Citations are those posts of information regarding your site that people post on directories. They’re like mini reviews about your website and business that allow for surfers to find you when they query search engines. These citations are far more valuable as they may seem, and there are ways to gain the upper hand, especially for local SEO.
You’re going to have to do some work to maximize the value of the citations about your site. Find as many as you can and triple check them for accuracy. It’s not always a matter of having lots of citations as it is in having accurate citations. Having the wrong name and location or phone number and other contact and descriptive information can ruin your chances of getting maximum efficiency in search traffic, especially that treasured targeted organic traffic. If someone is surfing for your site, let’s pretend here that your site has query data for “Joe’s Aquarium Supplies in Los Angeles, California, 123 ABC Street” and the citations have “Joe’s Aquarium Store in California, ABC 123 Avenue” instead, then you can see the damage being done. Surfers are getting your site’s name right but the address is all wrong. This could be due to a typo in your promotion or some other site goofed up. Either way these things have to be corrected and depending on the volume, it could take a while.
You’ll need to do some backtracking to find out where and when the error occurred and get to work immediately on correcting things. Of course this means the tedious chore of contacting each site to edit the info that you can’t and they may or may not be reluctant to do so depending on how difficult it could be. If it appears that things will be difficult, then respond to the citations themselves with the correct information. At least the correct information will appear next to the incorrect data.
The same goes for the products and services you provide. You can get far on synonyms, but only so far. Descriptions and lists of your products and services has to be correct as well. If you’re lucky enough to have an advertisement jingle that accompanies your promo, all the better. People like to post popular jingles to commercials they like, especially on social media. If you do have an audio video commercial with a jingle, make sure it’s posted on all the social media video sites and in those ads, announce the correct products and services as well as contact and location info. Never leave anything to chance. Establish your ground and keep it.
Precise information in those citations could mean the success or failure in this area of SEO. As you gain more fans make sure to bring to their attention that if they mention you in any citations to include the info you provide for them. Do this especially if you have a mailing list. Sometimes people get lazy or drunk or are in a rush and while posting info about you and your business site, they make mistakes. Getting them to correct them is just too much of a task, but you can at least try.
Remember, citations are just part of the arsenal you have to improve your local SEO rankings. Don’t underestimate their value nor shirk your responsibility in making these citations as accurate as possible.