Define Your Online Identity – With Citations?

“Citations are a key component of the ranking algorithms used by Google and Bing (Yahoo! uses Bing rankings). Other factors being equal, businesses with a greater number of citations will probably rank higher than businesses with fewer citations.”
— Moz.com

In today’s post-Panda and Penguin world, it can be difficult to know where to go with your SEO strategy. Google and the other search engines have significantly changed the way they value links as well as the content on your website. Now, their top priority is to verify your online identity. To accomplish this, they use “citations.”

Citations are mentions of your business name and address on webpages other than your own; these mentions do not have to link to your website. An example of a citation would be your listing in the online Yellow Pages where your name and address are displayed with no link. Other entities from which businesses commonly receive citations include local business organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce or the Better Business Bureau. Professional listings are a third source of credible citations; these include listings from societies of which you are a member as well as listings in third party directories that are specific to your specialty or the procedures you perform (e.g., Consumer Guide to Plastic Surgery or AllAboutVision.com).

Citations are used by the search engines to verify that the business that owns a given website is part of a real community. Procedure-related citations (i.e., those involving the procedures you perform) are particularly effective because they provide Google with both verification and validation of your identity. This type of recognition is key to the ranking of your website in the Google Local section of the search results and is even more important to your website’s ranking for geo-specific search terms, such as “cosmetic dentist Nashville” or “facelift Cleveland.”

Think about all of this from Google’s perspective. If Google can both verify that your practice is an integral part of a community and establish what you contribute to that community (i.e, your specialty/procedures), it will consider your site more credible — and therefore will boost your rankings for procedure search terms that pertain to your practice, in the geographic areas you are targeting. That is why, according to Moz.com, “Citations are a key component of the ranking algorithms used by Google and Bing (Yahoo! uses Bing rankings). Other factors being equal, businesses with a greater number of citations will probably rank higher than businesses with fewer citations.”

Seems simple enough, right? Wrong. According to Universal Business Listings, more than 40 percent of citations are incorrect or incomplete. While accurate citations verify your practice as a bonafide member of a local community, erroneous, inconsistent or blank citations can (and do) send Google the opposite signal. If there are numerous erroneous bits of information about your practice floating around the Internet — or if there is no information about your practice on credible webpages where your competitors do have accurate information listed — Google is much more likely to rank your competitors’ websites above yours.

How do you combat this problem? Your SEO team should be working consistently to create new citations for your practice and to clean up your citations that are inconsistent. This type of vigilance builds credibility for your practice and makes your online footprint more authoritative. But, this doesn’t mean you can (or should) forget about links. A skilled SEO team will also pick up a few links from these highly credible local websites, making your citations even more powerful.

Let us know if you have any questions about your online identity.

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