What Are Local Business Citations?

A local citation is any online mention of a local business’s name, address, and phone number. You can find citations all over the internet, including on local business directories, websites, apps, and social media platforms.

Citations are predominantly created to help searchers find local businesses online, but they can also have an effect on your local search engine rankings. The more citations you have from high-quality websites, the more likely you are to rank well in local search results.

Other components of a local citation include:

• Business categories
• Hours of operation
• Driving directions
• Business description
• Images
• Videos
• Payments accepted
• Geo-coordinates
• Reviews
• Review responses
• Taglines
• Links to social media
• Email addresses
• Attributes

The more information you include in your local citations, the better as this will help your customers and encourage search engines to trust your business. For example, if you have a website with up-to-date information about your products and services as well as positive customer reviews, this will create a good impression with potential customers and also signal to search engines that your site is authoritative and trustworthy. Creating quality local citations is an important part of any successful Local SEO strategy.

What Does N.A.P. Or NAP Consistency Mean?

N.A.P. stands for name, address and phone number. NAP consistency means that your business listings have the same NAP information across all directories, websites and apps where your business is listed. Consistent NAP information makes it easier for customers to find your business online and also signals to search engines that your business is legitimate,

How Do Local Citations Help Your Google Rankings

Local citations help improve your Google rankings in two ways:

Relevance: The more citations you have from high-quality websites, the more likely you are to rank well in local search results.

Authority: The more information you include in your local citations, the better as this will help your customers and encourage search engines to trust your business.

Creating quality local citations is an important part of any successful Local SEO strategy.

How Many Citations Does Your Local Business Need?

The answer, it depends.

The following is a list of key findings from our research.

• Local businesses who rank in the top 10 positions in Google Local have an average 81 citations
• Businesses ranked #1 in Google local rankings have an average 86 citations. Businesses ranked #10 have an average 75
• Hotels, bars, and restaurants have the highest number of citations. Photographers, tradesmen, and storage businesses have the lowest on averag
• The most popular citation sites across industries are: 1. Facebook, 2. Yelp, 3. Mapquest, 4. Yellow Pages, 5. Manta
• 5% of local businesses don’t have any of the most popular citation sites. For Home Service Industries, this is 18%!

How Does Your Free Citation Finder Work?

Step 1: Scan 60 Local Listing Sites For Your Business Listing

If you’re running a local business, it’s important to make sure your N.A.P (name, address, and phone number) information is consistent and accurate across all of the local listings sites, business directories, and data aggregators. Otherwise, you could be losing out on potential customers who can’t find your business or get in touch with you.

Our local citation finder is a quick and easy way to check your business’s citation sources and N.A.P information on over 60 different sites. Simply enter your business details into the form and we’ll do the rest. We’ll let you know if any of the listings have inaccurate or missing information, as well as where you need to update your details. With our local citation finder tool, you can rest assured that your business is listed correctly on all the major local directories. Review Grower’s local citation finder identifies 3 potential problems with all the citations and shows you exact citation opportunities .

Our 3 step audit:

Step 1: N.A.P. Accuracy Checker

One of the most important things you can do to ensure that your business is found online is to check your NAP accuracy on the most important business listing sites, directories, and data aggregators. NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone, and these are the three essential pieces of information that must be accurate in order for customers to be able to find and contact your business.

Step 2: N.A.P. Completeness Checker

It’s not enough to just have a lot of citations. Your business also needs to have a high completeness score. The more complete your citation profiles are, the better your chances of being found online.

Step 3: N.A.P. Consistency Checker

As a local business, it’s important to make sure your NAP (Name, Address, and Phone number) information is consistent across the web. This is important for two reasons. First, consistent NAP information helps customers find your business more easily. Second, consistent NAP information helps improve your local SEO (Search Engine Optimization) ranking.

Frequently Asked Questions

What’s included in my free citation scan?

With our local citation finder, we first scan 60 sites to find your listing then run through our 3 step process to audit the accuracy of your listings, the completeness of your nap, and the consistency.

What are the local data aggregators?

Local data aggregators are sites that collect business information from a variety of sources and then distribute that information to other local directories, maps, and search engines. The 5 major data aggregators in the US are Data Axle, Foursquare, Neustar Localeze, Yellow Pages Network, and GPS Network.

What are the top 3 local SEO ranking factors?

The three most important ranking factors in Google’s local search are proximity, relevancy, and prominence. Proximity means the distance between your business’ location to where someone is looking for you; relevance refers to what kind of company it is categorically, while prominence is how well-known your business is when compared to other businesses in the area. A complete, accurate, and consistent citation profile will make you more prominent on Google’s radar!

There’s no stronger marketing initiative for local businesses than implementing strong local search rankings, and local search marketing campaign.

Do you have any extra tips?

Once you’ve gone through and listed your business on all the 60 sites we check and have your accuracy, completeness, and consistency scores on target you should look at recreating your competitor’s citations.