Are you looking for ways that will help you boost your local SEO ranking? If that is the case, you should know that local citation building is among the top five strategies for improving SEO rankings. It is a simple strategy that can help you a lot! However, some business owners are avoiding citation building because they don’t want their addresses to be shown on the Internet. If you too are one of them, we, at AZ Citation Services, are here to help! You can keep your address private while making a strong online presence and we are going to tell you all about it. So, how do you build citations if you want to hide your address? Read on and find out all about this topic!
What is citation building?
Every SEO expert knows how valuable local citations are. This is an SEO strategy that can help local businesses get more customers by making their online presence stronger. So, citation building can be very useful, but what actually citations and citation building are?
Seeing the word citation might bring back some school memories. However, these citations aren’t the same as the ones you have used in school. In the context of online marketing, it has a totally different meaning! A citation is a mention of your company’s name, address, and telephone number on a third-party website. Citations can be shown all around the web! They can be included in industry-specific publications, social media profiles, Google My Business, review websites, and so on.
You are the one who is choosing what to include in your local citations. Here is some information that can be part of local citations:
- The name of the company
- Company’s address
- Phone number
- Social media links
- Opening hours, etc.
Keep in mind that people use citations to find a service they need. This is why you should look up tips for making perfect citations and follow them because that is what will help you attract more customers.
Why would one business want to build citations and hide its address?
There are many benefits to getting local citations. So, why would one business want to build citations and hide its address? That doesn’t make any sense, right?
Well, no. Due to many reasons, some companies opt for keeping their address private. These businesses don’t want to have customers that will show up at their door. However, they still want to have a good position in local rankings and that is why they order a citation. To help you understand this better, let’s take a look at some of the reasons why would a business want to build citations and hide its address.
- Operating from home. Which means that a business owner will need to share their home address. Doing this is what can anyone feel uncomfortable.
- Operating from a virtual office or a shared co-working space. These aren’t the perfect locations for helping and serving clients.
- Not having staff during operating hours. If a customer shows up at the address, they will find no one and that is a huge minus.
Will hiding address affect your business?
As you can see, there are different types of businesses and not all of them should share their addresses. But, let’s face it. We all have the same question. Is it a good idea to build citations if you want to hide your address? Would dong this affect your business in any way?
What we can say is that not showing your address in citations won’t harm your business. However, you should keep in mind that there are many websites that won’t let you hide your address. This means that your business won’t be able to appear on these sites while others will. Others will take full advantage of citation opportunities and they will build a stronger online presence. And that is something you would want to avoid.
So, will hiding your address have a negative impact on your business? No. But, you will miss out on great opportunities that will help you grow your business. Thus, you should really ask yourself before you opt for citation building whether you should hide your address or not.
Whether you want to hide your address or not, Google’s guidelines need to be followed
In some cases, the address of your business needs to stay hidden even if you don’t want that to happen. According to Google My Business guidelines, there are some businesses that aren’t allowed to show their address on Google. This goes for businesses that don’t have staff during operating hours and for those that operate from homes. Showing address on Google in these cases is against their terms of services and comes with consequences.
So, how to build citations if you want to hide your address?
There is no doubt your business can benefit a lot from citation building. Even if you decide to keep your address private, you will still be able to improve your local SEO ranking. To help you out, we have written a couple of recommendations and tips you will want to follow.
If you want to hide the address of your business, hide it on the websites that will let you do that. However, you should also build citations on some other websites that won’t let you keep it private. This is because it is very unlikely that a person would stumble upon your address on these websites. Most people rely only on popular search engines, such as Google. Thus, you can show your address on unpopular sites and hide it on popular search engines. Your local SEO ranking will improve and your business will become stronger.
Do you want to learn more about citations? If so, make sure to get in touch with us and our experts will gladly inform you and answer your questions.
