You can build citations for your local SEO campaign, to bring in important traffic to your business website and local store front. Businesses need exposure and advertising, in order for a buying public to know about your products and services. Using an effective local SEO campaign is one effective method of making your store known and attractive.

What Are Local Citations

Local citations are mentions of a business, along with the NAP. The NAP is comprised of the business name, the business address and the business phone number. This type of advertising ensures you that search engines can accurately collect important information on your specific business. These local citations need to be on either relevant or authoritative websites.

How to Use Local Citations for Local SEO

A citation ensures you that your specific information is being sent to a buying customer. Citations signal to search engines that your website is relevant to a specific geographic region and offers a particular service. Building citations can follow these steps:

  • A hard way of finding citations is to take the number one ranking website for your keyword or key phrase, copy the company's NAP and place these in quotations. You insert this into a Google search, and all websites that show up are potential sites where you can place citations for your particular business. You can capture each of the sites on your generated list and repeat your process for all the first page websites.
  • Scrapebox is another method that is an automated tool for this same purpose. You place the NAP in the search box and hit enter. The Scrapebox program will send you all the Google search results in an area. You export these into an excel spreadsheet. Effective Internet marketers use this tool often.
  • Whitespark is another marketing tool that is similar to Scrapebox. Whitespark will do all of the work for you and find your citations. The marketing program will place your business information, also. You provide the NAP and a few detailed categories. This type of program can save you a significant amount of money and can be used with other link building systems.

Why Are Local Citations Important

Local citations can help you in the following ways:

  • Citations are effective marketing strategies for your small business. Local keyword searches are important customer information bits to gather and use. A local customer who is ready to buy may be more comfortable with a business that has a ready address and phone number. Phone calls are frequently used to ask further questions about a particular product or time when a business is open, for example.
  • Your local search rankings can improve with citations for your local name, address and phone number. Your local rankings are important for those ready-to-buy customers who need to visit your site store. Information about a product or service can be delivered more effectively.
  • Multiple locations can eventually be ranked by using citations. A business with multiple locations can use local citations for their SEO marketing. Each location will need to be defined with its own address and phone number. Customers understand that a store can have several locations, and finding the location closest to them is important.

Summary

Local citations are mentions of a business along with its NAP, or name, address and phone number. This type of marketing assures you that search engines can accurately collect the information that is needed for your specific business. Further, this important information needs to be sent to a buying customer.


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