USE ONLINE BUSINESS CITATIONS TO YOUR ADVANTAGE!
An online business citation is a mention of your business on another website. For example, sites that offer business listings similar to the Yellow Pages are places where your business can gain free exposure. Your business’s name, address, phone number, and website link can be advertised without cost on listing pages. These online business citations are an important form of advertising. People searching for services will most likely find you on Google, but for thousands of potential customers looking at business citation websites, you want to be sure your information is there. This can both bring new customers to your business and remind past customers about you.
A Citation Is a free Advertisement!
Several examples of business citation websites are shown below. These sites are there to help your business.
Rank Higher
Besides being a form of free advertising, there are other advantages to online citations. One of the biggest advantages is that the links to your website on other websites help tell search engines, like Bing, Google, and Yahoo, that your company is a valid and legitimate business. The more times a search engine finds a reference to your business, the higher the ranking your business gets in people’s search results. This is related to Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, that we hear so much about in marketing today. The visibility=credibility equation works on a smaller scale too, for people, not just search engines; if potential customers see your business name on various websites, it provides confidence that your business is legitimate.
Do Your Homework
How can you take advantage of online business citations? Start with the big ones, like yp.com, superpages.com, yelp.com, citisearch.com, and other large business referral sites. Many of these sites will let you post your business information for free. Next, do some local research to find sites specific to your area where you can post information about your business. Does your local chamber of commerce have a web site? If so, see if you can post your business name and address there. Is there a local business association that has a web site? Post your business there. Also, be sure to join the Better Business Bureau, so your company name can be found on BBB.org.
Look for websites that discuss your industry, and contact the website owner to see if you can post a citation there. Perhaps you could pay a fee to have your website listed, or maybe you can work out a trade where you post their link on your site and they post yours — this can benefit both parties.
Take Advantage
Be proactive about online business citations. Get your business listed on as many other legitimate sites as possible. These online citations provide advertising for your business, lend credibility to your business, and affect the rankings of your business on search engine results. Don’t be afraid to get creative about where you find these other websites and how you go about getting them to list your link.
If you approach it wisely, you can reap great rewards from just a little time and effort working with business citations. You may even find that this effort pays off better than some paid forms of promoting your business!