Yes! Local Business Citations Can Still Help Boost Google Maps Rankings
Using business citations for local SEO has changed tremendously from just a few years ago. Sometimes it can seem like a lost cause…everyone is building citations nowadays…and soon you are wondering if citations are even worth the time anymore. Well, good news, they are. When you apply some of the tactics listed in this post you will see your citation building effort begin to pay dividends once more.
Why Citations Still Matter for Your Local SEO
Back in the Stone Age of local SEO, all that was needed to land a spot in the map-pack was to ensure that your client had more local business citations than any of the competition. Seriously – it was that easy.
Today local SEO is a tad more complicated, and it takes more than just that extensive list of local directories you’ve been building for the last few years to claim a victory. We’ve evolved as SEOs. We are no longer cave dwellers, and although citations are no longer the big clubs we carry on our backs. they are still a powerful tool that should not be forgotten about.
That’s not to say, however, that you can expect to survive 2019 with your citation knowledge and strategies from the Stone Age. We know staying up to date on all the changes in local SEO can be challenging, but if you aren’t using local business citations correctly for your clients, then you’re wasting your time and consequently your money. This is why we’ve decided to share this comprehensive citation guide with you.
How Citations Can Increase Prominence
The main factors that are taken into consideration when Google populates the local search results are as follows:
- Relevance – The business must be found both geo-relevant and topically-relevant to the search phrase.
- Proximity – Google determines where to arrange local businesses in the search results by their distance from the searcher’s location.
- Prominence – this factor is about how well the brand is established online. Google determines a business’s prominence score by scraping for any and all info that can be found about them on the internet.
Specifically, the total amount of documents that reference the company directly impacts the local prominence of that business. These documents are referred to as brand documents, and the more documents you create for the brand, the higher their prominence rating will be.
How do you obtain these brand documents, you ask??
(Just kidding, you’ve probably guessed where I’m going with this…)
CITATIONS! Yes, by building local business citations you will be increasing the total number of brand documents that reference that business. When built correctly, you will be able to get those citations indexed, and in turn, increase the brand’s local prominence score.
Some directories, such as Yelp and Angie’s List, will also allow users to leave reviews on a local business’s profile to share their customer experience with others. The content of said reviews, and even more so the total review score of a listing on third-party sites such as these can be used to impact a brand’s local prominence.
In more detail, the Google patent that references reviews left on third-party sites reads:
“…instructions for assigning a score to a document based on a combination of two or more of a score associated with another document that is identified as authoritative for the document, a total number of documents referring to a business associated with the document, a highest score associated with the documents referring to the business, a total number of documents with reviews of the business, a number of information documents that mention the business, a numeric score of a review of the business, a function of a plurality of scores of reviews of the business, a type of document containing a review of the business, a type of language used in a review of the business…”
Building out the backlink profiles of the top business citations is another way to ensure that they will have the power needed to increase your client’s local prominence. Many of you will see this step is optional, but you shouldn’t. Your goal should be to secure the greatest search ranking value of any pages which reference the business NAP.
An up-to-date citation strategy should be initiated for each and every local client who signs a contract with you. Otherwise, you are throwing away the opportunity to properly establish their online brand presence and increase their prominence score – a local ranking factor necessary for ranking in the 3-pack.
What if the Business Has Bad Data?
We’ve all had at least one client who hired us because they originally thought they could DIY their SEO, or because they went with the online “guru” who sold them a $50 3-pack guarantee and learned the hard way that you get what you pay for. The problem with taking on clients such as these is that typically you are stuck with cleaning up the mess that was left behind rather than establishing the brand with a clean reputation.
Don’t worry – citation cleanup is possible. While it is true that the company NAP should remain as consistent as possible across all directories, Google is advanced enough to understand that abbreviations, punctuation, and other small inconsistencies are normal. For example, two listings that differ as shown below would be acceptable:
123 Street Name Apt #3 vs 123 Street Name Apartment 3
However, if two listings differed greatly, as shown here:
123 Street Name Apt #3 vs 123 Street Name Unit B
Then you would need to correct the differences to ensure a consistent online presence and increased local prominence. This process is commonly called Citation Cleanup.
Steps For Successful Citation Cleanup
Though the concept may seem simple, you’ll soon realize how much of a hassle this process can become. After successfully completing hundreds of citation cleanup campaigns, we’ve perfected the process and are here to share valuable tips and advice to save you some time, money, and frustration.
First things First, Citation Audit
Before you jump in, you need to perform a citation audit to know which of your listings have inconsistent details. To do this you can do 2 things:
- Run a Google search with the query “Business Name -site:damain.com”
- Example: “Acme Solutions Limited -site:acmesolltd.com”
- By doing this you will see a ton of the business’s existing citations in the results and can start combing through to find any with inconsistencies.
- Save yourself the time and grab an extensive manual audit from Web 2.0 Ranker.
- Click here to see an example report: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eM1ZGw_1eUzY4qj8X90pjhzgrC5bqVjeo0yjZU9OO8c/edit?usp=sharing
Determine Ideal NAP
IMPORTANT: At this point, you need to decide which version of the company name, address, phone number, and landing page you want to be established, and use this exact NAP across everything online. We strongly advise that you format the details as they are listed on the GMB listing, however, if most of the citations differ from this version, then you may select the most commonly used NAP and edit the details in GMB rather than fixing it on 50-100 directories. Caution: If your GMB listing is already ranking well for your targeted keywords, DO NOT change the NAP or website in GMB.
Taking Action
Now that you’ve decided what the desired NAP is, and have gathered a list of citations that need to be updated, you can start the real cleanup process.
You may have an organized file containing all of the company’s existing directory logins, but chances are that if they require citation cleanup, then this will most likely not exist. In this case, open the profiles one-by-one and look for a button/link that says “Own this business?”, “Edit this listing”, “Claim this listing”, or something similar. You will need to click that option and follow the steps provided to gain access to the listing.
You could be asked to verify that you own/represent the business by receiving a code via phone call to the business number or an email to a domain email, or in some cases (Google, Bing, Foursquare, etc) you may be required to receive a postcard at the business address.
Once you have gained access, you can manually log in and edit each listing to correct the company NAP and get more out of those local business citations. If you don’t have the time (or patience) to spend on a task like this you always have the option to outsource the work to someone else – but make sure you use someone with great attention to detail. Check out Web 2.0 Ranker’s Citation Cleanup service which actually includes a free manual citation audit. Two birds, one stone.
Achieving a consistent company NAP online is extremely important for Local SEO, so once you completed the cleanup process be sure to keep all the necessary information handy to update these listings once in case the client ever moves, rebrands, changes ownership, etc, etc. Remember to vigilant when it comes to getting the details right!
Web 2.0 Ranker’s 2 Prong Secret Sauce for Citations
Congratulations! You’ve read 2,190 words of content so far! As a reward, we are now going to share with you the top 2 methods of using citations as a tool to manipulate local prominence:
Indexation and Authority
The Web 2.0 Ranker citation process focuses on building citations that index better because when brand documents are not indexed, they are not counted for the entity and will not increase the business’s prominence score. And we know that the authority of your citations and brand mentions (this is simply the backlink authority of the page) is also a part of the brand’s prominence.
So, how does Web 2.0 Ranker increase the indexation rate and the authority of local business citations?
We start by creating a country-specific list of high authority directories that are likely to be indexed. Company profiles are built by hand and we have the option to add unique content to each citation to increase the rate of indexation. Once the citations have been completed, we can add tiered links or budget PBN links to begin building the backlinks of the profiles and to increase the authority of your tier one branded properties.
Google will not count citations that have not been indexed as brand documents for the business. So if you aren’t taking every step to increase the indexation rate of your citations, then you could be letting those profiles go to waste. And if you aren’t thinking about the backlink graphs of your entire brand, not just your website location pages, then you are literally not enjoying the full benefits of your business citations.
To make it simple:
Hand Built Country Specific Citations + Unique Company Descriptions + Tiered Links + Entity Linking = More Indexed and Authoritative Citations
More Indexed Citations = Increased Local Prominence
More Authoritative Citations = Increase Local Prominence
Our Top 11 Ways to Make Citations Great Again with Examples
Building Better Citations
- Build them as well as the campaign budget allows. We found that completely filling out the profile and adding media to the listings is crucial to get Google to index the citations. Oftentimes, though, that is only the starting point. We tested and saw great results from using unique keyword optimized content that significantly increased the overall index rate, but having 10,000 or 15,000 words of decent business descriptions written, that are unique, is not the cheapest thing to do. But if the budget allows it does help.
- Claim your listings. This seems simple but let me explain the importance of it. We try to build on mostly auto-approve directories but some of the top-level platforms will require additional levels of phone or text verification. Many times, unclaimed listings are set to no-index status by the platform. Notably, Yelp is one of these directories. So taking the extra few minutes to have a team member ensure the citations have been verified will go a long way to getting the top platform profiles indexed.
- Sort by indexable profiles vs indexable search pages. Not every citation profile is indexable. There are a few directories that set the business profiles to no-index but these are not worthless because the profiles are the only way to show up on the directory’s search or category pages, that ARE indexed. Many times this is the case with very very large directories. As they get larger they need to conserve crawl budget and ensure enough quality content on their site to satisfy Google so they purposely set the profiles to no-index. The no-indexed profiles will not be boosted as the sole point of those is to get the business listed in the search results. Notably, Angie’s List is such a directory.
Interlinking Citations and Establishing an Entity
- Add your indexable citations into the bottom of a locally optimized YouTube video description. Be sure to include the NAP in the description as well as links to the location page and the GMB listing and you will have a great tool for not only driving local relevancy but also ensuring that your brand citations remain indexed. For this to be helpful your YT video should be indexed but this can be easily accomplished just by adding the link to the YouTube video inside a GMB post.
- Add your citations to an entity or brand page on the website. You can use this page a the hub for your online brand and such a page can also serve to facilitate building the authority of the tier 1 properties.
- Add your citations in your Same as schema. This is going to help ensure that you get credit for your brand docs and that they get assigned to the correct entity. Both of which can help increase local prominence by making it easier for Google to assign credit for the brand mentions to your entity.
- Add your citations and brand profiles in the content of the GMB Site. Not only will this help establish documents for your entity but also helps get stubborn or difficult profiles indexed.
- GMB Posts remain one of the best ways to get links indexed, and while it’s difficult to do at bulk if you aren’t using a GMB post scheduling tool like Local Viking, the majority of links that we add to GMB posts instantly index in Google search as soon as the post is published, so sharing your most valuable citations in the posts is a viable strategy that does seem to help boost your citations.
Boosting Citation Authority
- One of our basic staples that will begin helping citations increase their backlink authority, our tiered links w geotagged photos can help create some geo-relevancy for the branded properties because we are including geo-tagged photos, local map embeds, and have access to a massive network of niche and geo-themed Web 20 blogs. This tactic takes advantage of a basic way of increasing PR by using a large number of low authority links and is still effective when used with the high-authority citation sites that we build the profiles on.
- Affordable but hard-hitting private network links are another tactic for building the backlink authority of the citations. Because these are comparatively more than the web 2 tiered links, we try to make sure to only target our better indexed and do-follow brand properties unless we have an additional budget dedicated to quality tiered linking.
- Another favorite of mine to affordably power up the authority of your brand citations is our do-follow news mentions. With this, we can add up to 4 contextual do-follow links inside the news article. I often use a combination of my website, top citations, and other top brand profiles.
Let’s Wrap This Up
A well-established, authoritative, and consistent NAP in the company’s online presence is essential to any successful local SEO campaign, so be sure to follow the tips in this guide to ensure you get the most out of your local business citations.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions, and if you find this guide super helpful and would like more content like this, let us know!! Thanks for the read!