SEO Citations Made Simple

If you don’t already know of it, allow me to introduce to you an industry buzz word called “citation”. I detest using industry buzz words. But since you are going to hear this term being used and discussed by many people who want to be “in the know”. These are people who will be good sources and will be on your side – you might as well know what it means! Once you know what it means we will use it more freely.

Citations and Local SEO

“Citation” is a generic word that refers to any reference to your company name or to your website. The more local information that’s contained in that reference, which hopefully gets repeated and spread over and over again. The more local recognition you are building in relation to your name. Links that act as citations are great, but a citation does not have to be directly associated with your online presence. Your appearance in the Yellow Pages is a citation or your name on an advertising billboard, also qualify as citations. Especially in light of the fact that both such references are likely to contain your URL.

What Citations Mean for SEO

SEO citation

This is NOT the kind of traffic citation you want!

Even if citations are not web-related and don’t result in a visit to your site, they still promote other potential sources of revenue for you. Citations existed long before the internet and have always been important. However, website visits resulting from citations are building your local online presence, and this is where SEO comes into play. Search engines use algorithms that know and understand how to identify citations.

For instance,

Google is smart! It can actually recognize when and where you are putting your contact information out there. But that’s not automatic. Just because you plaster citations all around and people who find your pages see them, does not necessarily mean that the search engines are aware of your efforts to make your citations visible. You have to understand where to place your citation and how to present it in forms that the search engines recognize.

Take a scenario,

When you insert a lot of them correctly and in the right density and with the right frequency, Google will notice. That being done correctly is important, because properly presented, citations will bring you a higher ranking in searches related to what you do and where you are geographically located. That in turn will bring you revenue by bringing to your higher quality web traffic, and hence if you’ve done it all right, more customers!

Well Placed SEO Citations Can Grant You Unexpected Power

Correctly implemented local citations could create the potential to outrank even your largest and most powerful competitors! Your citations could indicate to the search engine more local relevance than would be given by a competitor focusing on a more national market than you.

Local SEO Subjects – A Continuing Theme

Citations are but a small part of a bigger topic. Please keep following us for more discussion about local SEO optimization. We encourage and invite you to sign up for access to our free video training series on content marketing. You will find more detailed technical discussion of the concepts introduced in our posts.

Happy Browsing !!

Please visit www.aaranyaadvertising.com or drop a line for any query to info@aaranyaadvertising.com