Obviously, you want to see if your citations are improving business visibility and ranking. That’s why this is definitely a perfect guide for you. Most people’s first thoughts when asked how to improve their online visibility are to build a website, set up social media profiles, and perhaps start a blog to regularly update their content. Also, most people overlook the fact that getting citations for your local business online is a simple yet highly effective method of boosting your online visibility. Clearly, it is an amazing way for establishing your brand as an authority in your industry. But, before we show you how to track your citations we will cover the basics first. Obviously, we will encourage you to keep learning about citations even after you read this helpful guide.
Citations 101
Any time your company is mentioned anywhere online counts as a citation for your local business. For this, there are two possible manifestations. Either a properly formatted citation or a listing in a business directory like Yelp or Foursquare. A free-form reference is any mention of your business or website in an unstructured format. We are talking about blog posts, articles, tweets, posts, and such. A mention of your business is sufficient for it to be considered an unstructured citation. Also, a link back to your website is not required. You should also research building citations later on.
NAP
Your company’s NAP (NAP is short for – name, address, and phone number) are the three most crucial bits of information to include in any citation. That is the reason why we talk often about them. If you need any more information feel free to check out the above-mentioned blog. You will see everything you need to know about NAP’s there. Now, let’s continue. Full references are referred to as citations. A “partial citation” is one that lacks one of these three components. On the other hand, some citations are more thorough than others and may feature the following elements:
- work hours
- reviews
- payment forms
- description of a business itself
- images
- videos
- directions
- coordinates, etc
The most common question we get
The most common question we get is “can citations help my ranking?“. The short answer would be yes. But we don’t do short here on AZ Citations. As you well know – we try to explain as best as we can. Obviously, that’s why our blog is a perfect place for you to continue your research. After reading this obviously. For now, keep reading. Search engine rankings (especially local ones) absolutely can be influenced by a company’s prominence in local directories.
How often a company is mentioned in the media can be a big thing. The more mentions you have – the better you will rank. If your basic citations are of high quality, you should be improving business visibility in Google’s (local) search interfaces. Businesses in the area can take charge of numerous citations and guarantee the precision of all referenced information.
Also, another question we get is “can citations help SEO?”. If you’re concerned about your local search engine rankings, you should focus on getting as many citations as possible. Google’s confidence in the existence of a business can be increased by having that business listed in reputable online directories. This is a good way to boost your visibility. And rank better online.
How to track citations
As you well know – when it comes to local SEO, links and citations both play a role in rankings and play important role in improving business visibility. Having a presence in reputable online directories gives the signal to Google that increases their confidence that your company actually exists. But how can you track them? We know the three ways you can track your citations easily :
- Google Scholar – One of the most straightforward ways to use Google Scholar’s citation data is to look up how often a specific article/blog has been cited by others.
- Scopus – To conduct a search for a specific author, for example, use the Scopus search page’s “Author Search” option. For the broadest results, type in the author’s last name followed by an initial. Choose a few names from the list of prospects by clicking on filters for specialty, region, and/or organization. To get an overview of the citations that led to these results, select the “View Citation Overview” link. It’s easy as that.
- Web of Science – The first and the easiest one – we left you a link for this one to research.
The history of tracking tools
We talked a lot about SEO tools. Now let’s see what we have here. The purpose of citation tracking for academics is twofold: to identify the seminal works in a given field and to monitor the frequency with which their own published works are cited by others. For a long time, the Web of Science by Thomson Scientific was the only place where researchers could find this kind of data. Two rivals, Scopus (Elsevier) and Google Scholar (Google) appeared in 2004. This study reports the results of an observational citation analysis of these three databases, comparing the citation counts of articles from two different fields (oncology and condensed matter physics) and two different years (1993 and 2003) in order to test a few hypotheses.
Citation Tracker can help you to track competitors’ citations
Do you have any experience with Citation Tracker? If you don’t – now is a perfect time for it. If you use Citation Tracker properly the gaps in your citation profile can be easily identified. This might reveal the citations that competing companies have but you don’t. Through this method, not only can you increase your knowledge and citations, but also your standing in search results.
You can view your competitors’ citations in a separate section of your Citation Tracker report. If you want to see everything but your claimed citations – it will be displayed right here. Citations and mentions of your top five competitors will also be right here. Begin at that point and see where it leads. Hopefully, this is a good way for you to work on improving business visibility. Finally, if you start having any problems make sure to call us. We can help you out!
