Citations are typically business directory listings, such as Yelp, Yellow Pages, and many others. Citations are a fundamental ranking factor for local SEO. As such, it is essential to get citations right in order to improve your business' visibility online and to potentially affect local rankings.
Citations give search engines a digital 'anchor point' that provides multiple points of evidence to show that the business is where they say it is. They also help potential clients find what they're looking.
You should make sure that the business’s name, address, and telephone number are consistent online. If they aren't, then you might not be able to get the citation right. If you achieve this, Google (and other search engine) will be confident in the true location of your business, meaning they can accurately place the location on a map.
A range of accurate citations also shows search engines that a business has prominence, or is well known, which search engines also consider when determining the influence that a business holds in its local results.
There are many different ways for a business to get listed on Google, Bing, and Yahoo! But creating these listings and keeping up with them is a laborious task that requires a lot of research and inputting.
Citation Tracker displays a list of all the websites and directories where your business is listed. These are known as 'live citations.'
For the most important websites (e.g. YELP, GOOGLE, YELLOWPAGES.COM), the tool performs a complete audit of the core business information (NAP) displayed within the website, and highlights any errors or inconsistencies in the data. This allows you to easily check a business's citations without having to spend hours of time manually researching them.
The Citation Tracker looks at the business's competition (using the top-ranked businesses in the same business categories found on Google Business Profile), and searches the web to identify their mentions. It then provides the business with a listing of citation sites that they might be interested in.
Citation Tracker is used to audit client websites and plan effective strategies for their online presence. Many customers also use these reports to help educate prospects or clients on the current citation footprint of their business, which makes it easy for them to visualize how Google views their business.
