Citations are something that a lot of businesses tend to disregard. Most of them simply do not think it as important as marketing efforts. And even those who go through the motions of and list their website in local citations tend to stop there. However, citations can help you out, especially when your business is just starting out. Why? Google and other search engines love to collect data about different businesses. And they draw that data from citations. They then sort the businesses according to the quality of the platforms their citations are on, the accuracy of the citation data, as well as the number of citations the business has. Finally, when a person uses Google to look for a product or service, Google serves up the websites of higher-ranked businesses first. This is what makes finding quality citation sources for 2022 and getting your business on them important.
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Google rankings
Google My Business is one quality citation source for 2022 that is absolutely irreplaceable! Naturally, almost every business goes to the effort of creating a Google profile for themselves. The usefulness of having one simply does not allow for not to do it. This is helped by the fact that semantic search optimization, necessitated by Google Voice Search software, has made it much, much easier for customers to find businesses in their area that suit their needs. And the main source of Google search results in this scenario are the citations made on Google My Business.
It doesn’t hurt, either, that the quality of any citations made here is automatically guaranteed by Google. Which naturally makes its reliability impeccable in the eyes of any potential customer. Making this an extremely easy way for your to start making your online presence known.
Local Business Directories
Reliable websites such as Localeze, Infogroup, and Acxiom all have their own databases on local business citations. These directories are easily accessible by area and will showcase all the various businesses which may be relevant to you. Of course, the more reliable a website is, the more important the quality of your citation is. This means that you might want to rely on assistance with citation building. The amazing thing about such websites is the fact that they are well-known sources of citations. This makes their credibility a lot higher, which should immediately attract more customers who do find you through them.
Social Media Apps
Social media is actually an excellent place to post your citation data. This can be done through the profile of your business and affiliated partners. But there are also plenty of opportunities to have your citations posted on the profiles of other people. This is considered an ‘unstructured citation’. Which means that the citation is located on a site or app which is not expressly meant to host such data. This tends to make Google rate the quality of such citations a bit lower. But the sheer outreach of a good unstructured citation makes it well worth the tradeoff in credibility with Google.
Note, however, that citation management is important in such cases! If the published data is partially incorrect, for example, it cites a wrong phone number, Google tends to catch onto the discrepancy and flag it. This would do additional harm to the credibility of your citations.
Platforms specific to the industry
Industry-specific citations sites are some of the best quality citation sources for 2022. It is also helpful that they are typically citation sites that publish your listing instantly. By industry-specific citation platforms, we are talking about those pandering to a specific type of business.
Let us take the tourism industry, for example. Tripadvisor is a well-known citation site that lists all kinds of helpful businesses to make your trips better. They list restaurants, hotels, and similar. And even provide ratings and recommendations of the best establishments. This means that not only is your citation getting posted and flagged by Google as being on a reliable website, but you’re also getting a lot of free publicity. And if you manage to top the charts and get your businesses the reputation of one of the best out there, it will do wonders for your customer pull. Which makes these sites even more valuable.
Search engine resources
Of course, you should not discard the importance of the various search engines and your own website. Search engines index sites, which is a process of assessing and ranking them according to their quality. If you can boost your site’s ratings with smart use of SEO, you can get a lot better placement in the Google search results. And the citation on your own website still counts as a citation! Not to mention that working on your website, its rating, cooperation with other businesses, and getting backlinks from other sites, you are actually also getting your citations onto them. This means that you are effectively constantly working on your citations as well! And the better they and your own website grow, the higher the reliability of those citations becomes, forming a virtuous cycle of cooperation.
A warning
With everything we have covered, it should now be easier for you to find quality citation sources for 2022. Getting your website on them will do wonders to boost your lead generation and visitor numbers. Which will, of course, help your business thrive even further! Due to this, it can easily be seen just how important citations are, both of the structured and unstructured variety. However, there exists a potential issue with pursuing citations at any website no matter its reliability. As we have mentioned before, Google ranks the quality of citations according to the website they are found on. This means that if the website in question is considered to be of low quality, your citation will be flagged the same way. This adds another layer to the citation game. You need a large number of citations, but only on websites that will not harm your rankings.
