seo-building-directory-citations

Boosting Your Visibility: The Power of SEO, Citations & Directory Listings

In today’s digital landscape, having a strong online presence is crucial for businesses and individuals alike. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays a pivotal role in achieving this goal, and one often overlooked aspect of SEO is the use of citations and directory listings. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore the significance of SEO, delve into citation and directory listings, and demonstrate how to effectively use them to enhance your online visibility while adhering to Google’s Search Central Guidelines and best SEO practices.

Understanding the Basics of SEO

Before we dive into citations and directory listings, it’s important to establish a solid foundation and understanding of SEO. SEO is the process of optimizing your website to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), thereby increasing organic traffic to your site. Google’s Search Central Guidelines provide a roadmap for best practices, ensuring your website complies with their standards. Let’s briefly review some key SEO components:

  • Keyword Research: Start by identifying relevant keywords and phrases that your target audience is likely to search for.
  • On-Page Optimization: Optimize your website’s content, meta tags, headings, and images for the selected keywords.
  • Quality Content: Create high-quality, informative, and engaging content that addresses the needs of your audience.
  • Mobile Friendliness: Ensure your website is responsive and mobile-friendly to cater to users on all devices.
  • Page Speed: Improve page load times to enhance the user experience.
  • Backlinks: Build high-quality backlinks to establish your website’s authority.

SEO and Citation Listings

Citations are online mentions of your business’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) across various web platforms. These citations can be structured, appearing in organized business directories, or unstructured, such as mentions on social media or news articles. When utilized correctly, citations can significantly impact your SEO:

  • Local SEO: For local businesses, consistent and accurate citations are vital. They help search engines verify your location and improve your chances of appearing in local searches.
  • Trustworthiness: Accurate and consistent citations across the web signal to search engines that your business is reputable and trustworthy.
  • NAP Accuracy: Ensuring your NAP details are consistent across all citations is crucial to prevent any confusion for both users and search engines.

Directory Listings and SEO

Directory listings are online catalogs or databases that categorize and list businesses or websites. These can be general directories like Yellow Pages or niche-specific directories relevant to your industry. Here’s how directory listings can enhance your SEO:

  • Backlinks: Many directories allow you to include a link to your website. These backlinks can improve your site’s authority when coming from reputable directories.
  • Local Exposure: Local business directories can help you target a specific geographic area and attract local customers.
  • Credibility: Listings in respected directories can enhance your business’s credibility and online reputation.

Effective Strategies for Utilizing Citations and Directory Listings

  • Start with Research: Before diving into citation and directory listings, conduct thorough research to identify relevant platforms in your niche or location. Google My Business, Yelp, and Yellow Pages are good places to start.
  • Consistency is Key: Ensure that your NAP details are consistent across all citations and directories. Any discrepancies can lead to confusion and harm your SEO efforts.
  • Optimize Your Profiles: Make the most of the opportunities each directory provides. Write compelling business descriptions, add high-quality images, and include your primary keywords naturally.
  • Quality Over Quantity: Focus on quality directories rather than quantity. Relevance and authority matter more than having a presence on every directory out there.
  • Monitor and Update: Regularly monitor your citations and directory listings to ensure accuracy. Any changes in NAP information should be updated promptly.
  • Build Backlinks Carefully: When submitting to directories, be cautious about the number and quality of backlinks you are creating. Aim for directories that have a solid reputation.

Incorporating citations and directory listings into your SEO strategy can significantly boost your online visibility, especially when you follow Google’s Search Central Guidelines and adhere to best SEO practices. With consistent NAP information, relevant citations, and high-quality directory listings, you can improve your website’s ranking in search engine results pages and attract more organic traffic.

Remember that SEO is an ongoing process, and staying up to date with the latest industry trends and guidelines is crucial. Regularly review your citations, directory listings, and other SEO strategies to maintain a strong online presence and ensure your website’s success in the competitive digital landscape.

In our next post, we’ll provide a list of the top 50 citations and directories we have found to be the most helpful, non-spammy and reliable.

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SEO Scammers

seo-scammersI’ve had several clients ask about so-called “SEO companies” who are cold calling and offering to “improve your search ranking” or “manage your business’s online profile”… “guaranteed”. So, I wanted to take a minute to provide some clarification and additional information.

In short, this is a scam to win your business. Without having inside information specifically from Google, Bing, Yahoo or other search engines, there is not a way that they can honestly guarantee first place results. The following article has some age to it, however, it is from a respected SEO company within the industry and much of the information is still valid today.

I also ran across this article today explaining how Google has sued several SEO companies for stating that their company was affiliated with Google when, in fact, they were not.

Hopefully, the above articles have provided a little more information on the SEO robocalls that you may have been receiving.

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google-my-business

My Google My Business listing restored

Been very busy with new work, and realized I had not updated with the latest info on having my Google My Business listing restored. In short, my listing has been restored with still no clear understanding as to what was wrong or how it was in violation of Google’s guidelines.

I started a thread within the Google Advertiser Community in the Google My Business> Basics for Business Owners forum about the removal of my listing, how it occurred, the phone calls, and other Google support methods I had tried.

I received a response from Priya Chandra, a Google My Business Top Contributors. After several attempts of my deleting, reclaiming, and Priya reviewing the information, we still were not able to get anywhere with having it reinstated. I also tried with another gmail account I had created sometime ago for the business, reclaimed and verified.

After almost giving up, Priya brought in a Google My Business Community Manager who suggested I appeal the suspension again through the Google My Business local business reinstatement request. I had tried this several times earlier to no avail.

The next morning, I received notice (see below) that my suspension was lifted and my listing was reinstated. My previous customer reviews were also restored with the exception of the one from that particular Friday when my listing was suspended.

“We have reviewed your request and have determined that your Google+ page is in compliance with our Google My Business Quality Guidelines and Google+ User Content and Conduct policies. The suspension of your page has been lifted and the business(information) will be live on Google Maps within the next few days.

If you are facing a problem with your business information not reflecting the changes on Maps, please accept the recent edits you’ve made by navigating to your Google My Business dashboard.

If you have any further questions please consult the Google My Business Help Center.

Thanks,
Google My Business Support”

I still have no idea why the listing was suspended, or even why it was reinstated, but I’m not arguing and was very thankful for the time and help that Priya and Liz spent to help resolve the issue.

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google-my-business

Google MyBusiness listing deleted

Unfortunately, I have no new news, other than my listing has now been deleted after being suspended for two weeks. I’ve edited my listing to show a new cover photo, edited my business hours, removed photos, and resubmitted it for review. I then received the following email:

Thanks for contacting Google My Business support.

We will be unable to assist you in making the requested change. For more information on this topic, please refer to our quality guidelines: Guidelines for Representing your Business on Google.

While I understand this can be frustrating, we do not have additional information to provide on this issue. If you would like to appeal the suspension, make sure you’re entirely compliant with all the above guidelines. If so, feel free to access your account and follow the link provided to you in the red banner.

If your profile has been suspended because of a content violation, please log in to Google+, remove the content that violates our policies and then follow the on-screen instructions to submit an appeal to have your profile suspension lifted. Appeals are typically reviewed within a few days.

Regards,

Google My Business.

Not a very helpful email at all and makes it very difficult to correct the problem if you don’t know what it is. I’ve contemplated creating a new page, however, that means I will lose my current reviews I’ve received.

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google-my-business

Google MyBusiness Review Update

The Good News

I received an email from Google yesterday with regards to my reviews not appearing on my Google MyBusiness listing.  See below for details:

Hello,

Thanks for notifying us about your Google My Business listing or reviews not showing up on Search or Maps.

The issue has been resolved and your listing/reviews is now visible.

Your problem was investigated in detail, and the technical issue that caused it has been fixed. If you have any questions or continue to experience issues, reply to this email. Include your phone number to have a specialist to contact you by phone, or fill out this form.

Thank you for your patience, hope you have a great day ahead :)

And the Bad News

My Google MyBusiness for tangerinemoons has been blacklisted by Google. I submitted an appeal this past Friday, called Google on Tuesday, which was a very disappointing phone call. The only response I could get from the service rep was to review the MyBusiness guidelines and to edit my information. Even after I explained to her that I had done this, this was her only response. I asked if I would receive any correspondence from Google to let me know of an update, and her response … “Maybe”. Hmm. That’s interesting. Asked to speak to supervisor, and she stated she had no supervisor. I asked her for her name or a rep number, she stated she could not share that info. However, I received an email from the person a few minutes later with her name at the bottom. Hmm. That makes total sense.

I did have a client leave me a review on Friday, and their MyBusiness page was also suspended. However, I was able to submit an appeal and it was reinstated almost immediately.

I called again on Wednesday, April 14 and spoke to a service rep and he was a little more helpful. He explained that he understood the problem but he was unable to determine the actual problem that would have caused my page to be suspended. He immediately put me on hold while contacting his supervisor. (Hmmm. This rep has a supervisor.)

The supervisor came on and explained that my case would be escalated and for me to be patient and that Google would contact me to notify me of the issue. A much different conversation than I had had the day before. I apologized for the lack of information and the frustration for me and tangerinemoons. I explained that I just wanted to resolve the issue and if I had something that was out of compliance, that I wanted to correct it.

One item I might add. I do like the feature of being able to have Google call me for support. Both phone calls were immediately made to me after hitting the submit button.

So, I sit patiently. And we’ll see what happens.

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