Local citations form an integral part of an SEO strategy because these can help your company gain desirable visibility on a search engine. But what does citation mean here? Also referred to as business listing or directory listing, citations include the name, address, and contact details of your business. Putting up all these details correctly everywhere is critical, as it can serve as a building block of your SEO planning. Although platforms that showcase such information may vary from country to country, some of the widely known websites include Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook, Foursquare, and so on. Once you manage to feature in one of these directories, you can expect to appear before your potential customers when they search for a related business. Business citations can be of two types, including structured and unstructured.
What is structured citation?
When listings appear on a particular platform in a consistent format with others, it is known as a structured citation. The consistency in the structure comes through the way information has been submitted. The users need to use specific fields to provide their details, and that’s why you see all the businesses having a similar pattern.
What is unstructured citation?
Even if it is not so common, this kind of citation can appear all over a web page. For example, if you look at blogs, press articles, or forums, you will find that a business address gets a mention in one place, followed by contact information later on. The same page may contain all the data, but not all of them appear together. Search engines have to crawl these pages fully to dig out the relevant information according to the queries. But you cannot still ignore the significance of this type of citation.If you use both these methods of citation well, you can expect your business to have better performance in terms of SEO and beyond. There are many reasons why you should focus on this part. Let’s explore them one by one. Singapore SEO
Importance of business citation
- Customers look for business citations while searching for a product or service. So, even if you keep the factor of SEO aside, you cannot deny its significance for your potential customers.
- Even though they may not directly impact your ranking, you can depend on citation signals to indirectly influence your local and organic positions. Search engines trust online directories and websites that feature business listings. Hence, if you give consistent information everywhere, search engines will automatically value your business.
- Having authority is necessary. When you list your business on citation directories, you need to provide your website URL also, which some of them showcase as do-follow links. So, this, in a way, helps you earn a link back to your site, which enjoys a special place in search engines.
You can reap benefits only if your citations are accurate. But if you fail to keep them up-to-date and consistent everywhere, you can trigger the reliability issue in the eyes of the search engine. As a result, your rankings can also get hit. To make sure it doesn’t happen so, reach out to a well-established SEO company in Singapore for citation auditing. For help, you can visit https://www.seosingaporeservices.org.
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