Local SEO is a hugely important marketing tactic for local businesses of all types and sizes. The higher you rank in local search results, the more people will visit your website and the more people will visit your store.

One of the main Local SEO optimization tactics is creating citations. But what are citations and what do you need to know about them?

What is a Citation?

A citation is a reference of your physical business online. These are usually made on business directories, but you can also get citations from platforms like Facebook and Tripadvisor. They are a way for consumers to find you and get the information they need about your business.

A citation must include at least three important details of your business:

• Name
• Address
• Phone Number

It can also include your URL, opening times and other pieces of information. But it is critical that they include the three bullet points above.

Getting Your Citation in the Right Places

Part of the trick with citations isn’t just creating them, it’s creating them in the right places. Most citations will be added to online business directories, which are essentially the yellow pages of the internet.

Some of these websites will be national or international, but many will be dedicated to a particular geographic area, city, or industry.

Because of this, you shouldn’t submit your citation to every single directory that you can find. Some of the more specific ones won’t be suitable for your business and can confuse Google.

You should also consider the authority of a website when creating citations. The higher the authority, the better. It may not be worth creating citations on very low authority websites

Confused as to where to create citations? Start with these ten websites:

• Google My Business
• Facebook
• Apple Maps
• LinkedIn Company Directory
• Yelp
• Bing
• Better Business Bureau
• MapQuest
• Foursquare
• HubSpot

Optimizing Your Citation for Search Engines

For the most part, online directories will require you to provide your business’ NAP (it’s name, address and phone number). As we have said, these are the most important pieces of information to include.

When you write them, you need to do so consistently every single time. Every single citation should have the exact same information as every other, written in exactly the same way.

Some directories will give you the opportunity to add more information to your listings. This can include:

• Business hours
• Email address
• Company description
• Multimedia (i.e. photos, videos)
• An overview of your products and/or services

When these additional pieces of information are offered, you should jump on them. The more information that you can add to your citation, the better. Not only will it help Google to get a better idea about your business when it scans the web, but it can also help the customers that use these websites to get more information about your business.

That’s all there is to citations. Now you just need to go out there and create them!

Online consumers love reviews. It can be hard to know what to trust when buying online and whether a product will live up to the hype. But reviews give you a great idea of what products are really like from people who have actually used them. They are such a useful tool for making great purchase decisions.

There are so many choices available to consumers that they need to find a way to quickly narrow down their options. Nine times out of ten, they’ll turn to reviews as the tool to do this. As a result, consumers will be drawn to businesses with lots of good reviews and ignore businesses with bad or average reviews.

It’s not just consumers who use reviews, either. Google also uses reviews when ranking businesses in its search engine. The more high quality reviews you have, the higher you rank

In this article, we’ll explain why reviews are so important.

Why Reviews Are Effective

It’s hard for online shoppers to interact with products online. They can’t pick them up, they can’t touch them and they can’t try them out. That means it’s very hard to get an idea of what a product is really like. The only information they have available to them is from product descriptions and photos.

But reviews provide a way to find out information from people who have actually used the product and understand what it’s like. As a result, they can fill the void left by the inability to physically interact with the products. Good reviews are a huge seal of approval for consumers and can fill buyers with confidence.

Why Your Business Needs Reviews for Local SEO

It’s not just ecommerce stores that need reviews, local businesses need lots of reviews, too. That’s because online searchers are looking for reviews of local businesses just as much as online shoppers are looking for reviews of products.

There are several ways that reviews can impact your business. The first is that it can make customers much more likely to try out your product or service. When they see loads of positive reviews, it becomes much easier to commit to buying from you. On the other hand, they’ll be turned off if they see loads of negative reviews.

Secondly, reviews impact the way that Google ranks your business in local map pack results. Reviews are one of the biggest ranking factors for local SEO and Google places a lot of emphasis on them. The more five star reviews your business has, the higher it is going to rank in Google local results.

So how do you get reviews for your business? We’ll tell you in the next section.

Integrating reviews into your local SEO

The only guaranteed way to make sure that reviews boost your local SEO is to create a Google My Business account and make sure that all reviewers post their reviews there rather than on other websites. While Google does use reviews from other websites, it will definitely use reviews on its own platform, so better to be safe than sorry.

There are a lot of guides that tell you what to do when it comes to SEO. Whether they are step-by-step guides or a series of quick tips, you’ll find no shortage of articles that tell you what to do.

But there aren’t as many guides that tell you what not to do. The truth is that when someone does local SEO on their own, they are going to make mistakes. As such, you need to be aware of the most common mistakes. If you’re doing your own SEO, here’s what not to do.

Mistake #1 – Poor NAPs

NAP stands for your business’ Name, Address, and Phone Number. These are the key parts of your citations, which help you to rank in Google. But they are easy to get wrong. Every citation that you create for your business needs to be exactly the same every single time you write it.

Too often, business owners aren’t strict enough with their NAPs and that can lead to inconsistencies. This confuses Google and will result in lower rankings and less traffic for your local business.

Mistake #2 – Unclaimed Google My Business

Google My Business is the home of your local SEO efforts. But so many businesses still haven’t claimed their online listing. This is a big problem. When you don’t claim your business, you aren’t able to personalize any of the information. It’s this personalization that helps you to rank above your competitors. No personalization and no additional data, no ranking. Don’t make this mistake, claim your Google My Business page immediately and start filling it in.

Mistake #3 – Missing on-page local signals

A lot of local SEO optimization happens away from your website. But getting your website right is still important. It’s the first thing Google will look for when ranking your website and it’s important to have the right signals in place. These include the following:

• Name, Address, and Phone (NAP)
• Use of title tags, meta tags, and meta descriptions
• Backlinks from local sites
• Content quality and structure
• Local keyword optimization

Without these signals, Google won’t easily be able to tell what your website is about and what it should rank for.

Mistake #4 – No online reviews

Reviews are probably the most important local SEO ranking factor there is — once you have your Google My Business page in set up, of course. Yet many people don’t have any reviews for their business in place. This is a big problem. The more positive reviews that you have on your Google My Business page, the higher Google will rank it. It proves that you offer a great service or product and are trustworthy. Start getting reviews ASAP to make sure that you don’t make this mistake.

Mistake #5 – Ignoring results

SEO isn’t a set and forget process. You need to keep an eye on what happens so that you can react and change your strategy. Measuring what works and what doesn’t is essential. So is taking notice of what Google Analytics says.

Word of mouth from friends and relatives was traditionally used by consumers to decide whether or not to buy products or services. That or they had to buy a product for themselves to try it out.

That’s not the case anymore. People aren’t so inclined to make risky purchase decisions. That’s because buyers can now easily access online reviews, which will help them find out whether or not they should buy a product or a service.

An overwhelming percentage of consumers say that their purchasing decisions are influenced by online reviews. That’s why it’s so important for your business to start paying attention to customer feedback and make an effort to get more positive reviews. Even more so given that reviews can also impact your SEO.

How reviews impact SEO

Reviews can either impact your business positively or negatively. Keeping track of your reviews can help you to stay in tune with your customers wants, needs and experiences. Not only can they help you to get more business, but they can also help you to improve your existing products or services. And they can help you get more traffic.

Here are 4 ways that online reviews affect search engine optimization.

Reviews build your authority

As we said, reviews act as today’s word of mouth. The only exception is that reviews spread much further and much faster than real world of mouth. That means a good or a bad review have a much bigger impact on your brand’s authority. They are also used by Google to determine how reliable and good your business is. The more positive reviews you have, the higher you rank in Google’s local pack.

Reviews influence conversion rates

Reviews have a big impact on whether or not consumers buy from your brand. A load of positive reviews can make it much more likely that consumers purchase from your brand. Negative reviews can put consumers off from purchasing from your business. It’s no good having lots of traffic from your SEO efforts if you have terrible reviews that damage your conversion rates.

Reviews affects your rankings

Online reviews are one of the most important local SEO ranking factors. As well as your Google My Business profile and your business directory citations, reviews play a role in helping you optimize the following:

• The Google Local Pack. These are the top three results displayed for local queries. The more reviews your business has, the more likely your business is to show up in these results
• Google Map. Better reviewed businesses are likely to be displayed more prominently and more regularly in Google map results.
• Reviews can even help you optimize your organic SEO presence.

Reviews are crucial to your SEO efforts. Not only can they help you to rank higher on their own, but they can also have a negative impact on your SEO efforts if they stop people from converting. If you need more reviews, speak to our team today to get more positive reviews as quickly as possible.

Citations do still play a big role in local SEO. Fact.

In fact, if citations didn’t exist, local SEO would be much more challenging than it already is.

It can be impossible for new businesses to compete for the top 3 spots in Google’s Map Pack, especially if those businesses work in competitive industries. If you’re competing with more than a dozen businesses, ranking is going to be tough. Nailing citations, however, can give you the boost that you need.

The Importance of Citations in Local SEO

Near me searches and searches with local intent  have grown significantly over recent years. Most of this rise can be attributed to the surge in smartphone devices, the dependence that people place on them and the fact that they can use your location without you having to type it in to Google.

That’s because Google automatically uses your location data to find nearby places that are relevant to your search whether you like it or not. How they know which businesses to show is, in part, down to citations.

A citation is a summary of your business’ key information: it’s name, address and phone number. NAP is the acronym for those pieces of information. You can add more information to your citations but this is the bare minimum that you need to include.

The more directories that you submit citations to, the more likely it is that your business will show up in Google My Business results.

The Advantages of Local Listings for Businesses

Local listings such as Google My Business and Bing Places act as a mini Yellow Pages for the internet. They help users to quickly find real local businesses near them. Here are some of the advantages to using them.

1. You appear at the top of Google

Local results and Google’s Map Pack in particular appear at the very top of Google’s search pages, way above other organic listings. By dedicating time to creating citations on local business websites, you can help make sure that you appear above all of your competition.

2. Get more traffic

The higher you rank in Google, the more traffic your business website is going to get. It really is that simple. The vast majority of businesses never make it to the first page of Google. Even the businesses on the first page of Google don’t get a lot of traffic unless they rank in the top positions. If you want to guarantee relevant traffic to your website, you need to appear in Google’s Local Pack. Focusing on citations helps your business to rank higher. The higher you rank, the more traffic you get.

3. Increase store visits

People don’t have to click on your website to benefit your business. Some won’t even bother clicking on your link and will just get up directions ot your store and come straight to you. You don’t just guarantee web traffic by ranking high in Google’s Map Pack, you also guarantee store traffic, too.