Hello Big Ponders!
In a world where every search is local, your visibility depends - in part - on business citations. The good news is you don’t need to be a SEO expert to get them right.
Today’s video explains how to use citations for SEO without any of the jargon. At least, I don’t think there’s any jargon in there!
This clip is short and you’ll learn something new in a matter of minutes.
Let’s watch it now.
Click to watch the video.
Here’s the video chat transcript in full. Enjoy!
Video Chat Transcript
Andrew: Hi, everyone. My name is Andrew McGarry. We're here with Ari Pournaras from Big Pond Digital with another Big Pond Digital video. And today we're going to talk about how to generate more traffic and leads using local citations. So first question, what are citations and how can businesses benefit from them? Ari, over to you.
Ari: Yes. So citations are mentions of your business information, your name, your address, and in some occasions all the details on other websites. And so it's as simple as that. A good example of that could be Yell or yellow pages online typically that mention the name of the business, the address, postcodes, sometimes the website, brief description. Yeah. And that's pretty much an example of citation and they're really beneficial when it comes to local businesses because they tie in to your Google my business rankings and the more mentions from authority citation websites you have, the better your rankings basically. And we tested that actually recently and when we had an example of a brand that had limited citations and roughly the same metrics as another website, they have more. And yeah, they can really help your position and your rankings in Google by business specifically. So in that local "three-pack".
Andrew: Okay. So. Let's move on. No, we've got so this is this looks like a four square listing. You want to tell us about this?
Ari: So, yeah, this is a typical example of a citation, Paesano, a great place in Glasgow. And so this is what it looks like. And obviously not all citation websites are the same. Some are different. And before Square four Square is a really good example of that. And you get loads of these and depending on the industry, you might get industry specific ones. So for example, for restaurants, there might be some specific citation websites that deal only with restaurants or maybe restaurants and hotels. And so you've got your typical range of citations that apply to everybody, like Yell and Foursquare. And then you've got interesting industry specific ones that might apply only to your industry.
Andrew: That makes sense. Okay. So how would you go about building and managing citations?
Ari: Okay. So building citations, it's actually not a difficult task. It's pretty straightforward. The only issue is that it actually takes time. And if you want to go and say build hundreds, and keep the information consistent, that might take quite a lot of time out of your daily schedule. And well, you could start by building your Yell listing, your Foursquare listing. You can even do a quick Google of, you know, top 50 citations in the UK to build and you can work off that list and build them, right? So that's one way you can you can do manually could do it yourself and it's free. One thing to watch out for some of these citation websites offer you a free listing. They get your details and then the phone you up and try to upsell a premium package. And usually yeah, I mean, it's they're a business too. Yeah. And so usually our stock answer to that is, thank you, we're not interested. Please take us off your marketing list. And if you say that GDPR comes into play and they, they basically need to stop calling you all the time.
Ari: And so that's a good way of actually going about that. So yeah, so the first way of doing is manually yourself. The other way of actually doing it is outsourcing it to software tools like BrightLocal. And so that's a really good example of, of citation management software and they do a lot of things, but they're really well known for the citation aspect of the tool. And so BrightLocal is something you can sign up for, for your business. And basically not only ask them to build a citation for you, we can actually manage them. So if you move location and they can update all the listings for you or you can see if you've got inconsistencies between listings. And the important thing with citations is to keep the information the same across all of them. So they need to match your Google My Business listing and as long as you can achieve that consistency across everything, that will improve your rankings in the local space.
Andrew: Okay, that makes sense. So for the average business owner or marketer, they might be thinking, well, there's only Google Maps. You maybe... You've mentioned Google My Business, they might think of Facebook. You know, they might think, well, there's a couple might even do LinkedIn. I mean, you know, the average business owner might think there isn't that many citations to actually manage. Now what you're kind of saying is actually there's more than you would realise.
Ari: There's a lot more. Yes. And from some of them, you could actually get direct leads and you're not going to get as many as a through Google or Facebook or your other channels. But some of them are still really prominent and can actually drive traffic and leads directly. But the other ones, you build them mainly just to have that mention there. And because when Google looks at all these sources and sees the actually listed on 100 different types of websites, that gives you more authority in their eyes, which helps your position online.
Andrew: Okay. And I mean, we've got a list here of options in terms of obviously people could just do it themselves. It could manage it in a spreadsheet. But there are custom tools that would allow you to do it in a more organized, focused way.
Ari: Yeah. Yeah. And these are more catered to... I mean, anybody could use them. And what if, for example, you're a business that has multiple branches, then I would actually suggest going down this route because if you've got, say, even three locations, it could become a little bit complicated managing all the citations. And so it's worth paying like a monthly fee and it's reasonable, you know, it's quite reasonable and it's worth paying that on a monthly basis to manage them and, you know, make sure that everything is consistent.
Andrew: And I guess from a from a value... From an effort versus reward perspective, someone who's heard this today that thinks, okay, so this sounds like it might be worthwhile. Well, what would you say to them in terms of the effort versus reward?
Ari: And so I think the effort is quite minimal compared to the actual reward that you would get. And again, because this is a local space, you actually compete in it. And so if you, for example, build 50 citations, even if you do it manually, it takes you a day out of your schedule. I think the results that you would get from that would, you know, would make it worth it.
Andrew: Make it worthwhile. Yes. Great. Well, that was a really interesting, you know, beginners take on citations. Hopefully people can start to understand the value that citations have that, you know, people may have moved businesses premises, changed phone numbers, maybe even changed emails. And that consistency is really important so that search engines such as Google can understand what you are as a business entity and can therefore give you the right level of visibility for where you are, not only in terms of your geography, but the size of company you are, and making sure that you have that level of visibility based on how well you are known in your region. All right. Thanks for that, Ari. Until next time, folks, take care.
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Want more advice? Call us on 01292 844899. If you’re in a hurry, email claire@bigponddigital.co.uk and let’s set up a chat.
Until next time - good luck!
The Team @ Big Pond
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