The more directories and aggregators that have the correct business information the better. That way the business will be listed in more places online, and make it easier for people to find it. To see how a business is doing, conducting a citation audit is the best course of action.

Citation listings with incorrect information may be damaging to your local rankings. The more accurate they are the better.

As an example, you might have a contact number listed on one website and a different contact number on another. This is bad for your business. It’s confusing for potential clients and they will not know which of the two are correct contact details. Not forgetting that it may also confuse Google.

A local citation is any online mention of the name, address, and phone number of a local business. Citations can occur on local business directories, on websites and apps, and on social platforms.

Citations help Internet users to discover local businesses and can also impact local search engine rankings. Specifically, having the right basic citations can help you rank accurately on Google Maps. Local businesses can actively manage many citations to ensure data accuracy.

Citations are considered a ranking factor for local SEO. Having your business listed in trusted online directories sends signals to Google to improves their degree of certainty that your business exists.

The quantity of listings, the accuracy of your listings, and the quality of the online directories can affect how Google perceives your online presence.

This is why it’s important to pick your citations wisely.

There are several different types of citation websites out there and many SEOs argue about which are more valuable than others.

However, for local SEO, the SEO community generally agrees that the following Citations are “must-haves.”

• Google My Business
• Bing Maps
• Facebook
• Yelp

There are hundreds of potential websites to list a business online, but not all of them may be relevant for your business. That’s why citation categories exist.

There are many types of citations for many different types of businesses. Attorneys, healthcare, real estate, you name it; a category of exists.

While some citations have a higher domain authority than other, the category relevancy is more important than the domain authority. That’s why getting listed in these industry categories is critical.

Citation building is the act of sending out consistent, accurate and relevant information about your business to listing directories so that search engines and consumers know when, how and where to find your local business.

You can also think of citation building as similar to link building.