did Google choose to license data from these companies? Because they tend to vet business information more stringently than the average web directory, through phone and mailing address verification. So Google has high confidence in the fidelity of the information they license.

These aggregators also license business data to other directories and mobile apps featuring local businesses, in addition to Google. In turn, Google crawls those websites looking for citations.

The Local Search Ecosystem

These aggregators are not perfect, however. Because they’re the original data source for so many websites, an incorrect Name, Address, Phone, or website attribute can be amplified many times over. This creates all kinds of incorrect and mismatched thumbprints. To reiterate, these mismatched thumbprints actually look like different businesses to Google. So it’s critical to get your information correct at the source – the data aggregators themselves – if you want to get credit for all of your thumbprints.

Many aggregators allow businesses to correct improper information (or submit missing information) via online portals. This includes Infogroup’s ExpressUpdate and Acxiom’s MyBusinessListingManager. Others are either not publicly-accessible (Factual) or are prohibitively expensive (Neustar/Localeze), in which case it’s best to use a citation submission service (more on this below).

Consumer directories

In addition to licensing data, Google does what it does best – crawls the Internet – looking for local business citations as well. Citations from authoritative consumer directories (such as Yelp or YP.com) carry much more weight in terms of helping your rankings than those from weak directories you’ve never heard of, like USCityNet or ABLocal.

For U.S.-, U.K.-, Canada-, or Australia-based businesses, Darren Shaw and Nyagoslav Zhekov of Whitespark have put together great resources. These resources delineate the top consumer directories on which you should list your business.

The key point here is that the quality of the citation source matters far more than the quantity of sources on which you’re listed. Despite the marketing of certain business listing services touting “dozens” or “hundreds” of directories, the reality is that there are only a handful of cross-industry consumer directories on which you really need to be listed. At that point you should move on to industry and local directories – which are largely outside the network of major listing services. It won’t hurt to be listed on longer-tail directories, but they’re just not worth your time or money.

Industry directories

As with inbound links, citations from industry-relevant websites help build the authority of your business. They also give Google a sense of the types of keywords for which your business is relevant.

Chances are that U.S.-based businesses can rattle off the important vertical directories in their industry. Sites like Avvo and Findlaw for Lawyers, Houzz and HomeAdvisor for contractors, WeddingWire and TheKnot for photographers, etc. Basically, these are the directories that rank regularly for the keywords that you want to rank for.

Businesses with an optimized thumbprint on these directories stand a better chance of ranking in Google for industry terms than businesses with a messy or missing thumbprint.

The team at Whitespark has also put together a list of the top industry directories. This is a great starting point, no matter what kind of business you are.

Local directories

Citations from local directories also increase the authority and credibility of listed businesses. As I mentioned in my inbound links column, the member directories of your local chamber of commerce and neighborhood business association are great places to start.

There may also be business listing websites that are popular with local residents. In my hometown of Portland, Oregon, the Oregonian newspaper maintains a strong directory at OregonLive.com. Travel Portland and Supportland also maintain robust directories, just to name a couple.

Seek out listings on similar sites in the towns and cities where your business operates. 

Optimize your site for search & social media and keep it optimized with Yoast SEO Premium »

Buy now » Info Advanced citation building

One of the advantages of citation building over other SEO tactics is that it’s relatively non-technical. Any business owner with enough time can be just as effective as an agency or expert SEO consultant. It’s simply not that complicated to get your business listed on major data aggregators, consumer directories, vertical directories, and local directories. There are a couple more advanced techniques that you can use to either go beyond the basics or outbuild your competition, however.

Unstructured citations

The four types of directory citations I covered above are all what SEO professionals call “structured citations” – sites on which NAP attributes are presented in well-structured format by the sites on which they appear, perhaps even in schema.org.

But mentions of your business name or phone number in general web content (such as a blog post or media article) may be just as valuable. Provided that there’s enough context for Google to identify that it’s indeed your business being mentioned.

In terms of identifying good prospective sources of these unstructured citations, many of the same linkbuilding suggestions I gave around finding interviews and guest columns apply here.

Longer-tail industry and local directories

If you’re lucky enough to operate in an industry and a geography covered by Whitespark’s lists of top citation sources, you can probably stop reading here. But if your business is in a country or market in which Whitespark has not yet done research, you can perform similar research yourself.

Simply search Google for [your keyword] and [your city] and note the directories that appear in the top 20 (or so) organic results. You can even get more specific and add the word [directory] to the end of your string, or [submit] to the beginning.

These are websites with a reasonable degree of credibility in Google’s eyes, on which it would be helpful to place your NAP thumbprint.

Through a different, but equally effective, mechanism, Whitespark’s Local Citation Finder can automate much of this research for you.

Paid citation services

For those local businesses with a moderate budget, there are automated submission tools. These can help get your thumbprint on many important directories in a matter of days (or even minutes in some cases).

My former product, Moz Local, remains an excellent baseline citation submission service for U.S. businesses.

Whitespark’s service is a great option for those businesses with slightly larger budgets or more tailored submission needs.

Rule of thumb[print]

Make sure your customers find your shop! Optimize your site with our Local SEO plugin and show your opening hours, locations, map and much more! »

Buy now » InfoIt’s important to be represented as cleanly and as completely as possible, as many places as you can be online. However, it’s important to weigh the benefit of citations against their cost – whether in time or money.

My overriding rule of thumb[print] when it comes to thinking about citation building is “be where your customers expect you to be.” That is, if you run a deli, and every other deli in your city is on Yelp, you probably need to be on Yelp, too. If you’re a guitar instructor, and every other guitar instructor in your region is on Thumbtack, you probably need to be on Thumbtack, too.

Being where your customers expect you to be also means you’ll be where Google expects you to be. Citations beyond these obvious websites provide diminishing returns, so be wary of that fact as you evaluate signing up with new products or services.

The place of citations in the local algorithm of the future

Citations are a rudimentary ranking factor in what is an increasingly sophisticated local algorithm. Because they’re relatively easy to build, most successful small businesses will already have a strong citation profile.

In other words, citations have basically table stakes in the Local SEO poker game. You need a strong citation profile to compete. But if your business already has a strong profile, it’s unlikely that building a few more citations will move the needle much on your rankings.

Increasingly, Google is able to assess the veracity of a business’s thumbprint from users of Maps, location-enabled Android devices, Waze, and other mobile collection devices (such as StreetView cars). Thus, the future competitive differentiators are likely to be different from the structured citations of today.

My colleague Mike Blumenthal has rhetorically posed, “are words becoming the new links?” Google’s algorithm gets smarter and smarter at detecting entity mentions that appear in natural language (such as those in interviews or media articles). This could blend the disciplines of citation building, link building, and social media even further.

Summary

Citations are your business’s digital thumbprint. “Optimizing” that thumbprint via business name keyword-stuffing or tracking phone numbers carries substantial risk to your local rankings.

Your thumbprint should appear on data aggregators, as well as prominent consumer portals, industry directories, and local directories.

My rule of thumb[print] for citations: be where your customers expect you to be, and you’ll be where Google expects your business to be.

Unstructured citations are likely to become more important in the future. More and more local businesses achieve the “table stakes” of basic directory presence.

Read more: ‘Ranking your local business at Google: Introduction’ »

http://ift.tt/2w7qHbG

[jassifoodie]

for more details  @jassi foodie  *Indian Nationals registered with Indian Embassy / CG website can book at normal Repatriation Fares on our website or through authorised UAE travel agents. @DGCAIndia #ExpressUpdate #Covid19Update #FlyWithIX #AirIndiaExpress More information- @jassi foodie  https://www.instagram.com/p/CCtqG1GpnYH/?igshid=1nxd9kf9zgr7j

[evanstheodoredqe]

Ranking your local business part V: Citations for local search

This is the fifth post in an 8-part series on how to rank your business for local searches at Google. Previously, I’ve listed the most important aspects that influence your local ranking, discussed how to get the most out of Google My Business, covered best practices for on-site optimization, and given you some ideas for building inbound links. Here, I’ll focus on another core local search ranking factor: building citations for your business. Learn why and how to do that!

What’s a citation?

Key citation attributes

Where to get citations

Data aggregators

Consumer directories

Industry directories

Local directories

Advanced citation building

Unstructured citations

Longer-tail industry and local directories

Paid citation services

Rule of thumb[print]

The place of citations in the local algorithm of the future

Summary

Get the Local Premium bundle and fully optimize your local site! »

Buy now » InfoI’d like you to think back 12+ years ago to early 2005. (Scary for a guy who’s 35 to acknowledge, but some present-day readers may still have been in elementary school!)

The Internet was a very different place. MySpace, not Facebook, was all the rage, and Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram weren’t even close to launching. There was no iPhone and there was no Android.

In a nutshell, the world was far less digital. When you searched at Google, it returned “10 blue links” of webpage results. The authority of those webpages was largely determined by inbound links.

But the launch of Google Maps in early 2005, and the subsequent release of the 10-pack in May 2007, portended something entirely different. Google Maps and the 10-pack ranked business listings, not websites, which required a completely different algorithm – an algorithm which remains distinct to this day.

After studying this algorithm in detail and discussing it extensively with colleagues like Mike Blumenthal, I wrote in May 2008 that “citations are the new links.”

Google now obfuscates much of the evidence that prompted my theory. But the underlying foundation of that Maps/10-pack algorithm still seems to be in place today in the Maps/3-pack interface that has succeeded it.

What’s a citation?

My premise in that May 2008 column was that while inbound links were the dominant ranking factor for “10 blue links” results, Google’s listing-based results couldn’t rely primarily on inbound links to determine rankings.

The reason? At the time, many businesses in Google’s business index didn’t have websites (some still don’t). Without a website, there’s nothing for other sites around the web to link to. So Google had to develop an alternative ranking algorithm that wasn’t dependent on links.

Based on information in a couple of Google patents highlighted by Bill Slawski, I thought about this secondary Google algorithm. I theorized it focused on the number of times Google’s spiders found references to a business across the web largely through mentions of its Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP).

I referred to these Name, Address, Phone number mentions as “citations”. This term appeared extensively in Google’s patents, and that term has largely stuck to this day.

Your NAP is basically your digital thumbprint – it’s how Google knows that a website is mentioning your business as opposed to someone else’s. The more times Google sees your thumbprint on reputable websites, the more confident Google is that it’s displaying a reputable business in its search results.

Key citation attributes

The core citation attributes are your Name, Address, and Phone number, along with your website. These attributes must be consistent anywhere you expect Google to pick up your thumbprint.

It’s why using tracking phone numbers is such a risky practice. It’s great to know where your incoming phone calls are coming from, but implemented incorrectly, tracking numbers can pollute your thumbprint. As can stuffing your business name with keywords because you think it will help you rank for those terms. 

Make sure your customers find your shop! Optimize your site with our Local SEO plugin and show your opening hours, locations, map and much more! »

Buy now » Info

The reality is that mixing and matching your NAP leaves makes it much harder for Google to match mentions of your business. Subsequently it’s more difficult to give your business credit in the form of rankings. It can also lead to duplicate listings if those mismatches appear in prominent enough sources. This is a headache that no business wants to develop (see Troubleshooting GMB Issues).

NAP consistency – which appears twice in experts’ top 10 individual local ranking factors – is especially important between your own website and Google My Business. The Yoast Local SEO Plugin makes this two-way consistency easy.

Where to get citations

Unless you’re blatantly spamming, there really isn’t a bad website on which to acquire a citation. But as with inbound links, certain citations are more valuable than others. Let’s take a look at the most valuable citation types below.

Data aggregators

In most developed countries around the world, Google has licensed existing databases to build its local business index rather than starting from scratch. In many cases, the licensors are the largest traditional yellow pages companies in each market. For example, Paginas Amarillas in Latin America, YPG in Canada, and Telelistas in Brazil have all licensed (or appeared to license) data to Google over the years. In the United States, the primary licensors have been Infogroup, Acxiom, Neustar/Localeze, and Factual.

Why did Google choose to license data from these companies? Because they tend to vet business information more stringently than the average web directory, through phone and mailing address verification. So Google has high confidence in the fidelity of the information they license.

These aggregators also license business data to other directories and mobile apps featuring local businesses, in addition to Google. In turn, Google crawls those websites looking for citations.

The Local Search Ecosystem

These aggregators are not perfect, however. Because they’re the original data source for so many websites, an incorrect Name, Address, Phone, or website attribute can be amplified many times over. This creates all kinds of incorrect and mismatched thumbprints. To reiterate, these mismatched thumbprints actually look like different businesses to Google. So it’s critical to get your information correct at the source – the data aggregators themselves – if you want to get credit for all of your thumbprints.

Many aggregators allow businesses to correct improper information (or submit missing information) via online portals. This includes Infogroup’s ExpressUpdate and Acxiom’s MyBusinessListingManager. Others are either not publicly-accessible (Factual) or are prohibitively expensive (Neustar/Localeze), in which case it’s best to use a citation submission service (more on this below).

Consumer directories

In addition to licensing data, Google does what it does best – crawls the Internet – looking for local business citations as well. Citations from authoritative consumer directories (such as Yelp or YP.com) carry much more weight in terms of helping your rankings than those from weak directories you’ve never heard of, like USCityNet or ABLocal.

For U.S.-, U.K.-, Canada-, or Australia-based businesses, Darren Shaw and Nyagoslav Zhekov of Whitespark have put together great resources. These resources delineate the top consumer directories on which you should list your business.

The key point here is that the quality of the citation source matters far more than the quantity of sources on which you’re listed. Despite the marketing of certain business listing services touting “dozens” or “hundreds” of directories, the reality is that there are only a handful of cross-industry consumer directories on which you really need to be listed. At that point you should move on to industry and local directories – which are largely outside the network of major listing services. It won’t hurt to be listed on longer-tail directories, but they’re just not worth your time or money.

Industry directories

As with inbound links, citations from industry-relevant websites help build the authority of your business. They also give Google a sense of the types of keywords for which your business is relevant.

Chances are that U.S.-based businesses can rattle off the important vertical directories in their industry. Sites like Avvo and Findlaw for Lawyers, Houzz and HomeAdvisor for contractors, WeddingWire and TheKnot for photographers, etc. Basically, these are the directories that rank regularly for the keywords that you want to rank for.

Businesses with an optimized thumbprint on these directories stand a better chance of ranking in Google for industry terms than businesses with a messy or missing thumbprint.

The team at Whitespark has also put together a list of the top industry directories. This is a great starting point, no matter what kind of business you are.

Local directories

Citations from local directories also increase the authority and credibility of listed businesses. As I mentioned in my inbound links column, the member directories of your local chamber of commerce and neighborhood business association are great places to start.

There may also be business listing websites that are popular with local residents. In my hometown of Portland, Oregon, the Oregonian newspaper maintains a strong directory at OregonLive.com. Travel Portland and Supportland also maintain robust directories, just to name a couple.

Seek out listings on similar sites in the towns and cities where your business operates. 

Optimize your site for search & social media and keep it optimized with Yoast SEO Premium »

Buy now » Info Advanced citation building

One of the advantages of citation building over other SEO tactics is that it’s relatively non-technical. Any business owner with enough time can be just as effective as an agency or expert SEO consultant. It’s simply not that complicated to get your business listed on major data aggregators, consumer directories, vertical directories, and local directories. There are a couple more advanced techniques that you can use to either go beyond the basics or outbuild your competition, however.

Unstructured citations

The four types of directory citations I covered above are all what SEO professionals call “structured citations” – sites on which NAP attributes are presented in well-structured format by the sites on which they appear, perhaps even in schema.org.

But mentions of your business name or phone number in general web content (such as a blog post or media article) may be just as valuable. Provided that there’s enough context for Google to identify that it’s indeed your business being mentioned.

In terms of identifying good prospective sources of these unstructured citations, many of the same linkbuilding suggestions I gave around finding interviews and guest columns apply here.

Longer-tail industry and local directories

If you’re lucky enough to operate in an industry and a geography covered by Whitespark’s lists of top citation sources, you can probably stop reading here. But if your business is in a country or market in which Whitespark has not yet done research, you can perform similar research yourself.

Simply search Google for [your keyword] and [your city] and note the directories that appear in the top 20 (or so) organic results. You can even get more specific and add the word [directory] to the end of your string, or [submit] to the beginning.

These are websites with a reasonable degree of credibility in Google’s eyes, on which it would be helpful to place your NAP thumbprint.

Through a different, but equally effective, mechanism, Whitespark’s Local Citation Finder can automate much of this research for you.

Paid citation services

For those local businesses with a moderate budget, there are automated submission tools. These can help get your thumbprint on many important directories in a matter of days (or even minutes in some cases).

My former product, Moz Local, remains an excellent baseline citation submission service for U.S. businesses.

Whitespark’s service is a great option for those businesses with slightly larger budgets or more tailored submission needs.

Rule of thumb[print]

Make sure your customers find your shop! Optimize your site with our Local SEO plugin and show your opening hours, locations, map and much more! »

Buy now » InfoIt’s important to be represented as cleanly and as completely as possible, as many places as you can be online. However, it’s important to weigh the benefit of citations against their cost – whether in time or money.

My overriding rule of thumb[print] when it comes to thinking about citation building is “be where your customers expect you to be.” That is, if you run a deli, and every other deli in your city is on Yelp, you probably need to be on Yelp, too. If you’re a guitar instructor, and every other guitar instructor in your region is on Thumbtack, you probably need to be on Thumbtack, too.

Being where your customers expect you to be also means you’ll be where Google expects you to be. Citations beyond these obvious websites provide diminishing returns, so be wary of that fact as you evaluate signing up with new products or services.

The place of citations in the local algorithm of the future

Citations are a rudimentary ranking factor in what is an increasingly sophisticated local algorithm. Because they’re relatively easy to build, most successful small businesses will already have a strong citation profile.

In other words, citations have basically table stakes in the Local SEO poker game. You need a strong citation profile to compete. But if your business already has a strong profile, it’s unlikely that building a few more citations will move the needle much on your rankings.

Increasingly, Google is able to assess the veracity of a business’s thumbprint from users of Maps, location-enabled Android devices, Waze, and other mobile collection devices (such as StreetView cars). Thus, the future competitive differentiators are likely to be different from the structured citations of today.

My colleague Mike Blumenthal has rhetorically posed, “are words becoming the new links?” Google’s algorithm gets smarter and smarter at detecting entity mentions that appear in natural language (such as those in interviews or media articles). This could blend the disciplines of citation building, link building, and social media even further.

Summary

Citations are your business’s digital thumbprint. “Optimizing” that thumbprint via business name keyword-stuffing or tracking phone numbers carries substantial risk to your local rankings.

Your thumbprint should appear on data aggregators, as well as prominent consumer portals, industry directories, and local directories.

My rule of thumb[print] for citations: be where your customers expect you to be, and you’ll be where Google expects your business to be.

Unstructured citations are likely to become more important in the future. More and more local businesses achieve the “table stakes” of basic directory presence.

Read more: ‘Ranking your local business at Google: Introduction’ »

http://ift.tt/2w7qHbG

[mariathaterh]

Ranking your local business part V: Citations for local search

This is the fifth post in an 8-part series on how to rank your business for local searches at Google. Previously, I’ve listed the most important aspects that influence your local ranking, discussed how to get the most out of Google My Business, covered best practices for on-site optimization, and given you some ideas for building inbound links. Here, I’ll focus on another core local search ranking factor: building citations for your business. Learn why and how to do that!

What’s a citation?

Key citation attributes

Where to get citations

Data aggregators

Consumer directories

Industry directories

Local directories

Advanced citation building

Unstructured citations

Longer-tail industry and local directories

Paid citation services

Rule of thumb[print]

The place of citations in the local algorithm of the future

Summary

Get the Local Premium bundle and fully optimize your local site! »

Buy now » InfoI’d like you to think back 12+ years ago to early 2005. (Scary for a guy who’s 35 to acknowledge, but some present-day readers may still have been in elementary school!)

The Internet was a very different place. MySpace, not Facebook, was all the rage, and Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram weren’t even close to launching. There was no iPhone and there was no Android.

In a nutshell, the world was far less digital. When you searched at Google, it returned “10 blue links” of webpage results. The authority of those webpages was largely determined by inbound links.

But the launch of Google Maps in early 2005, and the subsequent release of the 10-pack in May 2007, portended something entirely different. Google Maps and the 10-pack ranked business listings, not websites, which required a completely different algorithm – an algorithm which remains distinct to this day.

After studying this algorithm in detail and discussing it extensively with colleagues like Mike Blumenthal, I wrote in May 2008 that “citations are the new links.”

Google now obfuscates much of the evidence that prompted my theory. But the underlying foundation of that Maps/10-pack algorithm still seems to be in place today in the Maps/3-pack interface that has succeeded it.

What’s a citation?

My premise in that May 2008 column was that while inbound links were the dominant ranking factor for “10 blue links” results, Google’s listing-based results couldn’t rely primarily on inbound links to determine rankings.

The reason? At the time, many businesses in Google’s business index didn’t have websites (some still don’t). Without a website, there’s nothing for other sites around the web to link to. So Google had to develop an alternative ranking algorithm that wasn’t dependent on links.

Based on information in a couple of Google patents highlighted by Bill Slawski, I thought about this secondary Google algorithm. I theorized it focused on the number of times Google’s spiders found references to a business across the web largely through mentions of its Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP).

I referred to these Name, Address, Phone number mentions as “citations”. This term appeared extensively in Google’s patents, and that term has largely stuck to this day.

Your NAP is basically your digital thumbprint – it’s how Google knows that a website is mentioning your business as opposed to someone else’s. The more times Google sees your thumbprint on reputable websites, the more confident Google is that it’s displaying a reputable business in its search results.

Key citation attributes

The core citation attributes are your Name, Address, and Phone number, along with your website. These attributes must be consistent anywhere you expect Google to pick up your thumbprint.

It’s why using tracking phone numbers is such a risky practice. It’s great to know where your incoming phone calls are coming from, but implemented incorrectly, tracking numbers can pollute your thumbprint. As can stuffing your business name with keywords because you think it will help you rank for those terms. 

Make sure your customers find your shop! Optimize your site with our Local SEO plugin and show your opening hours, locations, map and much more! »

Buy now » Info

The reality is that mixing and matching your NAP leaves makes it much harder for Google to match mentions of your business. Subsequently it’s more difficult to give your business credit in the form of rankings. It can also lead to duplicate listings if those mismatches appear in prominent enough sources. This is a headache that no business wants to develop (see Troubleshooting GMB Issues).

NAP consistency – which appears twice in experts’ top 10 individual local ranking factors – is especially important between your own website and Google My Business. The Yoast Local SEO Plugin makes this two-way consistency easy.

Where to get citations

Unless you’re blatantly spamming, there really isn’t a bad website on which to acquire a citation. But as with inbound links, certain citations are more valuable than others. Let’s take a look at the most valuable citation types below.

Data aggregators

In most developed countries around the world, Google has licensed existing databases to build its local business index rather than starting from scratch. In many cases, the licensors are the largest traditional yellow pages companies in each market. For example, Paginas Amarillas in Latin America, YPG in Canada, and Telelistas in Brazil have all licensed (or appeared to license) data to Google over the years. In the United States, the primary licensors have been Infogroup, Acxiom, Neustar/Localeze, and Factual.

Why did Google choose to license data from these companies? Because they tend to vet business information more stringently than the average web directory, through phone and mailing address verification. So Google has high confidence in the fidelity of the information they license.

These aggregators also license business data to other directories and mobile apps featuring local businesses, in addition to Google. In turn, Google crawls those websites looking for citations.

The Local Search Ecosystem

These aggregators are not perfect, however. Because they’re the original data source for so many websites, an incorrect Name, Address, Phone, or website attribute can be amplified many times over. This creates all kinds of incorrect and mismatched thumbprints. To reiterate, these mismatched thumbprints actually look like different businesses to Google. So it’s critical to get your information correct at the source – the data aggregators themselves – if you want to get credit for all of your thumbprints.

Many aggregators allow businesses to correct improper information (or submit missing information) via online portals. This includes Infogroup’s ExpressUpdate and Acxiom’s MyBusinessListingManager. Others are either not publicly-accessible (Factual) or are prohibitively expensive (Neustar/Localeze), in which case it’s best to use a citation submission service (more on this below).

Consumer directories

In addition to licensing data, Google does what it does best – crawls the Internet – looking for local business citations as well. Citations from authoritative consumer directories (such as Yelp or YP.com) carry much more weight in terms of helping your rankings than those from weak directories you’ve never heard of, like USCityNet or ABLocal.

For U.S.-, U.K.-, Canada-, or Australia-based businesses, Darren Shaw and Nyagoslav Zhekov of Whitespark have put together great resources. These resources delineate the top consumer directories on which you should list your business.

The key point here is that the quality of the citation source matters far more than the quantity of sources on which you’re listed. Despite the marketing of certain business listing services touting “dozens” or “hundreds” of directories, the reality is that there are only a handful of cross-industry consumer directories on which you really need to be listed. At that point you should move on to industry and local directories – which are largely outside the network of major listing services. It won’t hurt to be listed on longer-tail directories, but they’re just not worth your time or money.

Industry directories

As with inbound links, citations from industry-relevant websites help build the authority of your business. They also give Google a sense of the types of keywords for which your business is relevant.

Chances are that U.S.-based businesses can rattle off the important vertical directories in their industry. Sites like Avvo and Findlaw for Lawyers, Houzz and HomeAdvisor for contractors, WeddingWire and TheKnot for photographers, etc. Basically, these are the directories that rank regularly for the keywords that you want to rank for.

Businesses with an optimized thumbprint on these directories stand a better chance of ranking in Google for industry terms than businesses with a messy or missing thumbprint.

The team at Whitespark has also put together a list of the top industry directories. This is a great starting point, no matter what kind of business you are.

Local directories

Citations from local directories also increase the authority and credibility of listed businesses. As I mentioned in my inbound links column, the member directories of your local chamber of commerce and neighborhood business association are great places to start.

There may also be business listing websites that are popular with local residents. In my hometown of Portland, Oregon, the Oregonian newspaper maintains a strong directory at OregonLive.com. Travel Portland and Supportland also maintain robust directories, just to name a couple.

Seek out listings on similar sites in the towns and cities where your business operates. 

Optimize your site for search & social media and keep it optimized with Yoast SEO Premium »

Buy now » Info Advanced citation building

One of the advantages of citation building over other SEO tactics is that it’s relatively non-technical. Any business owner with enough time can be just as effective as an agency or expert SEO consultant. It’s simply not that complicated to get your business listed on major data aggregators, consumer directories, vertical directories, and local directories. There are a couple more advanced techniques that you can use to either go beyond the basics or outbuild your competition, however.

Unstructured citations

The four types of directory citations I covered above are all what SEO professionals call “structured citations” – sites on which NAP attributes are presented in well-structured format by the sites on which they appear, perhaps even in schema.org.

But mentions of your business name or phone number in general web content (such as a blog post or media article) may be just as valuable. Provided that there’s enough context for Google to identify that it’s indeed your business being mentioned.

In terms of identifying good prospective sources of these unstructured citations, many of the same linkbuilding suggestions I gave around finding interviews and guest columns apply here.

Longer-tail industry and local directories

If you’re lucky enough to operate in an industry and a geography covered by Whitespark’s lists of top citation sources, you can probably stop reading here. But if your business is in a country or market in which Whitespark has not yet done research, you can perform similar research yourself.

Simply search Google for [your keyword] and [your city] and note the directories that appear in the top 20 (or so) organic results. You can even get more specific and add the word [directory] to the end of your string, or [submit] to the beginning.

These are websites with a reasonable degree of credibility in Google’s eyes, on which it would be helpful to place your NAP thumbprint.

Through a different, but equally effective, mechanism, Whitespark’s Local Citation Finder can automate much of this research for you.

Paid citation services

For those local businesses with a moderate budget, there are automated submission tools. These can help get your thumbprint on many important directories in a matter of days (or even minutes in some cases).

My former product, Moz Local, remains an excellent baseline citation submission service for U.S. businesses.

Whitespark’s service is a great option for those businesses with slightly larger budgets or more tailored submission needs.

Rule of thumb[print]

Make sure your customers find your shop! Optimize your site with our Local SEO plugin and show your opening hours, locations, map and much more! »

Buy now » InfoIt’s important to be represented as cleanly and as completely as possible, as many places as you can be online. However, it’s important to weigh the benefit of citations against their cost – whether in time or money.

My overriding rule of thumb[print] when it comes to thinking about citation building is “be where your customers expect you to be.” That is, if you run a deli, and every other deli in your city is on Yelp, you probably need to be on Yelp, too. If you’re a guitar instructor, and every other guitar instructor in your region is on Thumbtack, you probably need to be on Thumbtack, too.

Being where your customers expect you to be also means you’ll be where Google expects you to be. Citations beyond these obvious websites provide diminishing returns, so be wary of that fact as you evaluate signing up with new products or services.

The place of citations in the local algorithm of the future

Citations are a rudimentary ranking factor in what is an increasingly sophisticated local algorithm. Because they’re relatively easy to build, most successful small businesses will already have a strong citation profile.

In other words, citations have basically table stakes in the Local SEO poker game. You need a strong citation profile to compete. But if your business already has a strong profile, it’s unlikely that building a few more citations will move the needle much on your rankings.

Increasingly, Google is able to assess the veracity of a business’s thumbprint from users of Maps, location-enabled Android devices, Waze, and other mobile collection devices (such as StreetView cars). Thus, the future competitive differentiators are likely to be different from the structured citations of today.

My colleague Mike Blumenthal has rhetorically posed, “are words becoming the new links?” Google’s algorithm gets smarter and smarter at detecting entity mentions that appear in natural language (such as those in interviews or media articles). This could blend the disciplines of citation building, link building, and social media even further.

Summary

Citations are your business’s digital thumbprint. “Optimizing” that thumbprint via business name keyword-stuffing or tracking phone numbers carries substantial risk to your local rankings.

Your thumbprint should appear on data aggregators, as well as prominent consumer portals, industry directories, and local directories.

My rule of thumb[print] for citations: be where your customers expect you to be, and you’ll be where Google expects your business to be.

Unstructured citations are likely to become more important in the future. More and more local businesses achieve the “table stakes” of basic directory presence.

Read more: ‘Ranking your local business at Google: Introduction’ »

http://ift.tt/2w7qHbG

[mariaajamesol]

Ranking your local business part V: Citations for local search

This is the fifth post in an 8-part series on how to rank your business for local searches at Google. Previously, I’ve listed the most important aspects that influence your local ranking, discussed how to get the most out of Google My Business, covered best practices for on-site optimization, and given you some ideas for building inbound links. Here, I’ll focus on another core local search ranking factor: building citations for your business. Learn why and how to do that!

What’s a citation?

Key citation attributes

Where to get citations

Data aggregators

Consumer directories

Industry directories

Local directories

Advanced citation building

Unstructured citations

Longer-tail industry and local directories

Paid citation services

Rule of thumb[print]

The place of citations in the local algorithm of the future

Summary

Get the Local Premium bundle and fully optimize your local site! »

Buy now » InfoI’d like you to think back 12+ years ago to early 2005. (Scary for a guy who’s 35 to acknowledge, but some present-day readers may still have been in elementary school!)

The Internet was a very different place. MySpace, not Facebook, was all the rage, and Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram weren’t even close to launching. There was no iPhone and there was no Android.

In a nutshell, the world was far less digital. When you searched at Google, it returned “10 blue links” of webpage results. The authority of those webpages was largely determined by inbound links.

But the launch of Google Maps in early 2005, and the subsequent release of the 10-pack in May 2007, portended something entirely different. Google Maps and the 10-pack ranked business listings, not websites, which required a completely different algorithm – an algorithm which remains distinct to this day.

After studying this algorithm in detail and discussing it extensively with colleagues like Mike Blumenthal, I wrote in May 2008 that “citations are the new links.”

Google now obfuscates much of the evidence that prompted my theory. But the underlying foundation of that Maps/10-pack algorithm still seems to be in place today in the Maps/3-pack interface that has succeeded it.

What’s a citation?

My premise in that May 2008 column was that while inbound links were the dominant ranking factor for “10 blue links” results, Google’s listing-based results couldn’t rely primarily on inbound links to determine rankings.

The reason? At the time, many businesses in Google’s business index didn’t have websites (some still don’t). Without a website, there’s nothing for other sites around the web to link to. So Google had to develop an alternative ranking algorithm that wasn’t dependent on links.

Based on information in a couple of Google patents highlighted by Bill Slawski, I thought about this secondary Google algorithm. I theorized it focused on the number of times Google’s spiders found references to a business across the web largely through mentions of its Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP).

I referred to these Name, Address, Phone number mentions as “citations”. This term appeared extensively in Google’s patents, and that term has largely stuck to this day.

Your NAP is basically your digital thumbprint – it’s how Google knows that a website is mentioning your business as opposed to someone else’s. The more times Google sees your thumbprint on reputable websites, the more confident Google is that it’s displaying a reputable business in its search results.

Key citation attributes

The core citation attributes are your Name, Address, and Phone number, along with your website. These attributes must be consistent anywhere you expect Google to pick up your thumbprint.

It’s why using tracking phone numbers is such a risky practice. It’s great to know where your incoming phone calls are coming from, but implemented incorrectly, tracking numbers can pollute your thumbprint. As can stuffing your business name with keywords because you think it will help you rank for those terms. 

Make sure your customers find your shop! Optimize your site with our Local SEO plugin and show your opening hours, locations, map and much more! »

Buy now » Info

The reality is that mixing and matching your NAP leaves makes it much harder for Google to match mentions of your business. Subsequently it’s more difficult to give your business credit in the form of rankings. It can also lead to duplicate listings if those mismatches appear in prominent enough sources. This is a headache that no business wants to develop (see Troubleshooting GMB Issues).

NAP consistency – which appears twice in experts’ top 10 individual local ranking factors – is especially important between your own website and Google My Business. The Yoast Local SEO Plugin makes this two-way consistency easy.

Where to get citations

Unless you’re blatantly spamming, there really isn’t a bad website on which to acquire a citation. But as with inbound links, certain citations are more valuable than others. Let’s take a look at the most valuable citation types below.

Data aggregators

In most developed countries around the world, Google has licensed existing databases to build its local business index rather than starting from scratch. In many cases, the licensors are the largest traditional yellow pages companies in each market. For example, Paginas Amarillas in Latin America, YPG in Canada, and Telelistas in Brazil have all licensed (or appeared to license) data to Google over the years. In the United States, the primary licensors have been Infogroup, Acxiom, Neustar/Localeze, and Factual.

Why did Google choose to license data from these companies? Because they tend to vet business information more stringently than the average web directory, through phone and mailing address verification. So Google has high confidence in the fidelity of the information they license.

These aggregators also license business data to other directories and mobile apps featuring local businesses, in addition to Google. In turn, Google crawls those websites looking for citations.

The Local Search Ecosystem

These aggregators are not perfect, however. Because they’re the original data source for so many websites, an incorrect Name, Address, Phone, or website attribute can be amplified many times over. This creates all kinds of incorrect and mismatched thumbprints. To reiterate, these mismatched thumbprints actually look like different businesses to Google. So it’s critical to get your information correct at the source – the data aggregators themselves – if you want to get credit for all of your thumbprints.

Many aggregators allow businesses to correct improper information (or submit missing information) via online portals. This includes Infogroup’s ExpressUpdate and Acxiom’s MyBusinessListingManager. Others are either not publicly-accessible (Factual) or are prohibitively expensive (Neustar/Localeze), in which case it’s best to use a citation submission service (more on this below).

Consumer directories

In addition to licensing data, Google does what it does best – crawls the Internet – looking for local business citations as well. Citations from authoritative consumer directories (such as Yelp or YP.com) carry much more weight in terms of helping your rankings than those from weak directories you’ve never heard of, like USCityNet or ABLocal.

For U.S.-, U.K.-, Canada-, or Australia-based businesses, Darren Shaw and Nyagoslav Zhekov of Whitespark have put together great resources. These resources delineate the top consumer directories on which you should list your business.

The key point here is that the quality of the citation source matters far more than the quantity of sources on which you’re listed. Despite the marketing of certain business listing services touting “dozens” or “hundreds” of directories, the reality is that there are only a handful of cross-industry consumer directories on which you really need to be listed. At that point you should move on to industry and local directories – which are largely outside the network of major listing services. It won’t hurt to be listed on longer-tail directories, but they’re just not worth your time or money.

Industry directories

As with inbound links, citations from industry-relevant websites help build the authority of your business. They also give Google a sense of the types of keywords for which your business is relevant.

Chances are that U.S.-based businesses can rattle off the important vertical directories in their industry. Sites like Avvo and Findlaw for Lawyers, Houzz and HomeAdvisor for contractors, WeddingWire and TheKnot for photographers, etc. Basically, these are the directories that rank regularly for the keywords that you want to rank for.

Businesses with an optimized thumbprint on these directories stand a better chance of ranking in Google for industry terms than businesses with a messy or missing thumbprint.

The team at Whitespark has also put together a list of the top industry directories. This is a great starting point, no matter what kind of business you are.

Local directories

Citations from local directories also increase the authority and credibility of listed businesses. As I mentioned in my inbound links column, the member directories of your local chamber of commerce and neighborhood business association are great places to start.

There may also be business listing websites that are popular with local residents. In my hometown of Portland, Oregon, the Oregonian newspaper maintains a strong directory at OregonLive.com. Travel Portland and Supportland also maintain robust directories, just to name a couple.

Seek out listings on similar sites in the towns and cities where your business operates. 

Optimize your site for search & social media and keep it optimized with Yoast SEO Premium »

Buy now » Info Advanced citation building

One of the advantages of citation building over other SEO tactics is that it’s relatively non-technical. Any business owner with enough time can be just as effective as an agency or expert SEO consultant. It’s simply not that complicated to get your business listed on major data aggregators, consumer directories, vertical directories, and local directories. There are a couple more advanced techniques that you can use to either go beyond the basics or outbuild your competition, however.

Unstructured citations

The four types of directory citations I covered above are all what SEO professionals call “structured citations” – sites on which NAP attributes are presented in well-structured format by the sites on which they appear, perhaps even in schema.org.

But mentions of your business name or phone number in general web content (such as a blog post or media article) may be just as valuable. Provided that there’s enough context for Google to identify that it’s indeed your business being mentioned.

In terms of identifying good prospective sources of these unstructured citations, many of the same linkbuilding suggestions I gave around finding interviews and guest columns apply here.

Longer-tail industry and local directories

If you’re lucky enough to operate in an industry and a geography covered by Whitespark’s lists of top citation sources, you can probably stop reading here. But if your business is in a country or market in which Whitespark has not yet done research, you can perform similar research yourself.

Simply search Google for [your keyword] and [your city] and note the directories that appear in the top 20 (or so) organic results. You can even get more specific and add the word [directory] to the end of your string, or [submit] to the beginning.

These are websites with a reasonable degree of credibility in Google’s eyes, on which it would be helpful to place your NAP thumbprint.

Through a different, but equally effective, mechanism, Whitespark’s Local Citation Finder can automate much of this research for you.

Paid citation services

For those local businesses with a moderate budget, there are automated submission tools. These can help get your thumbprint on many important directories in a matter of days (or even minutes in some cases).

My former product, Moz Local, remains an excellent baseline citation submission service for U.S. businesses.

Whitespark’s service is a great option for those businesses with slightly larger budgets or more tailored submission needs.

Rule of thumb[print]

Make sure your customers find your shop! Optimize your site with our Local SEO plugin and show your opening hours, locations, map and much more! »

Buy now » InfoIt’s important to be represented as cleanly and as completely as possible, as many places as you can be online. However, it’s important to weigh the benefit of citations against their cost – whether in time or money.

My overriding rule of thumb[print] when it comes to thinking about citation building is “be where your customers expect you to be.” That is, if you run a deli, and every other deli in your city is on Yelp, you probably need to be on Yelp, too. If you’re a guitar instructor, and every other guitar instructor in your region is on Thumbtack, you probably need to be on Thumbtack, too.

Being where your customers expect you to be also means you’ll be where Google expects you to be. Citations beyond these obvious websites provide diminishing returns, so be wary of that fact as you evaluate signing up with new products or services.

The place of citations in the local algorithm of the future

Citations are a rudimentary ranking factor in what is an increasingly sophisticated local algorithm. Because they’re relatively easy to build, most successful small businesses will already have a strong citation profile.

In other words, citations have basically table stakes in the Local SEO poker game. You need a strong citation profile to compete. But if your business already has a strong profile, it’s unlikely that building a few more citations will move the needle much on your rankings.

Increasingly, Google is able to assess the veracity of a business’s thumbprint from users of Maps, location-enabled Android devices, Waze, and other mobile collection devices (such as StreetView cars). Thus, the future competitive differentiators are likely to be different from the structured citations of today.

My colleague Mike Blumenthal has rhetorically posed, “are words becoming the new links?” Google’s algorithm gets smarter and smarter at detecting entity mentions that appear in natural language (such as those in interviews or media articles). This could blend the disciplines of citation building, link building, and social media even further.

Summary

Citations are your business’s digital thumbprint. “Optimizing” that thumbprint via business name keyword-stuffing or tracking phone numbers carries substantial risk to your local rankings.

Your thumbprint should appear on data aggregators, as well as prominent consumer portals, industry directories, and local directories.

My rule of thumb[print] for citations: be where your customers expect you to be, and you’ll be where Google expects your business to be.

Unstructured citations are likely to become more important in the future. More and more local businesses achieve the “table stakes” of basic directory presence.

Read more: ‘Ranking your local business at Google: Introduction’ »

http://ift.tt/2w7qHbG

[mariaajameso]

Ranking your local business part V: Citations for local search

This is the fifth post in an 8-part series on how to rank your business for local searches at Google. Previously, I’ve listed the most important aspects that influence your local ranking, discussed how to get the most out of Google My Business, covered best practices for on-site optimization, and given you some ideas for building inbound links. Here, I’ll focus on another core local search ranking factor: building citations for your business. Learn why and how to do that!

What’s a citation?

Key citation attributes

Where to get citations

Data aggregators

Consumer directories

Industry directories

Local directories

Advanced citation building

Unstructured citations

Longer-tail industry and local directories

Paid citation services

Rule of thumb[print]

The place of citations in the local algorithm of the future

Summary

Get the Local Premium bundle and fully optimize your local site! »

Buy now » InfoI’d like you to think back 12+ years ago to early 2005. (Scary for a guy who’s 35 to acknowledge, but some present-day readers may still have been in elementary school!)

The Internet was a very different place. MySpace, not Facebook, was all the rage, and Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram weren’t even close to launching. There was no iPhone and there was no Android.

In a nutshell, the world was far less digital. When you searched at Google, it returned “10 blue links” of webpage results. The authority of those webpages was largely determined by inbound links.

But the launch of Google Maps in early 2005, and the subsequent release of the 10-pack in May 2007, portended something entirely different. Google Maps and the 10-pack ranked business listings, not websites, which required a completely different algorithm – an algorithm which remains distinct to this day.

After studying this algorithm in detail and discussing it extensively with colleagues like Mike Blumenthal, I wrote in May 2008 that “citations are the new links.”

Google now obfuscates much of the evidence that prompted my theory. But the underlying foundation of that Maps/10-pack algorithm still seems to be in place today in the Maps/3-pack interface that has succeeded it.

What’s a citation?

My premise in that May 2008 column was that while inbound links were the dominant ranking factor for “10 blue links” results, Google’s listing-based results couldn’t rely primarily on inbound links to determine rankings.

The reason? At the time, many businesses in Google’s business index didn’t have websites (some still don’t). Without a website, there’s nothing for other sites around the web to link to. So Google had to develop an alternative ranking algorithm that wasn’t dependent on links.

Based on information in a couple of Google patents highlighted by Bill Slawski, I thought about this secondary Google algorithm. I theorized it focused on the number of times Google’s spiders found references to a business across the web largely through mentions of its Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP).

I referred to these Name, Address, Phone number mentions as “citations”. This term appeared extensively in Google’s patents, and that term has largely stuck to this day.

Your NAP is basically your digital thumbprint – it’s how Google knows that a website is mentioning your business as opposed to someone else’s. The more times Google sees your thumbprint on reputable websites, the more confident Google is that it’s displaying a reputable business in its search results.

Key citation attributes

The core citation attributes are your Name, Address, and Phone number, along with your website. These attributes must be consistent anywhere you expect Google to pick up your thumbprint.

It’s why using tracking phone numbers is such a risky practice. It’s great to know where your incoming phone calls are coming from, but implemented incorrectly, tracking numbers can pollute your thumbprint. As can stuffing your business name with keywords because you think it will help you rank for those terms. 

Make sure your customers find your shop! Optimize your site with our Local SEO plugin and show your opening hours, locations, map and much more! »

Buy now » Info

The reality is that mixing and matching your NAP leaves makes it much harder for Google to match mentions of your business. Subsequently it’s more difficult to give your business credit in the form of rankings. It can also lead to duplicate listings if those mismatches appear in prominent enough sources. This is a headache that no business wants to develop (see Troubleshooting GMB Issues).

NAP consistency – which appears twice in experts’ top 10 individual local ranking factors – is especially important between your own website and Google My Business. The Yoast Local SEO Plugin makes this two-way consistency easy.

Where to get citations

Unless you’re blatantly spamming, there really isn’t a bad website on which to acquire a citation. But as with inbound links, certain citations are more valuable than others. Let’s take a look at the most valuable citation types below.

Data aggregators

In most developed countries around the world, Google has licensed existing databases to build its local business index rather than starting from scratch. In many cases, the licensors are the largest traditional yellow pages companies in each market. For example, Paginas Amarillas in Latin America, YPG in Canada, and Telelistas in Brazil have all licensed (or appeared to license) data to Google over the years. In the United States, the primary licensors have been Infogroup, Acxiom, Neustar/Localeze, and Factual.

Why did Google choose to license data from these companies? Because they tend to vet business information more stringently than the average web directory, through phone and mailing address verification. So Google has high confidence in the fidelity of the information they license.

These aggregators also license business data to other directories and mobile apps featuring local businesses, in addition to Google. In turn, Google crawls those websites looking for citations.

The Local Search Ecosystem

These aggregators are not perfect, however. Because they’re the original data source for so many websites, an incorrect Name, Address, Phone, or website attribute can be amplified many times over. This creates all kinds of incorrect and mismatched thumbprints. To reiterate, these mismatched thumbprints actually look like different businesses to Google. So it’s critical to get your information correct at the source – the data aggregators themselves – if you want to get credit for all of your thumbprints.

Many aggregators allow businesses to correct improper information (or submit missing information) via online portals. This includes Infogroup’s ExpressUpdate and Acxiom’s MyBusinessListingManager. Others are either not publicly-accessible (Factual) or are prohibitively expensive (Neustar/Localeze), in which case it’s best to use a citation submission service (more on this below).

Consumer directories

In addition to licensing data, Google does what it does best – crawls the Internet – looking for local business citations as well. Citations from authoritative consumer directories (such as Yelp or YP.com) carry much more weight in terms of helping your rankings than those from weak directories you’ve never heard of, like USCityNet or ABLocal.

For U.S.-, U.K.-, Canada-, or Australia-based businesses, Darren Shaw and Nyagoslav Zhekov of Whitespark have put together great resources. These resources delineate the top consumer directories on which you should list your business.

The key point here is that the quality of the citation source matters far more than the quantity of sources on which you’re listed. Despite the marketing of certain business listing services touting “dozens” or “hundreds” of directories, the reality is that there are only a handful of cross-industry consumer directories on which you really need to be listed. At that point you should move on to industry and local directories – which are largely outside the network of major listing services. It won’t hurt to be listed on longer-tail directories, but they’re just not worth your time or money.

Industry directories

As with inbound links, citations from industry-relevant websites help build the authority of your business. They also give Google a sense of the types of keywords for which your business is relevant.

Chances are that U.S.-based businesses can rattle off the important vertical directories in their industry. Sites like Avvo and Findlaw for Lawyers, Houzz and HomeAdvisor for contractors, WeddingWire and TheKnot for photographers, etc. Basically, these are the directories that rank regularly for the keywords that you want to rank for.

Businesses with an optimized thumbprint on these directories stand a better chance of ranking in Google for industry terms than businesses with a messy or missing thumbprint.

The team at Whitespark has also put together a list of the top industry directories. This is a great starting point, no matter what kind of business you are.

Local directories

Citations from local directories also increase the authority and credibility of listed businesses. As I mentioned in my inbound links column, the member directories of your local chamber of commerce and neighborhood business association are great places to start.

There may also be business listing websites that are popular with local residents. In my hometown of Portland, Oregon, the Oregonian newspaper maintains a strong directory at OregonLive.com. Travel Portland and Supportland also maintain robust directories, just to name a couple.

Seek out listings on similar sites in the towns and cities where your business operates. 

Optimize your site for search & social media and keep it optimized with Yoast SEO Premium »

Buy now » Info Advanced citation building

One of the advantages of citation building over other SEO tactics is that it’s relatively non-technical. Any business owner with enough time can be just as effective as an agency or expert SEO consultant. It’s simply not that complicated to get your business listed on major data aggregators, consumer directories, vertical directories, and local directories. There are a couple more advanced techniques that you can use to either go beyond the basics or outbuild your competition, however.

Unstructured citations

The four types of directory citations I covered above are all what SEO professionals call “structured citations” – sites on which NAP attributes are presented in well-structured format by the sites on which they appear, perhaps even in schema.org.

But mentions of your business name or phone number in general web content (such as a blog post or media article) may be just as valuable. Provided that there’s enough context for Google to identify that it’s indeed your business being mentioned.

In terms of identifying good prospective sources of these unstructured citations, many of the same linkbuilding suggestions I gave around finding interviews and guest columns apply here.

Longer-tail industry and local directories

If you’re lucky enough to operate in an industry and a geography covered by Whitespark’s lists of top citation sources, you can probably stop reading here. But if your business is in a country or market in which Whitespark has not yet done research, you can perform similar research yourself.

Simply search Google for [your keyword] and [your city] and note the directories that appear in the top 20 (or so) organic results. You can even get more specific and add the word [directory] to the end of your string, or [submit] to the beginning.

These are websites with a reasonable degree of credibility in Google’s eyes, on which it would be helpful to place your NAP thumbprint.

Through a different, but equally effective, mechanism, Whitespark’s Local Citation Finder can automate much of this research for you.

Paid citation services

For those local businesses with a moderate budget, there are automated submission tools. These can help get your thumbprint on many important directories in a matter of days (or even minutes in some cases).

My former product, Moz Local, remains an excellent baseline citation submission service for U.S. businesses.

Whitespark’s service is a great option for those businesses with slightly larger budgets or more tailored submission needs.

Rule of thumb[print]

Make sure your customers find your shop! Optimize your site with our Local SEO plugin and show your opening hours, locations, map and much more! »

Buy now » InfoIt’s important to be represented as cleanly and as completely as possible, as many places as you can be online. However, it’s important to weigh the benefit of citations against their cost – whether in time or money.

My overriding rule of thumb[print] when it comes to thinking about citation building is “be where your customers expect you to be.” That is, if you run a deli, and every other deli in your city is on Yelp, you probably need to be on Yelp, too. If you’re a guitar instructor, and every other guitar instructor in your region is on Thumbtack, you probably need to be on Thumbtack, too.

Being where your customers expect you to be also means you’ll be where Google expects you to be. Citations beyond these obvious websites provide diminishing returns, so be wary of that fact as you evaluate signing up with new products or services.

The place of citations in the local algorithm of the future

Citations are a rudimentary ranking factor in what is an increasingly sophisticated local algorithm. Because they’re relatively easy to build, most successful small businesses will already have a strong citation profile.

In other words, citations have basically table stakes in the Local SEO poker game. You need a strong citation profile to compete. But if your business already has a strong profile, it’s unlikely that building a few more citations will move the needle much on your rankings.

Increasingly, Google is able to assess the veracity of a business’s thumbprint from users of Maps, location-enabled Android devices, Waze, and other mobile collection devices (such as StreetView cars). Thus, the future competitive differentiators are likely to be different from the structured citations of today.

My colleague Mike Blumenthal has rhetorically posed, “are words becoming the new links?” Google’s algorithm gets smarter and smarter at detecting entity mentions that appear in natural language (such as those in interviews or media articles). This could blend the disciplines of citation building, link building, and social media even further.

Summary

Citations are your business’s digital thumbprint. “Optimizing” that thumbprint via business name keyword-stuffing or tracking phone numbers carries substantial risk to your local rankings.

Your thumbprint should appear on data aggregators, as well as prominent consumer portals, industry directories, and local directories.

My rule of thumb[print] for citations: be where your customers expect you to be, and you’ll be where Google expects your business to be.

Unstructured citations are likely to become more important in the future. More and more local businesses achieve the “table stakes” of basic directory presence.

Read more: ‘Ranking your local business at Google: Introduction’ »

http://ift.tt/2w7qHbG

[samiaedithg]

Ranking your local business part V: Citations for local search

This is the fifth post in an 8-part series on how to rank your business for local searches at Google. Previously, I’ve listed the most important aspects that influence your local ranking, discussed how to get the most out of Google My Business, covered best practices for on-site optimization, and given you some ideas for building inbound links. Here, I’ll focus on another core local search ranking factor: building citations for your business. Learn why and how to do that!

What’s a citation?

Key citation attributes

Where to get citations

Data aggregators

Consumer directories

Industry directories

Local directories

Advanced citation building

Unstructured citations

Longer-tail industry and local directories

Paid citation services

Rule of thumb[print]

The place of citations in the local algorithm of the future

Summary

Get the Local Premium bundle and fully optimize your local site! »

Buy now » InfoI’d like you to think back 12+ years ago to early 2005. (Scary for a guy who’s 35 to acknowledge, but some present-day readers may still have been in elementary school!)

The Internet was a very different place. MySpace, not Facebook, was all the rage, and Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram weren’t even close to launching. There was no iPhone and there was no Android.

In a nutshell, the world was far less digital. When you searched at Google, it returned “10 blue links” of webpage results. The authority of those webpages was largely determined by inbound links.

But the launch of Google Maps in early 2005, and the subsequent release of the 10-pack in May 2007, portended something entirely different. Google Maps and the 10-pack ranked business listings, not websites, which required a completely different algorithm – an algorithm which remains distinct to this day.

After studying this algorithm in detail and discussing it extensively with colleagues like Mike Blumenthal, I wrote in May 2008 that “citations are the new links.”

Google now obfuscates much of the evidence that prompted my theory. But the underlying foundation of that Maps/10-pack algorithm still seems to be in place today in the Maps/3-pack interface that has succeeded it.

What’s a citation?

My premise in that May 2008 column was that while inbound links were the dominant ranking factor for “10 blue links” results, Google’s listing-based results couldn’t rely primarily on inbound links to determine rankings.

The reason? At the time, many businesses in Google’s business index didn’t have websites (some still don’t). Without a website, there’s nothing for other sites around the web to link to. So Google had to develop an alternative ranking algorithm that wasn’t dependent on links.

Based on information in a couple of Google patents highlighted by Bill Slawski, I thought about this secondary Google algorithm. I theorized it focused on the number of times Google’s spiders found references to a business across the web largely through mentions of its Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP).

I referred to these Name, Address, Phone number mentions as “citations”. This term appeared extensively in Google’s patents, and that term has largely stuck to this day.

Your NAP is basically your digital thumbprint – it’s how Google knows that a website is mentioning your business as opposed to someone else’s. The more times Google sees your thumbprint on reputable websites, the more confident Google is that it’s displaying a reputable business in its search results.

Key citation attributes

The core citation attributes are your Name, Address, and Phone number, along with your website. These attributes must be consistent anywhere you expect Google to pick up your thumbprint.

It’s why using tracking phone numbers is such a risky practice. It’s great to know where your incoming phone calls are coming from, but implemented incorrectly, tracking numbers can pollute your thumbprint. As can stuffing your business name with keywords because you think it will help you rank for those terms. 

Make sure your customers find your shop! Optimize your site with our Local SEO plugin and show your opening hours, locations, map and much more! »

Buy now » Info

The reality is that mixing and matching your NAP leaves makes it much harder for Google to match mentions of your business. Subsequently it’s more difficult to give your business credit in the form of rankings. It can also lead to duplicate listings if those mismatches appear in prominent enough sources. This is a headache that no business wants to develop (see Troubleshooting GMB Issues).

NAP consistency – which appears twice in experts’ top 10 individual local ranking factors – is especially important between your own website and Google My Business. The Yoast Local SEO Plugin makes this two-way consistency easy.

Where to get citations

Unless you’re blatantly spamming, there really isn’t a bad website on which to acquire a citation. But as with inbound links, certain citations are more valuable than others. Let’s take a look at the most valuable citation types below.

Data aggregators

In most developed countries around the world, Google has licensed existing databases to build its local business index rather than starting from scratch. In many cases, the licensors are the largest traditional yellow pages companies in each market. For example, Paginas Amarillas in Latin America, YPG in Canada, and Telelistas in Brazil have all licensed (or appeared to license) data to Google over the years. In the United States, the primary licensors have been Infogroup, Acxiom, Neustar/Localeze, and Factual.

Why did Google choose to license data from these companies? Because they tend to vet business information more stringently than the average web directory, through phone and mailing address verification. So Google has high confidence in the fidelity of the information they license.

These aggregators also license business data to other directories and mobile apps featuring local businesses, in addition to Google. In turn, Google crawls those websites looking for citations.

The Local Search Ecosystem

These aggregators are not perfect, however. Because they’re the original data source for so many websites, an incorrect Name, Address, Phone, or website attribute can be amplified many times over. This creates all kinds of incorrect and mismatched thumbprints. To reiterate, these mismatched thumbprints actually look like different businesses to Google. So it’s critical to get your information correct at the source – the data aggregators themselves – if you want to get credit for all of your thumbprints.

Many aggregators allow businesses to correct improper information (or submit missing information) via online portals. This includes Infogroup’s ExpressUpdate and Acxiom’s MyBusinessListingManager. Others are either not publicly-accessible (Factual) or are prohibitively expensive (Neustar/Localeze), in which case it’s best to use a citation submission service (more on this below).

Consumer directories

In addition to licensing data, Google does what it does best – crawls the Internet – looking for local business citations as well. Citations from authoritative consumer directories (such as Yelp or YP.com) carry much more weight in terms of helping your rankings than those from weak directories you’ve never heard of, like USCityNet or ABLocal.

For U.S.-, U.K.-, Canada-, or Australia-based businesses, Darren Shaw and Nyagoslav Zhekov of Whitespark have put together great resources. These resources delineate the top consumer directories on which you should list your business.

The key point here is that the quality of the citation source matters far more than the quantity of sources on which you’re listed. Despite the marketing of certain business listing services touting “dozens” or “hundreds” of directories, the reality is that there are only a handful of cross-industry consumer directories on which you really need to be listed. At that point you should move on to industry and local directories – which are largely outside the network of major listing services. It won’t hurt to be listed on longer-tail directories, but they’re just not worth your time or money.

Industry directories

As with inbound links, citations from industry-relevant websites help build the authority of your business. They also give Google a sense of the types of keywords for which your business is relevant.

Chances are that U.S.-based businesses can rattle off the important vertical directories in their industry. Sites like Avvo and Findlaw for Lawyers, Houzz and HomeAdvisor for contractors, WeddingWire and TheKnot for photographers, etc. Basically, these are the directories that rank regularly for the keywords that you want to rank for.

Businesses with an optimized thumbprint on these directories stand a better chance of ranking in Google for industry terms than businesses with a messy or missing thumbprint.

The team at Whitespark has also put together a list of the top industry directories. This is a great starting point, no matter what kind of business you are.

Local directories

Citations from local directories also increase the authority and credibility of listed businesses. As I mentioned in my inbound links column, the member directories of your local chamber of commerce and neighborhood business association are great places to start.

There may also be business listing websites that are popular with local residents. In my hometown of Portland, Oregon, the Oregonian newspaper maintains a strong directory at OregonLive.com. Travel Portland and Supportland also maintain robust directories, just to name a couple.

Seek out listings on similar sites in the towns and cities where your business operates. 

Optimize your site for search & social media and keep it optimized with Yoast SEO Premium »

Buy now » Info Advanced citation building

One of the advantages of citation building over other SEO tactics is that it’s relatively non-technical. Any business owner with enough time can be just as effective as an agency or expert SEO consultant. It’s simply not that complicated to get your business listed on major data aggregators, consumer directories, vertical directories, and local directories. There are a couple more advanced techniques that you can use to either go beyond the basics or outbuild your competition, however.

Unstructured citations

The four types of directory citations I covered above are all what SEO professionals call “structured citations” – sites on which NAP attributes are presented in well-structured format by the sites on which they appear, perhaps even in schema.org.

But mentions of your business name or phone number in general web content (such as a blog post or media article) may be just as valuable. Provided that there’s enough context for Google to identify that it’s indeed your business being mentioned.

In terms of identifying good prospective sources of these unstructured citations, many of the same linkbuilding suggestions I gave around finding interviews and guest columns apply here.

Longer-tail industry and local directories

If you’re lucky enough to operate in an industry and a geography covered by Whitespark’s lists of top citation sources, you can probably stop reading here. But if your business is in a country or market in which Whitespark has not yet done research, you can perform similar research yourself.

Simply search Google for [your keyword] and [your city] and note the directories that appear in the top 20 (or so) organic results. You can even get more specific and add the word [directory] to the end of your string, or [submit] to the beginning.

These are websites with a reasonable degree of credibility in Google’s eyes, on which it would be helpful to place your NAP thumbprint.

Through a different, but equally effective, mechanism, Whitespark’s Local Citation Finder can automate much of this research for you.

Paid citation services

For those local businesses with a moderate budget, there are automated submission tools. These can help get your thumbprint on many important directories in a matter of days (or even minutes in some cases).

My former product, Moz Local, remains an excellent baseline citation submission service for U.S. businesses.

Whitespark’s service is a great option for those businesses with slightly larger budgets or more tailored submission needs.

Rule of thumb[print]

Make sure your customers find your shop! Optimize your site with our Local SEO plugin and show your opening hours, locations, map and much more! »

Buy now » InfoIt’s important to be represented as cleanly and as completely as possible, as many places as you can be online. However, it’s important to weigh the benefit of citations against their cost – whether in time or money.

My overriding rule of thumb[print] when it comes to thinking about citation building is “be where your customers expect you to be.” That is, if you run a deli, and every other deli in your city is on Yelp, you probably need to be on Yelp, too. If you’re a guitar instructor, and every other guitar instructor in your region is on Thumbtack, you probably need to be on Thumbtack, too.

Being where your customers expect you to be also means you’ll be where Google expects you to be. Citations beyond these obvious websites provide diminishing returns, so be wary of that fact as you evaluate signing up with new products or services.

The place of citations in the local algorithm of the future

Citations are a rudimentary ranking factor in what is an increasingly sophisticated local algorithm. Because they’re relatively easy to build, most successful small businesses will already have a strong citation profile.

In other words, citations have basically table stakes in the Local SEO poker game. You need a strong citation profile to compete. But if your business already has a strong profile, it’s unlikely that building a few more citations will move the needle much on your rankings.

Increasingly, Google is able to assess the veracity of a business’s thumbprint from users of Maps, location-enabled Android devices, Waze, and other mobile collection devices (such as StreetView cars). Thus, the future competitive differentiators are likely to be different from the structured citations of today.

My colleague Mike Blumenthal has rhetorically posed, “are words becoming the new links?” Google’s algorithm gets smarter and smarter at detecting entity mentions that appear in natural language (such as those in interviews or media articles). This could blend the disciplines of citation building, link building, and social media even further.

Summary

Citations are your business’s digital thumbprint. “Optimizing” that thumbprint via business name keyword-stuffing or tracking phone numbers carries substantial risk to your local rankings.

Your thumbprint should appear on data aggregators, as well as prominent consumer portals, industry directories, and local directories.

My rule of thumb[print] for citations: be where your customers expect you to be, and you’ll be where Google expects your business to be.

Unstructured citations are likely to become more important in the future. More and more local businesses achieve the “table stakes” of basic directory presence.

Read more: ‘Ranking your local business at Google: Introduction’ »

http://ift.tt/2w7qHbG