Most people have heard about links from one website to another, commonly called “backlinks”. But there is another type of important SEO element called “citations”. Citations are similar to backlinks, but there is a difference between the two:
• Backlinks are links on other websites that point to your website. A good example of this is when a blogger or perhaps a news website writes an article about your company and includes a link back to you website.
• Citations are mentions of your company without any actual link. When another site talks about your company by mentioning your businesses name, phone number and address, known in the SEO biz as the NAP, that is considered a citation.
Not all citations have the entire NAP, they may just have one or two of the elements, and that is where a good SEO services company can help you increase your rankings in the search engines. Consistency in your NAP will help Google and the other search engines verify that your business information is correct and that you have been recognized by these websites.
There are many very important citation sites, here are some of the more important ones:
• Google My Business
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Yelp
• Foursquare
• YellowPages
• SuperPages
• DexKnows
How Citations Can Help Your Ranking
Citations from well-established websites like YellowPages.com help increase the belief that your company’s contact information is correct and that your business is established and confirmed as legitimate. This is why it is so very important to get your NAP correct in as many well known website portals such as those mentioned above.
How We Can Improve Your Citations
We use a combination of SEO ranking tools combined with our own experiences to locate existing citations for your business and those of some of your competitors. The competitors are added so that you can review where they are getting their citations from. We provide our clients with a comprehensive report of all current citations as well as prospective citation websites that our clients can add their business to over time.
Many of the incorrect citations we locate for your company can easily be corrected by us to include the proper NAP, these will be reflected in the previously mentioned report. Some of the incorrect citations cannot be corrected by us due to the need for either phone verification at the place of business or an email address from the company. We provide our clients with a list of each of these incorrect citations and a link to the website where they can correct them.
If you are looking to improve your search engine rankings, one of the many things you should do is claim as many citations as you can. Net101 can help you with this as well as the many other SEO services we provide. Call us now at 707-490-4542 for a free SEO consultation.
