Do you run a business and want to rank higher in local listings? Then citation helps you achieve it. Local citation building is the essential thing that influences your local SEO ranking.

Before gulping up the information about the Future of Citation, the strategies become fruitful if you have a clear understanding of the basics, like what a local citation is, how to find them for new business listings.

Rewinding to the Basics

What does Citation Building Mean?

Many get distraught by the generalized meaning of citation that is the search of resources. But ease-off, in the context of online marketing it implies the mention of your business name, address, and telephone number on a third-party website. The details shortly termed as NAP plays a significant role in local citation building.

The online citations can have a combination of the details annexed below,

• Company Name
• Address
• Phone Number
• Opening hours
• Product or services
• Images/Photos
• Videos
• Social media links

The citations are not a new strategy and have been in the SEO environment for nearly a decade.

The mentions can be on business directories, business listings, product review sites, industry-specific publications, social media pages, local media outlets, Google My Business, and other related apps. The search engines deploy citations to verify the data of the local businesses and provide the information to the consumers. The citations indexed by Google boost your local search rankings.

Why Citations are Significant for Local Business

• It is a unique online pathway that helps existing and potential customers finds your business information.
• The nearness of the business’ physical address is a major driving factor for the local search engine rankings, especially after the recent Google updates. The search engines utilize the citation information to determine the location of the business to deliver customers with accurate results.

Types of Citations

Two universal types of citations are structured and unstructured.

Structured Citations

It is the mention of business on standardized business listings like review sites or directories. Yelp listing, Facebook Page, or Yellow pages are instances of structured listings. The information must be accurate.

Unstructured Citations

As the name suggests, it is the mention of business on non-standardized business listings such as a newspaper or blog post. The NAP information displayed can be complete or partial, but it presents a significant opportunity to boost local business.

Tools to Get Started with Citation Building

You can provide NAP information to each citation site either manually or using automated tools like data aggregators. The method is extensively used by many businesses to build efficient local citations. The following four data aggregators are essentially information collectors, and they are,

• Factual
• Foursquare
• Neustar Localeze
• Infogroup

Future of Citations and Citation Building

The present competitive business ecosystem necessitates small scale businesses to create and maintain an online presence to overcome competitors and establish domain authority. They have to tick off all SEO checkbox that exists, and citations act as a catalyst for driving the desired results. Moreover, search engines connect online customers with businesses by providing the necessary cited information, which in turn helps them to interpret your brand value while making decisions. The future of citations is never likely to cease to exist.