The Importance of Citation Building

If you want to improve your company’s visibility online and drive more website traffic, one way to do this is citation building. This will increase your appearance in local searches and help bring more attention to your business. Subsequently, this will lead to a rise in the number of leads you receive. Roughly 53% of all Google searches are local searches, so it’s more important now than ever to make sure you’re optimising your local SEO. Here, we’ve outlined the basics you need to know about citation building for trades. We’ll also tell you more about our very own SEO Visibility Booster, which is a tailor-made product that uses citation building to help you grow your trade business online.

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What are citations?

A citation is any mention where the name of your business, as well as address and phone number, appear on an online platform. They can be included in a range of sources, including social networking sites, business directories, search engines, news articles and more.

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Why is citation building important?

Citations are extremely important in helping the local SEO of small businesses. Search engines like Google take them into account when attempting to verify your online information and determine the relevance and authority of your site and business online.

The larger the number of citations your business has, the increased chance that your company will rank towards the top of local search results, which in turn helps drive more website traffic to your site.

Citations should be consistent and accurate on online platforms. Otherwise, you risk affecting your local SEO and losing out to your competitors. For example, Google could mistake a local business with a name similar to yours.

In addition to the above, the quality and quantity of your citations help build credibility with potential future customers. It also helps establish your company’s authority in your industry. A citation is essentially a recommendation that will encourage potential customers to try out your business. The more citations you have, the more likely people will see you as trustworthy.

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Introducing our SEO Visibility Booster

One of our most popular products for trades looking to boost their visibility online is the SEO Visibility Booster. We know as tradesmen, you don’t always have the time or the resources to do heavy SEO work yourself, so that’s where we come in! We’ll add your trade business to over 100 websites and directories and you’ll find yourself climbing up Google’s search results pages in no time!

Hear how our SEO Visibility Booster has helped grow other trade businesses and boost their ranking on Google:

“We have seen an increase in our visibility and so an increase in leads coming in which was the primary reason for doing the program. Everything so far has been great, Matthew & Joel are always so helpful and quick with responses, it’s really appreciated” - Tracy from Cavi Clear

Another one of our recent SEO Visibility Booster customers, Pipeline Plumbing, came to us with a poorly performing site. After implementing our citation-building SEO plan, we helped them achieve an average position of 18 on Google and they’ve seen a fantastic increase in their number of leads.

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Our top tips on citation building

1. If you haven’t already, set up and optimise your Google Business Profile. We offer this as a stand-alone service as well as part of our website package!
2. Submit your business to local directories and industry-specific sites such as Checkatrade.
3. Make use of data aggregators. These are websites that automatically collect and distribute information about businesses to search engines and directories.
4. Encourage customers to leave reviews wherever you’d most prefer. This could be directly to you, on your website, Google, or on an online directory for example.

Citation building is an extra layer of local SEO that is crucial for tradesmen wanting to expand their customer base. It’s vital to make sure you’re getting seen online and keeping on top of your citations will make a big difference to the number of leads you receive. Get in touch to see our how our tailor-made SEO Visibility Booster could help grow your business!

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