The local citation is one of the best way to make listed your business on the web; it is the full combination of your company name, phone number, postal code, address, and website address. In the terms of SEO, to explore the local search result of your business citation is one of the key factors.

The most important thing in local citation is you must have to include your company name, address, and phone number. If you can’t give these all information clearly then it may referred to as a partial citation.

Sometimes you may hear about a NAPW and UNAP citation. Here W refers to a website and U for URL of your website. When listing your business in a citation site you can also put your website link. No doubt this can create a big additional value to Google.

IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT LINKS:

Getting a link back in a citation is bonus, but you don’t need to get a backlink to increase your value. Whenever you are mentioned in a citation, then you automatically create the value. Google can see your business information and details through the NAP information in the citation. The more you can mention your business on the web, the more Google will appreciate you. This is one of the most important factors of getting rank in local search. But remember the link you create in a citation manual web 2.0 links can increase value of your website to Google, though most of them are no-follow.

Types of Citations

Structured or unstructured are the two types of citation.

Structured Citations

The structured citation is kind of a specific business listing directory that only let their users know about the information of many business. The example list in the bellow are structured citations.
• Yelp
• Yellowpages
• Facebook
• Superpages
• MapQuest Etc.

Unstructured Citations

You can also put your business information in any other site like magazine, newspaper sites, wikis and blogs. This is actually kind of unstructured citation.

Local Business Citation

How Citation Can Help a Local Business

Verification & Trust

This is extremely important. Through the citations Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engine can understand that your business exists.  When you list your business in different citation with same name, same information then it helps your business create authority, establish trust and will help you to improve your ranking in local search results.

Prominence

When it comes to local search rankings the algorithms used by both Google, Bing and Yahoo. The local search expert rated citation factors of a business as making up approximately 13.31% of the top 50 factors.

How to Build Citations for Local Businesses

It should be done right and correctly. It’s a time consuming process as well. Anyone who want to list their business in citation can outsource the work to a trusted service provider.

Tips for building citations:

• You need to have an email address. The best way is to use your business email that is associated with your website domain and that is not kind of Gmail or Yahoo.
• You must provide same information like your name, address, phone number and location in every site.
• Select a perfect category, it is important. Try to keep your categories consistent on the sites and choose the category that best describes what your business does.
• Add as much detail as possible – Add photos, your logo, a full business description, your operating hours, links to your social accounts, and so on.
• Add your website logo, photos, social accounts links, your operating hours; as much details you can put.

Summary

To optimize your business for local SEO you must have a strong citation profile. When it comes about local search the citations are always important and the part of the foundational basics.