It can be challenging for local businesses to compete with big brands online, but if you’re strategic in your approach and have the right tools, you can easily enhance your local SEO performance by raising your overall visibility and hence raising your sales.
The ideal strategy for businesses to increase in-store traffic is by using local SEO. Local citations are one of the fundamental components of a comprehensive local SEO strategy.
Local Citation
Citations are an online reference for a company that includes the name, address, and phone details (NAP). When an SEO talks about citations, they typically mean a collection of unique business listings across many websites. The majority of citations take the form of an online company directory, however, there are other types of citations as well. While many citations only require a name, address, and contact details, most websites give more information.
For example, Bleen works as a business listing and directory. Australian local business lists their NAP on Bleen to easily contact potential customers. These businesses can make changes to their details as and when required. This way their information is consistent and updated.
Importance of Local Citation in Local SEO
The information about businesses is gathered by Google and other search engines from all across the internet. If whatever they validate about your business is accurate and consistent, it builds trust with the search engine, which ultimately will boost the ranking possibilities. On the other side, if the data they gather about your company is inconsistent, it will have a detrimental effect on your company’s online reputation and local SEO.
Being Available Where Customers are Searching
It is common information that consumers to research products and services before making a purchase. They often search local citations and directories during this research period to get more information on products and services. Customers don’t have to follow Google exclusively. For diverse purposes, they will access different directories.
For example, if you’re a flooring contractor then it is feasible to list your business on Flooring Domain. Flooring Domain is one of the carpet directories in Australia listing all flooring-related businesses locally.
More links to the website
To have strong SEO, it makes sense that you only want links from reliable, trustworthy websites pointing back to your website. You can learn that almost all company listing directories contain a specific field for “Website URL” by taking a few minutes to browse through them. The good news is that many of these directories display these connections as “do follow,” which suggests that search engines will trust them to pass link equity to your page.
More Third-Party Reviews
To rank in Google’s local pack, the top three elements are prominence, relevance, and proximity. Being prominent entails having a good online reputation. The more online mentions of your company, the better. Positive mentions result from good ratings.
For example, Industry Link Online is an online business directory as well as a news section where different writers post blogs, articles, and news in the form of reviews and feedback for certain businesses. It is a great way to reach customers.
These are the key components for advancing your local SEO efforts. Keep in mind that different places may benefit from your local SEO efforts. If you’re targeting more than one place, you can even use these concepts in SEO for several areas.
