What is Local Citation? Structured and Un Structured Citations
What is Local Citation?
A local citation is any online mention of a local business’s name, address, and phone number. Citations can occur on directories that list all the businesses in your area or specific ones like Yelp and Foursquare to those websites where you post photos from your latest vacation – such as Instagram! Regardless of whether they’re found by clicking around social media sites or through search results, web users can find shops near them that sell what they need. But have you thought about how it could impact their rankings too?
A “local” citation may be both an offline mention (like being featured in a newspaper) OR an online one, for instance, when someone posts reviews on Google Business pages; mentions their location, which includes its exact street address & telephone
A citation mentions your business name with its contact information, usually in the form of an HTML link. Citations are crucial to ranking well for local SEO as they help get you on more search engine results pages and into maps that show up when people look around their area online.
A citation, which may be called something different depending on who you’re speaking with, like “NAP” (name-address-phone), is one part phone number and two parts URL that are required by Google’s guidelines. A single line mentioning this information about a person/business might not seem all too important at first glance, but if there isn’t any form of contact available, how would anyone know where we live?
What are structured and unstructured citations?
It is nearly impossible to find anything on the internet without using a search engine in today’s world. These are great tools for finding information and help people do everything from deciding which movie theater they want to see a new release at or where their next doctor’s appointment will be. One of these informative sites that can also impact your daily life as well would be local citations. A citation should not confuse you with something school-related such as Harvard Law School. Still, instead, this means any mention of your name, address, and phone number online- whether it appears on social media platforms like Facebook or Yelp reviews!
What are structured citations?
Do you want to attract more customers? Want to get that coveted five-star rating on your Yelp page? The first step has a structured citation. Structured citations are business listings found in online databases like Yellowpages or social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. They’re always accompanied by mentioning your company’s name, address, and phone number (also known as NAP) because they reference it for authenticity purposes!
Your business listing is the essential piece of your company’s online presence. It should include as much information about you and what makes you unique so that every potential customer can find it easily. More importantly, trust their experience with you will be a positive one. A structured citation such as Yellowpages or Yelp provides an organized way for users to search through companies to find exactly who they are looking for without bias before even hearing from them.
What are unstructured citations?
An unstructured citation mentions your business that takes place in any website or app not structured explicitly for the publication of local listings. For example, mentions on social media platforms and news articles are reference points to businesses – just like citations with specific structures do.
Unstructured citations are not always a bad thing. They can be found on any website or app that isn’t explicitly structured to publish local business listings and act as an unofficial reference to your company, just like one from a newspaper, blog post, or social media platform would.
Importance of Local Citation for Local Business
If you’re not on the first page of Google search results, locals might never find your business. That means no customers and a failed business venture in just five minutes.
Some small businesses might think that their rankings are important only to major corporations like McDonald’s or Starbucks but these rules apply to everyone from one-person startups all the way up to multinational brands with billions of dollars at stake every year. Local citations matter because they factor into three key areas: ranking for local searches (which is how most people discover new places) reputation across review sites which can affect both positive word-of-mouth as well as negative reviews revenue without being visible online it’s difficult if not impossible for potential clients to contact your company
When you use a service that accurately handles citations, your business can enjoy increased revenue and reputation. When inaccurate services are used, these assets will suffer. The stakes for maintaining a high ranking is too high to not invest in location data management; manual or automated solutions may be best depending on the needs of your company
Accurate citation systems positively impact rankings, reputation, and revenues while incorrect ones detract from those assets – but it’s important to choose carefully among manually operated semi-automated or fully automated options as they all come with different benefits and drawbacks which must first be weighed against each other before making any decisions.
