There are hundreds of places in which a citation – mention of a company’s address and name a website or phone number – may be built for your business on a local scale. All local businesses should concentrate on building a solid citation core which not just broadens your company’s visibility, yet additionally strengthens search engines’ “trust” within the validity of your company’s existence. Authoritative, high-quality citations also are seen by experts as the main ranking factor with competitive local search marketplaces. Below are some great possible citation sources for your local business or company.
Data aggregators
There’s one main aggregator of local business information in the United States. Around the U.S., Factual has compiled unique indexes of around 20 million business locations. The indexes typically are compiled by scouring business group membership rosters, traditional phone books, phone and bank records, and business registration entity databases.
As a result, the aggregator syndicates or licenses their information to most local search engines, which includes Google and Bing. The time taken for search engines to update indexes with fresh information from the aggregator varies, yet usually the process will take anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months.
The local search engines
The local search engines crawl the Internet for citations which will correct or validate business details inside their own indexes. Getting listed upon places such as Foursquare, Hotfrog, Yelp, etc., may shore up the search engines’ like Google confidence within the accuracy of a company’s website, location, and name. Many local businesses must engage in a concerted campaign or citation building ensuring they’re listed in as many high-quality local business directories as they can.
Local blogs
The local blogs include an excellent place to get your company listed. These obviously will vary by geography, yet if you conduct a search on a search engine for “[your neighborhood] blog,” or “[city] blog,” you likely will view great candidates.
The websites which show up for such searches are indexed well by search engines, as well as highly related to a certain city, region, or neighborhood in local results. Companies which are linked to those blogs are seen as relevant, trusted results within local search engines.
Locally focused directories
Similar to local blogs, a local directory is indexed well by search engines and highly related to a certain region. Human-edited directories are better than “free for all” ones. A directory that is edited by humans is less prone to spam, and are thereby trusted more by local search engines. An instance of a fantastic locally focused directory is Web’s Regional Directory. It’s possible to perform searches for items such as “[your state] directory,” or “[your city] directory,” to locate outstanding prospects for such citations.
Industry focused blogs or directories
If the site is concentrated on keywords and subjects associated with your services and products, it might be included amongst the websites that local search engines will count as sources of citations—even if that directory or website isn’t concentrated on a certain region. A trade organization’s membership directory or blog popular amongst readers within your sector will potentially be crawled by a local search engine for citations, for example. A search such as “[your keyword] directory,” or “[your industry] directory,” provides ideas of the types of websites on which you should get listed.
For more information on citation building contact Soaring Away at (910) 471-5030.
