“Search engine marketing and search engine optimization are critically important to online businesses. You can spend every penny you have on a website, but it will all be for nothing if nobody knows your site is there.” – Marc Ostrofsky (Online Entrepreneur)
What is a Citation?
A citation basically is a reference to your business or website anywhere on the internet. It usually comprises contact number, address of your office, and link to your website besides the name of the company for differentiating it with similar names of other companies. Although even mere mention of the name of a firm would technically still constitute a citation. You could relate internet citations as those found in yellow pages.
Why Citations are Significant?
Citations are not just mentioning of your company’s name, they are a kind of advertisements which get more visitors to your website. Google and other major search engines give importance to citations in their rankings. The more people the people will talk about something, the more will be the chances that that thing will pop up on the top of SERP (Search Engine Ranking Page). Thus, to get a local visibility, for small businesses, citations can be of a lot of help. Sometimes, a company with good citations can bypass even larger and well established companies as more citations would result in more web traffic, which in turn would result in even more citations by visitors and customers; thus creating a self-fueling loop of visitors and customers.
Not just for big businesses, citations are very important for small businesses too, which do not have much competition, like electrical or grocery stores etc. because most of these small businesses do not have a web site of their own. As a result, search engines show any information they can get their claws on. So, it is wise to put efforts in publishing local citations to make people aware about who you are and what you do.
All Citations are Not Equal:
Some citations are more trustable and have more priority over others. For instance, a citation by Forbes would definitely be worth a lot more than a citation by some local web site. Although, a small business would need a lot of time to get quality citations but there is a way to get seen around, if not among, quality citations. By increasing the quantity of citations for your firm, no matter even if they’re not from famous web sites, you could get a hold on the front page of Google. This can be done by attracting customers and giving them a decent experience, about which we shall talk in the next section.
How to Get People to Like Your Business?
You cannot hypnotize the visitors on your web site and make them buy things from you and later post good reviews about your company. But you can encourage them to consider you as a strong provider in spite of their current provider. To make a good rapport, you can start by giving them free incentives like coffee or electronics, or you could give them a discount for posting a good review on your website or social media. This would attract more traffic to your web site and this time they will not be just regular visitors, but likely customers who have come to purchase things from your website.
For more information related to online marketing, web design, and other correlated topics, contacts us at 215-515-5188 or visit P8DMC.com. Planet 8 Digital is a rising web design and marketing firm with many satisfied customers in and around Bucks County, Southampton, and Philadelphia.
