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What Are Local Citations [+ 4 Steps to Build Them for Your Business]

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If you’re not sure what local citations are, don’t worry — you’ve probably come across them while looking for a new service-provider, brand, or company.

For example, a few weeks ago, my sister came to town and wanted to take me out to dinner. She’s unfamiliar with the area’s local spots, so my sister took to Yelp to find a restaurant we’d both love. After scrolling through Yelp, she found a Black-owned restaurant called 7th + Grove that had rave reviews.

Yelp showed 7th + Grove’s address, so we knew it was in a busy part of town and could be packed the night we wanted to visit. Fortunately, the restaurant’s phone number was listed, so my sister called and made a reservation. In this scenario, the restaurant’s listed address and phone number were their local citations — and made our visit easy and organized.

Citations can help with local SEO because they allow search engines to verify the legitimacy of your business. If the same name, address, and contact information for your brand are easily accessible throughout the web, search engines can trust that your business exists and is truthful about the service it provides.

Benefits of Local Citations

Local online searches have proven to be integral to a business’ success. According to BrightLocal’s 2022 Consumer Review survey, 99% of consumers used online searches to find local businesses in the last year. In that same survey, 78% of consumers said they searched for local businesses online more than once a week.

Graphic showing statistics that support the importance of local citations.

Types of Local Citations

There are several kinds of citations for local SEO that could work for your business. Let’s take a look at what they are:

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Structured Citations

A structured citation is when the name, address, and phone number of your business are listed on relevant business directories or third party websites like Yelp or Yellow Pages. These third party websites already have huge databases of reliable information. For those reasons, search engines like Google trust them.

It’s helpful to have local citations in directories that are relevant to your industry. For more general directories, like Yellow Pages, you’ll want to ensure your business is listed in the appropriate category.

This makes it easier for Google to understand the service your business provides and connect you to your intended audience. If you’re not sure what directories you should target, our list of 50 local directories can help.

Below is an example of a structured citation on Yelp. I searched the word “cookies” and a local cookie shop was shown with its NAP listed and website linked, all in one directory.

cookies-Apr-29-2022-02-45-53-83-PMImage source

Unstructured Citations

Unstructured citations also mention key information regarding your business, but unlike structured citations, the information isn’t grouped together. These kinds of citations are typically found on websites or apps that aren’t specifically designed as directories or business listings.

Common forms of unstructured local citations are online news articles, reviews, or blog posts that mention your business.

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For example, the That’s So Tampa article below spotlights a new restaurant named Wandee opening in the city of Tampa, Florida. The name of the restaurant is mentioned in the first paragraph, while the location and link to its Facebook page (which contains contact information) is at the bottom.

Local citations in article about Tampa restaurant

There is data that supports the notion that unstructured citations, like online reviews, can be beneficial to businesses. According to a survey by Brightlocal, 77% of consumers were “always” or “regularly” reading online reviews when browsing for local businesses in 2021. This is up from 63% in 2020.

How to Build Citations for Local SEO in 4 Steps

If you want to pursue local citation building for your business, here are the simple steps you need to take:

1. Use data aggregators.

There are many online business directories that rely on business owners to submit their NAP directly to the website to be included. Business owners and marketers simply don’t have the time to submit their business’ NAP to thousands of sites. Fortunately, there is a simple way to navigate this: data aggregators.

Data aggregators are companies that collect information, including business NAPs, and distribute them to hundreds of websites, saving you time and effort.

According to CitationsCheck, the four most prominent data aggregators right now are Foursquare, Localeze, Factual, and Infogroup.

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To boost your citations for local SEO, simply search for your business on these sites to see if it’s already featured. If you spot your business, claim it. If it’s not already on the site and you’ve ensured there are no duplicates, submit your business listing and its correct NAP to the website.

2. Submit your NAP to core sites.

The next step is to submit your NAP to core sites like Yellow Pages, Facebook, Yelp, Apple Maps, Yahoo Local, and Bing Places. Before submitting your NAP to these sites, make sure they are relevant to your business and worth the time and effort. This can be done by visiting the websites yourself and seeing what kinds of businesses are featured in the directories.

3. Submit your NAP to industry-specific and local websites.

After submitting to core websites, you’ll want to submit your information to directories that are specific to your kind of business. If you’re a home improvement contractor you’ll want your information on Angi, if you’re a realtor you should be on realtor.com, if you’re a hotel your information should be on TripAdvisor.

You’ll also want to be featured on hyper-local directories like the local Chamber of Commerce or other local business association websites.

4. Pursue unstructured local citations.

Unstructured citations for local SEO come in the form of blog posts, reviews, and articles about your business. Unstructured local citation building is a bit more difficult than structured local citation building because you’ll need someone to care enough about your business to write about it. But, don’t worry, it is far from impossible.

One way to pursue unstructured citations is to use Google to find supplier pages. Many businesses have supplier pages that link to the companies they supply or companies that supply them. Just make a list of suppliers and perform a site search to see if they already have mentions of your business on their website.

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Another resource is HARO (Help A Reporter Out). HARO connects journalists with sources for news stories. It’s a free tool that works by sending you daily email alerts from journalists. You’ll answer the journalist’s questions or give a quote, they’ll usually cite you and your business in their upcoming article.

Local citations help your business gain visibility online, boost search engine rankings, and improve consumer discovery. Whether you’re pursuing unstructured or structured local citation building, it’s important to ensure your business’ name, address, and phone number are accurate and the same across all platforms.

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MARKETING

Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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More promotions and more layoffs

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More promotions and more layoffs

For martech professionals salaries are good and promotions are coming faster, unfortunately, layoffs are coming faster, too. That’s according to the just-released 2024 Martech Salary and Career Survey. Another very unfortunate finding: The median salary of women below the C-suite level is 35% less than what men earn.

The last year saw many different economic trends, some at odds with each other. Although unemployment remained very low overall and the economy grew, some businesses — especially those in technology and media — cut both jobs and spending. Reasons cited for the cuts include during the early years of the pandemic, higher interest rates and corporate greed.

Dig deeper: How to overcome marketing budget cuts and hiring freezes

Be that as it may, for the employed it remains a good time to be a martech professional. Salaries remain lucrative compared to many other professions, with an overall median salary of $128,643. 

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Here are the median salaries by role:

  • Senior management $199,653
  • Director $157,776
  • Manager $99,510
  • Staff $89,126

Senior managers make more than twice what staff make. Directors and up had a $163,395 median salary compared to manager/staff roles, where the median was $94,818.

One-third of those surveyed said they were promoted in the last 12 months, a finding that was nearly equal among director+ (32%) and managers and staff (30%). 

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Extend the time frame to two years, and nearly three-quarters of director+ respondents say they received a promotion, while the same can be said for two-thirds of manager and staff respondents.

Dig deeper: Skills-based hiring for modern marketing teams

Employee turnover 

In 2023, we asked survey respondents if they noticed an increase in employee churn and whether they would classify that churn as a “moderate” or “significant” increase. For 2024, given the attention on cost reductions and layoffs, we asked if the churn they witnessed was “voluntary” (e.g., people leaving for another role) or “involuntary” (e.g., a layoff or dismissal). More than half of the marketing technology professionals said churn increased in the last year. Nearly one-third classified most of the churn as “involuntary.”

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Men and Women

Screenshot 2024 03 21 124540Screenshot 2024 03 21 124540

This year, instead of using average salary figures, we used the median figures to lessen the impact of outliers in the salary data. As a result, the gap between salaries for men and women is even more glaring than it was previously.

In last year’s report, men earned an average of 24% more than women. This year the median salary of men is 35% more than the median salary of women. That is until you get to the upper echelons. Women at director and up earned 5% more than men.

Methodology

The 2024 MarTech Salary and Career Survey is a joint project of MarTech.org and chiefmartec.com. We surveyed 305 marketers between December 2023 and February 2024; 297 of those provided salary information. Nearly 63% (191) of respondents live in North America; 16% (50) live in Western Europe. The conclusions in this report are limited to responses from those individuals only. Other regions were excluded due to the limited number of respondents. 

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Download your copy of the 2024 MarTech Salary and Career Survey here. No registration is required.

Get MarTech! Daily. Free. In your inbox.

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