Why Local Citations Are Important for SEO

When it comes to having an effective SEO strategy, citations are incredibly important to your local business listings.

What are local citations?

By definition, citations are “mentions” of your business name and address on other webpages, regardless of whether or not there is a link to your website. Including local citations for SEO are a key component of the ranking algorithms. Businesses that have more citations are more likely to rank higher compared to businesses with fewer citations (assuming that all other factors are equal).

Local citations for SEO are able to validate that a business is part of a community. Citations from reliable websites are able to help improve your local search engine ranking. Citations can be found in local search engines, local blogs, locally-focused directories and industry-focused directories or blogs.

Local search engines will often find citations that will validate or correct the business information in their own indexes. Perform searches that include “[your industry] directory” and “[your keyword] directory” in order to get a few ideas of the types of sites on which to get listed. If your business is in a less-competitive niche, local citations are even more important to have, especially for service providers that do not have websites.

Citations from well-indexed portals are able to help increase the degree of certainty that search engines have about your business’ contact information and categorization. Without enough information, such as a website, search engines will rely on whatever information that they can find, including reviews.