Is your target audience local? Do you want to optimize your online business for nearby customers to gain more traffic, sales, and leads? This can be achieved through Local SEO services or Google Business Profile (GMB) optimization. When we implement a Local SEO strategy to improve your visibility in Google’s local search results, citations play a crucial role.
What Are Local Citations?
Local citations are a core element of Local SEO. They include your business’s Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP) listed across online directories and platforms. Google places high importance on the accuracy and consistency of your NAP information, as it helps build trust and credibility for both search engines and customers.
There are two main types of citations:
Structured Citations: These appear in official online directories such as Yelp, Yellow Pages, and Google Business Profile, where your business details follow a consistent and organized format.
Unstructured Citations: These are casual mentions of your business name and information found in blog posts, social media platforms, news articles, or other online content without a fixed directory format.
Why Are Local SEO Citations Important?
In simple terms, it represents your business identity and verifies your valid presence on the internet. Accurate and consistent information about your business name, address, and phone number—helps build visitor trust, enhances online visibility, improves rankings, and strengthens search engine credibility.
There are two types of citations:
Structured Citations: These appear in online directories like Yelp, Yellow Pages, and Google Business Profile, where business details are formatted consistently. Here is the example of structure citations:
Local listings, citations can include much more than just basic NAP information. As shown in the example above, some citations may also feature additional business details such as:
- Website URL
- Business category
- Business description
- Hours of operation
- Industries served
- Social media links
- Customer ratings
- Years in business
- No. of Employees
- Ownership Type
Unstructured Citations: These are mentions of your business’s name and details in blog posts, social media, or news articles, without a specific directory format. Here is an example of unstructured citations:
Where Should Your Business Be Cited?
To strengthen your local SEO presence on internet, your online business should be listed on reputable and high-authority local business directories and local listing websites. Some of the most important citation sources include:
- Google Business Profile or GMB
- Yelp
- Apple Maps
- Industry-specific local directories
- Hotfrog
These platforms help improve your brand online visibility, credibility, trust and local search rankings.
How to Build local citations for online business?
Citation building is the process of submitting, claiming, and verifying your business information across local directories, social media platforms, and relevant industry websites. To complete this process effectively, follow these steps:
- Use a valid business email ID.
- Identify a list of local directories or business listing websites.
- Sign up for an account and complete the verification process.
- Submit accurate business information, especially your NAP (Name, Address, and Phone number).
- Claim your business listing where applicable.
- If your business is already listed, review the information and correct any inaccuracies.
You can add additional information in your local citations like:
- Your website URL
- Contact Email ID
- Contact Person Name
- Business operating hours
- Business Category and description
- Customer reviews
- Business Logo
- Cover or Banner Image etc.
Best Tools to Check Local SEO Citations
If your online business is new, there’s little to no chance of having duplicate listings. However, if you’ve previously worked on Local SEO, you may already have existing citations that need to be checked, updated, or managed. In such cases, you’ll need dedicated Local SEO tools to help you accurately review, edit, and maintain your listings.
When managing local citations manually, it’s important to use tools specifically designed for listing accuracy and NAP consistency. Traditional SEO tools are not sufficient for this task. Instead, consider using one of the following listing management tools:
- BrightLocal – Citation Tracker
- Moz – Local Listing Checker
- Semrush – Listing Management
- Whitespark – Citation Finder
How to Create Citations for a Multi-Location Business
First, you need individual web pages for each location so you can effectively target your multi-location audience. Next, when creating citations for a multi-location business, make sure each location has its own unique and consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) profile on major directories such as Google, Yelp, and Bing. Maintaining accurate and identical information across all platforms helps improve local SEO trust and visibility.
Issues You May Face When Targeting a Multi-Location Business
You may have dedicated location pages, but your website’s static footer still displays only the main headquarters address, name and phone number. In this case, even though each location has its own page, the footer showing a single headquarters address can create inconsistency and confusion for both users and search engines.
What you can do is either create an individual footer for each location so you can display the correct local address, or include the location-specific address somewhere on the page using Schema markup.
Secondly, if you display multiple location addresses and phone numbers on your targeted location pages, it can create confusion for users and search engines. They may struggle to understand which specific location the page is meant to represent.
A mismatch in your local citations—such as incorrect address, name, or phone number—can harm your local SEO. To avoid this, ensure you use accurate and consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone) information for each location.
Duplicate Content: Copying the same content on multiple location webpages can make them look generic and reduce their relevance in Google’s searches.
Single Google Business Profile: Using just one Google Business Profile for all branches can limit the visibility of each individual location in local search results.
Final Thoughts
Local SEO citations are a key component of an effective local SEO strategy. Keeping your citations accurate and consistent builds trust with both search engines and customers, enhancing your business’s visibility and credibility in local search results.
