Whenever a person needs certain information or wants to know the answer to a question they look them up online. And, of course, in most cases, everybody would rely on Google and its search results. This fact is an excellent starting point for a successful business online marketing. If a businessman wants to get in touch with as many customers as possible and to promote his work, he needs to appear on Google. The best way of doing that is by building the citations. However, the mere creation of citations does not guarantee that your business will be visible among the search results. What you need to ensure is that Google recognizes your citations as trustworthy and indexes them. But, how does this indexing process happen, and does it matter if Google doesn’t index citations? Read this article from our AZ Citation Services experts and find out.
What are citations and why they are important?
Smart marketing moves are extremely important in the business world, especially nowadays. You need to be skilled, and you should learn what to do in order to make your business more successful. Thanks to modern technologies, today online business promotions are a great way to draw attention to your products and services.
Citations are, simply speaking, the online mentions of certain businesses, and can serve as an excellent way for promoting them. They offer your potential customers basic information about your business. This information needs to be accurate and consistent in order for Google to recognize them as reliable, and thus show your business among the first searching results.
Defining the indexing process and does it matter if Google doesn’t index citations?
If Google enters the process of indexing a web page, that means it has become aware of the page and its content. The idea is to create a kind of list of all the websites that Google knows about. That list is something called Google’s index. And only if a site is indexed there it will appear among the search results on Google. For every marketer that should be the primary goal.
When someone consults search engines to find certain information, Google looks in its database, meaning the index, in order to respond to the request with the relevant data. Logically speaking Google search engine cannot offer your business as a result if it doesn’t exist in its index. Business owners who understand the importance of citations for local SEO will give their best to build them well. But only if Google becomes aware of the citations they will influence SEO and local rankings. When a citation doesn’t appear in the search results, you can be sure there is no worth of it.
Through several studies, people shared their experiences about the correlation between the process of indexing and the ranking of their businesses. Namely, in many cases, businesses with considerably low rating results started showing some improvements in ranking the moment they got their citation indexed. The more indexed citations, the better ranking. Of course, this doesn’t mean that indexing is the only way for gaining a better position in the Google search results. However, it does influence it in a way.
Things you can do to get your citations indexed
If Google can’t find your citations, there will be no credits of your business mentions for your local search. In other words, your business will not get prominence, since Google doesn’t even know that it exists. Therefore, it is important for you that Google indexes your citations.
Useful pieces of advice:
- One way of increasing the citation indexing is by utilizing the unique content in every single citation you build. In some cases, it may happen the lack of uniqueness can have an impact on the process of indexing even with the well-optimized and properly built citations. Google spends money on indexing. Thus, only citations with high-value content can get a chance to be and stay indexed by Google.
- Focus well on building your citations. Every profile you create should be properly and carefully filled with all the necessary information. What’s more, if you contribute the listings with some media you can be sure your citation indexing will be faster.
- As soon as possible, make sure that your citations become a part of the content of the Google My Business citation site. The truth is that Google indexes almost every single citation that is published in the posts on this site. And the best thing is you will not have to wait since this happens almost immediately after publishing the post.
- Make sure your citations have been verified before you conclude your submission. There are some platforms that offer instant verification of the listing, thus there will be no problem with them. However, in some cases, you will have to make some additional steps in order to claim your listings. Keep in mind that it is not a rare case that a listing isn’t indexed just because it is not properly claimed.
Summing up
Understanding the online platforms and going into the world of social networks and search engines is an essential part of online marketing. People spend so much time surfing, and you need to make sure that the information about your services and products is available on some of the popular citation sites. Understand the market and the competition. Learn about citation building and create useful mentions. But, always keep in mind that Google needs to be aware of your actions. In our text, you can find the answer to the important questions- does it matter if Google doesn’t index citations, and what are the consequences if something like that happens? After all, one thing is clear- if something doesn’t really exist online, or if it is not visible, it can’t be successful. Maybe you should think about that.
