Do Citations help will all local rankings/Pages on my website or just the page it's linked to
-
Hi All,
My ecommerce site has different category/landing pages for each of my branches . I'm currently getting some more citations done as wondered the following
-
Is it a general rule to say, that the more citations you have the better as long as they are consistent and free?
-
Given that I have different categories /landing pages showing the NAP of my individual branches along with unique content, should all these extra citations help with local rankings across my whole site or is it usually just helping the specific localized webpage it's pointing to ?
-
I can get a company to help me do my citations but to do all the branches, it is going to be quite expensive. Is citations quite a big individual SEO factor in local search as opposed to on page seo factors etc etc.
Any advice greatly appreciated.
thanks
Peter
-
-
Many thanks Laura,
A Very comprehensive answer to my query.
I was referring to local organic search results with reference to whether citations would help with them as opposed to maps etc but I think by what you're saying is that they will.
I will read those articles you kindly linked in as well.
Many thanks
Peter
-
First of all, citations are not synonymous with links, although a lot of citations do include links. A business citation is just a mention of the company, often in a structured format and including the address, phone number, and website (but not necessarily).
Secondly, you'll need to clarify if you are referring to local search results (3-pack, 7-pack etc with map) or the organic search results. Citations (with or without links) have the greatest effect on local results. They help search engines distinguish one business from another, particularly in local search and map results.
Your question implies that citations only have value inasmuch as they help your website perform in search. On the contrary, business citations help customers find the products and services that they need online, even if they never make it to the company's website. In fact, it can be extremely frustrating to customers when they can't find what they need online, as I recently found out. Citations can be highly beneficial in terms of "Barnacle SEO" as well.
To answer your questions:
1. There are typically about 50-100 general and niche citation websites that are important for each industry. Anything beyond that will see diminishing returns.
2. Links from citations can be beneficial to an entire site, for the most part, but they are more significant for the target page. Avoid citations from spammy sites.
3. Citations are one of the biggest factors affecting local search results. See the 2014 Local Search Ranking Factors.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to get 1st page rankings in the local cleaning niche.
Hi guys, I'm trying to learn how to market my carpet cleaning website in Google but without much success. I'm reading marketing forums for over 6 months still can't achieve 1st page rankings. What I'm missing? Can you please check the site and tell me what to improve to get good rankings in Google UK? There are some competitors which are doing very well, for example competitor1, competitor2 but I can't figure out what they have which I don't? I'm not very experienced in marketing but hope someone here will guide me how rank my cleaning website on 1st page.
Local Listings | | badit340 -
Google My Business Pages - Still Relevant or Phasing Out?
Google My Business plays a big part of getting your company to rank in the local pack for local search queries. Apart from making sure this is correct and up to date, where do you think the future of GMB pages is headed? Will Google eventually start phasing these out and come up with a different way to populate the local pack?
Local Listings | | BlueCorona1 -
Citations, SEO and a skeptical client
What do you say to a client who recently purchased an online business and says 'I don't really care if the phone number or address on a directory is old or incorrect'?I've tried to explain the value from an SEO point of view, but he's not really buying it.Anyone encountered this skepticism before and if so, how did you handle it?
Local Listings | | muzzmoz0 -
How to Rank in Places Across Range Keywords
Having some success in Google Places but would like to rank across the range of phrases that we work with. To give you an example where LOCATIOn is the city we are based in: office partitions LOCATION
Local Listings | | GrouchyKids
Position 1 Local Results office refurbishment LOCATION
Position 29 Local Results office fit out LOCATION
Not present office partitioning LOCATION
Position 3 Local Results suspended ceilings LOCATION
NA What can I do to achieve results across the range of phrases? Am I missing something fundamental like not including something in Google Places? Justin How to Rank in Places Across Range Keywords LOCATION0 -
Ranking opportunity if we omit county in citations
I am looking to rank highly in local search for Birkenhead but have not currently filled in the county on Google + so Moz local is not picking the county up. I am wondering whether I should continue and keep the county off there as there is a potential problem: on our website we are listed as being based in the Wirral and we are also based in a county called Merseyside so have two different possible citations. We are ranking well for the term Wirral and do not want to effect this. I am thinking of building citations without Wirral or Merseyside and was wondering if anyone can advise? The address that I have in the citation would be - business name, building number, Birkenhead then Wirral or Merseyside and post code. I am currently using business name, building number, Birkenhead and post code and we want to rank highly for Birkenhead. Could anyone advise me here? The Wirral is a peninsular as can be seen on Wilipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Borough_of_Wirral
Local Listings | | SEM_at_Lees0 -
International customers for local business
Hi I have a vacation rental in France. My customers come from the UK/US, France, and Spain and as such i have three domains. www.domain.com (French) en.domain.com (English) es.domain.com (Spanish) I first set up a Google+ page which was tied to my French website and it's descriptive text and KW are in French. I subsequently set-up 2 more Google+ pages (English and Spanish, each with their respective domains and language specific KW) for the purpose of showing up in local searches in the UK and Spain, which is starting to working. I'm I going in the right direction? is this a crazy idea since they all have the same local address? Thank you for sharing insights regarding how to handle a local business with multilingual customers.
Local Listings | | pgcosson0 -
Brain Teaser - Dead Link Ranking in SERP's
Hello Moz Brains. Came across a site that is coming up for "caliber signs and imaging" which is a brand I'm working with, and a few things have me baffled: 1. The link in the SERP takes you to an error page (you can manually access it by dropping the www.)
Local Listings | | VanadiumInteractive
2. The entire site is setup with iFrams (header frame, body frame, and footer frame) navigating throughout the site keeps the single url and only swaps the body content.
3. The site if for a sign company but the blog area served in the iFrame is in Indonesian and seems to about some soccer matches.
4. The business associated with this site is in AZ, but they are coming in local (Irvine, CA) results with a dead page and no locally relevant content. I'm I missing something or is Google missing something? The site is "http://calibersigns.com/" and it belongs to a company in AZ. -- it comes up for "caliber signs and imaging" (in my case on the 3rd spot) or even worse "caliber signs and graphics" where it seems to be at the top, with all the surrounding content being the true brand -- which makes it look like my clients Google+ reviews and other endorsements belong to them. I have my local setting set to "92618", Irvine CA Would love some feedback on this and your opinion on how we should proceed? thanks in advance0 -
G+ Local Business Page vs. Brand Page Problems
I'm struggling a bit with a Brand page vs. Local page on G+ and wondering if anyone here has had this same problem and found a solution.... This is related to a business that has a does have a physical address for a head admin office, but they provides a financial service to people across Canada over the phone. So although the business has an address and local phone number for admin purposes, it doesn't want people showing up at that address and definitely doesn't want to be considered a "Local" business. However, Google automatically creates the local listing in google maps, which the business has claimed but otherwise does not want to maintain. Instead the business has a Brand page on G+ (not local) which it has linked to the domain and actively maintains as their G+ business page. The trouble is, Google is associating showing the local listing as the rich snippet in in their organic result instead of the Brand page. Is there anything the company can do to further help Google associate the Brand G+ page with the website instead of the local listing? I already tried removing the link to the website from the local listing in hopes that would dis-associate it with the domain. That got rid of the rich snippet, but now the local listing shows up as a separate organic result just below the main company website, which is just as bad or maybe worse. To confirm, the website IS linked to the BRAND page using rel=publisher, and the brand page does have a verified link to the company domain. Thanks for the help!
Local Listings | | PlusROI1