Having a website means you need to have good SEO. There are plenty of things that influence SEO and one of them is citation audit. Those who know more about SEO know just how important it is to have good citations. But those who don’t just seem to be doing this incorrectly. If you want to have a good website that people will be able to find, this is where you will learn just how to conduct a quick citations audit. Not a lot of people even know what citation audits are and we are here to bring all of this closer to you. We have included all the information you need to know about this topic. So, if planning on having a successful business or a website, here is where you will find the tips you need to know in order to conduct a quick citations audit.
What is Google My Business?
We can’t tell you about Citation Audit until we tell you about Google My Business. This is because the citations audit is related to Google My Business listings. If you have a business, this is surely something you have already heard of. This is a very helpful tool. It is free and it allows you to promote your business profile and business website. But this is only on Google Search and Maps. Which is, if you were to ask us, sometimes even more than enough. But it is, of course, best to advertise as much as you can in as many places as you can.
In order to access this, you will first need a Google My Business account. This way you will be able to connect with your customers easier. This is also a place where you can post updates about your business such as if the working hours change or if you move your business to a different location. But the most helpful thing about this tool is that you can actually see how customers interact with your business on Google.
Creating this profile is a very easy task. You just need to gather information about your business, enter it in the fields, and you are good to go. From there, a new world opens for your business. And that is when you will realize the importance of citations for a local business.
What is a citation audit?
Now that you know about Google My Business, you are ready to find out more about citation audit. It is related to Google My Business. Running a citation audit means checking whether the information on your Google My Business account is correct. But not only there, throughout the entire web as well. But it only applies to your NAP information. If you don’t know what NAP information is, we are here to explain. But it is very simple. It is just the Name, Address, and Phone number of your business.
Citation Audit ensures that across the web, wherever your business is mentioned, this information stays correct. This is because this is the most important piece of information about your business. If this information is not correct, your business won’t be easy to find. And this might lead to making your business seem unreliable to Google. This is just how citation audit is related to SEO. If you don’t conduct a quick citations audit every now and then, Google might display some false information about your business. And this might lead to your business developing slower. Especially if you have expanded your business from one city to another, these things are very important to pay attention to.
How to conduct a quick citations audit?
Now that you know more about citation audit as well, we are here to teach you just how to conduct a quick citations audit. The first thing you need to be certain about is just how you have input the information about your business in Google My Business. You need the business name, address, city\state, zip code, phone, website.
Then you decide just how you will be doing the citation audit. Will you be doing it manually or using a tool. BrightLocal is a great tool to have as it automates the whole process. But it is certainly something you need to pay for. And we believe that sometimes doing it manually is far more reliable.
Once you have all the information written out exactly as it is on Google, you need to start Google searching. Yes, to conduct a citation audit you need to use Google Search. And you just search for the name of your business and the city\state. This will show you everything about the businesses with that name in the city and state you have input. All the results you get that aren’t on your website or related to it are citations. But you have to know just what to put first in citations.
Open up a spreadsheet and start typing everything in. Make each column one information that we mentioned and just copy and paste every citation that you see. You also must include the link to the website where you have found the citation for future references and just to make it easier. Keep this list and every once in a while go and check whether the information is still up to date and correct.
Hiring professionals for this task?
You can also hire somebody to do this for you. There are plenty of people doing this online in order to get some extra cash. Hiring someone to do this for you is a good way to save some time. Or you can also pay for the best citation audit tool and have it done this way.
