If Google isn’t giving your website the attention you think it deserves — it could be that Google thinks You aren’t giving your business the attention it needs!
There are dozens and dozens of web directories that may be listing your website or your business. You might have submitted to some of them. More likely, your information has been scraped from other sources you have no control over.
In the trade, we call these listings “citations”. When you aren’t paying attention, the citations meet up, mate and spawn more citations. Before you know it – you are lost in cyberspace.
NAP: Name, Address and Phone Number
Google knows about these citations – each and every one of them. They also know about every error in your basic business information (name, address, and phone number). If Google thinks you don’t care about your online presence – they won’t care about it either.
They won’t take you out of the index, you’ll just hover somewhere in Google purgatory.
Structured Citation Management is a necessary chore
Citations are a key component on local search results for both Google and Bing. Our clients have been hearing how important it is to sign up for your Google My Business Account. That’s the easy one and the most important but it isn’t enough.
Legitimate directories and data scrapers are all potential portals or problems. You’ve probably never used Switchboard.com and yet their website has an 81 Domain Authority*. Google does take their listing of your business seriously.
Your task: get your business listings and structured citations under control.
So where to start?
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Get informed. Find out where your citations need to be fixed. Our first step is running a Business Listings Report
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When you get your results you can start submitting corrections to any directory that has an incorrect listing.
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Look for super-local directories and start submitting. I like the tool at Best of the Web.
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Then you wait.
The estimated speed of local data updates (at Google) can take as long as 200 days if you manage your citations manually. Don’t let that stop you. The rewards are well worth the efforts!
~JoMarie
BTW: You won’t be surprised that I’ve got some cool tricks up my sleeve to make some of this tedious work automatic (and go faster). We use professional and enterprise level tools that can speed up your citation managment to as little as 24 hours. Our tools will also protect your business going into the future. Let me know if you want help with your citation management.
