Learn how to deal with mentions of your business's NAP on other sites. No local business SEO tutorial is complete without this information.
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0:40 Structured citation
0:50 Unstructured citation
2:18 Google understands address abbreviations
3:50 USA citations system
4:40 How to see which citations matter most to your business
5:04 How to see what your citations look like and how to correct bad information

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Citations are mentions of your business's NAP info – name, address, and phone number – on other sites. They're your online ID – thirdparty backups of your business info that help prove that you're a local business at your actual address.

There are in fact two kinds of citations, even though most people only consider one. Most business owners and marketers equate citations to directory listings – that's the first type of citation, called a “structured citation”. Your NAP info is listed in a structured format, typically with your business name on one line, address on another, and phone on another.

The second type of citation is called an unstructured citation, and it occurs when your NAP information is listed in a… you guessed it – unstructured format. These happen when you're mentioned in longform content like a blog post or news article, where name, address, and phone number are all mentioned, but not in a strict linebyline format.

Citations used to be an incredibly weighted element in Google's local algorithm, but they've become less important over the last few years. Now, they're a foundational element – something that you need to get right in order to show up in local searches, but not something you can work harder on to influence your rankings.

I like to equate them to a poker ante. When you're sitting at the poker table, you have to pay an ante to play the next hand of poker – but that ante has no bearing on whether or not you win the hand. It simply allows you to play.

Your citations work the same way. Getting them right allows you to “play” and show up in local searches, but has zero bearing on how you'll rank once you're showing up. Citations are much more important for showing up in the map pack – if you don't have your citations set up correctly, it's very difficult to show up in map pack results.

Your citations need to be 100% consistent. Whenever Google's algorithm sees your NAP information listed on another website, it's expecting to see the same information. Any mismatched, incomplete, or duplicate information sends a bad signal to Google.

Google is smart enough to understand address abbreviations – you might read older posts that claim your citations need to be consistent down to each individual character, but that's no longer true. Google understands that “st” and “street” are the same thing.

Other than that, your address needs to be your actual address. Google ignores suite numbers, so don't try to cheat by using a suite number to make it look like you're in a different location. Don't try to use virtual offices like Regus or post office boxes to fake an address. Always use your real address.

If you've got multiple businesses at the same address, you need to be sure that 2 of the 3 NAP elements are different to avoid visibility problems. Since the address is the same, that means each business needs a unique name and unique phone number.

You also need to be listed on the sites that matter for your business. There are certain sites that every business should be listed on, while other sites only matter for certain verticals.

Think of it like this – your business needs to be listed (correctly) where Google expects it to be listed. There's no set number, but for this example, let's assume the number is 25. If you sell widgets in Denver, Colorado, Google's algorithm expects that a widget seller in Denver will be listed on 25 citation sites. If you're only listed on 15 of them, and several of those have data inconsistencies – yet your competitors are listed correctly on all 25, that could be a big part of the reason you're having trouble showing up in local searches.

#LocalSEO #SEOcourse #Citations #SEMrushAcademy