What could be more exciting than citation building? Alright, that was a lie—there is an endless list of things to do in Toronto that are much more exciting. For one, you can visit Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada and witness the jaw-dropping shark exhibit. If you love to shop, visit the colourful Kensington Market. Thrill-seekers will love Canada’s Wonderland, a theme park full of heart-pounding roller coasters. And if you want somewhere to eat, you’ve got over 8000 restaurants to choose from.
Even though building citations isn’t the most riveting activity, it is important. Your customers rely on citations to locate and contact your business, and search engines use them to determine the relevancy of your website in local SERPs. Your NAP (name, address, and phone number) is the core of your citations—this information needs to be 100% accurate across every mention of your website. It’s estimated that citations make up 8% of local ranking factors. It may be tedious, but building citations is an essential part of any successful SEO strategy.
What goes into building citations? It takes patience, an eye for detail, and mostly, a bit of time. There are a few things to take note of before you begin:
Creating consistent citations.
Google may be elusive about most of its ranking factors, but it makes one thing clear: it doesn’t like it when you misdirect customers, and an incorrect citation does just that. Citations act as a confirmation to search engines that your business has a real physical location; errors or inconsistencies make this information look suspicious, and your rankings will drop as a result. Customers won’t appreciate false information, either. If they call your business and discover that the number is out of service, they’ll move down the list and phone your competitor instead.
Inconsistent citations are bad for rankings and business, so what can you do to fix them? You can use online tools to audit your citations and look for any errors, like using this one by Moz. Simply enter your business name and location, and you can see where incorrect citations are across the Internet. Correct these mistakes as soon as possible so that your citations are consistent.
Building citations on high-traffic directories.
Where are customers searching for your business? Often, they visit websites like Google, Facebook, or Yelp to find out more about local companies. You also want citations on the most popular directories that are specific to your industry.
Let’s use an example of a dentist in Toronto. To help customers find your business, you want citations on directories that people look at when they’re searching for a local dentist. So, you should turn your attention to directories that specialise in healthcare professions. A few examples are 1800 Dentist and Vitals, along with Healthgrades. When your business is listed on the websites that most consumers look at, you’ll have increased visibility at no extra cost.
Generating more citations.
A higher volume of citations means that your website appears more legitimate; it also makes it easier for customers to find your information. Some businesses choose to build their citations manually. While there’s nothing wrong with this approach, it comes with one drawback: it can be very time-consuming.
It’s one thing to build citations across numerous directories when you have one location, but what if your business has five different shops across Toronto? You’ll need a separate citation for each, and you’ll need to make sure you don’t mix up any details, or you may face a rankings penalty. If one of your businesses delivers to Westside Toronto and the other only to Uptown, you need to distinguish these areas in your citation. With more citations, your website has more backlinks to directories with authority.
We get it: the last thing you want to spend your Saturday in Toronto doing is working on citations. Thankfully, there are ways you can outsource this work so that you can spend more time taking in the view at Niagara Falls. It starts with an SEO agency.
Looking for search engine optimization services in Toronto? At First Rank, we understand how unwieldy it can be to build citations on your own. We’ll help you keep things consistent across the world wide web. This is just one pillar of our SEO strategy; contact us today to find out more.
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