• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
more customers more sales logo

More Customers More Sales

Local SEO & Google My Business Product Expert

MENUMENU
  • Services
        • Google My Business Help
        • Google My Business Management
        • Local SEO
        • Citations Campaign
        • WordPress Websites
        • WordPress Maintenance
        • Google Analytics
  • Blog
  • About
        • Meet Margaret
        • Policies
          • Privacy Policy
          • Terms & Copyright
          • Legal Stuff
          • Billing & Refund Policy
  • Resources
        • Local SEO Discovery Centre
        • Google Maps Spam Reporting Guide
        • Best Review Sites
        • Google Posts Guide – 2020
        • Google My Business Website Builder Complete Guide (2020)
        • Local Search Terms Explained
        • Helpful LinksLinks for Google My Business support, Bing, and so much more. Hard to find links.

Citations – structured, unstructured, campaigns explained

published: 10 November, 2016 · updated: 22 September, 2020

A citation is any mention of your business out on the web.

Citations are used by search engines to weigh both the accuracy and popularity of businesses for the search results. It can come in various forms and consists of any combination of one or more of the following four items:

example of a citation on Yelp
example of a citation on Yelp
  1. Company name,
  2. Company address,
  3. Business phone number,
  4. Web address.

It does not matter whether the mention provides a link to your website or not. These come in various formats, following are examples:

  • Company Name, by itself.
  • Company name & phone number.
  • Company name, phone number, & address.
  • Company name, phone number, address, & link.
  • Company name with web address

Citations play a key role in the ranking of a local business page in a local pack and the Local Finder as well as the overall “findability” of a business, when people are looking for a business in their area. When a business wants to be shown in the top 3 or have higher visibility overall, one of the key tasks is to clean up and claim their citations.

Structured Citations

A structured citation is the presence of your business on other websites and/or business directories such as Google+, Yelp, Foursquare, Bing, and Yellow Pages.

Unstructured Citations

An unstructured citation is the presence of your business on newspaper websites, other business websites, or blogs.

Citation Campaign

A citation campaign is the marketing practice of building citations for a local business on a variety of websites.

Citation Quality

Generating citations from many sources, especially those within your immediate local, is less of a factor in local SEO than it was just a few years ago. Today the rule of thumb for citations is “quality over quantity”, while still having a healthy number. Remember the quality and authority of a directory linking to your website has an impact on the ranking power of your listing.

Citations are important to your local SEO efforts in two ways:

  1.  Targeted customers perspective – citations from other websites will bring more credibility and attention to your business. This will give your business the opportunity to be contacted by those visitors to that source website.
  2.  Search engine perspective – citations are picked up and matched to your main business website, even if it only includes the name and phone number. Search engines will return information of your business based on the needs of the local search.

Not Sure Where to Start?

Let’s chat online or in person with coffee, tea, or your choice…

Click Here

Footer

Services

  •  Google My Business Management
  •  Local SEO Audit
  •  Google Analytics
  •  WordPress Services
  •  Request a Workshop

Looking for Something?

 Resources

  • Google My Business Support Links
  •  Helpful Links
  •  Local Search Terms
  •  Reviews Disappearing?
  •  
  •  Google My Business Website Builder
  •  Beginners Guide to Citations
  •  Google Posts Guide
  •  Step by Step: Detecting Google Maps Spam with Examples

SMS

call

hours: Mon-Fri, 9:00-5:30

PO Box 149
Korumburra VIC 3950
Australia

 Member Login

Copyright © 2021 · more customers more sales, All Rights Reserved Disclosure: We sometimes use affiliate links which means at zero cost to you, we may earn a commission if you buy something through our links.