Citation Building Explained

Online Marketing Companies in Miami

When looking for online marketing companies in Miami, typically you try to find a company that is well established and organized and that can handle the job you are looking to hire them for. Typically when someone looks for a marketing company in Miami or anywhere in South Florida, they are looking for SEO services, in today’s modern world, Google is the primary method of looking for a local business or company. That is why today we are going to talk about how some of the best marketing companies are now converting to what is known as an SEO firm that offers many other types of marketing services. Local SEO has become so powerful that we are going to write about how you can do it yourself if you can’t afford the help of a marketing firm in Miami.

The most common type of marketing used for local business owners is through optimizing a Google Places business listing. The listings are free and if you know what you are doing you can typically run a successful campaign that brings you high quality targeted leads.

Assuming you already have a Google Places listing Setup, you can now begin to build citations that link to your website to build the credibility of your business listing on Google search.

Google Places Optimization – Building Citations

Ranking a Google Places listing is not difficult at all but you have to follow some simple procedures and guidelines which I will explain in this post.

It is important to understand that ranking a Google Places listing is very similar to ranking organically without a Google Places listing. Everything that you do for a typical SEO campaign needs to be done for a Google Places campaign, in fact, there are even some extra activities that you can make use of that do not apply towards a typical SEO campaign. So keep on creating content and optimizing you meta tags because the algorithm is not giving preference to business listings over websites. Do everything you would do for a normal SEO campaign as well as the processes I am about to describe. 

The first thing I want to discuss is the use of citations. Citations are basically places on the web where your business is mentioned. Typically these citations are made on different online business directories. Needless to say the industry has attracted many spam artists and now you can find thousands of online directories that has no purpose other than to help SEO a website. The spam-like directories are not going to help you rank at all, stay away from them, ALL OF THEM. Here are some tips you should follow when building citations:

1. Searching for citation sources – Finding the best citation sources is as easy as searching for one. If you are building citations for an optometrists office (eye doctor), then go to Google and search for “medical business directory” and try to get listed on all of the directories that show up!

Another good way to find relevant citation sources would be to search for the keywords that you want to rank for and then check the back link profile of the top ranking Google places listing. You will likely find different directories that are high quality and relevant.

Here is a link of reliable sources to generate to a reliable source of citations, use it to build your first set of citations!

Simply click this link and send a request to be added:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtLxJM8m0xkkdEgwREEtRm5lZWVnbXRwbkswSkhJMHc#gid=0

2. Building the citation – Finding the citation is half the battle, creating a SEO friendly citation is vital. The way to create an SEO friendly citation is to naturally use keywords in the description and in the keyword tag field (if provided). DO NOT over use keywords in a spammy way. Include links to your social media pages when there is an option to do so! INCLUDE EVERY THING! If you can upload a picture, upload a relevant picture, if there is an option for an image alt tag when you upload your picture then use a keyword! Easy right?

Many citation sources allow you to upload videos, images some allow you to link to your social media pages others do not. The key is to be proactive, use all of the fields available to get the maximum amount of content and media on your listing page.

3. Reviews– after you have created all of your business listings on the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing you need to generate reviews. You also need to do this for your citations, the more reviews you have the more credibility you have before the eyes of the Google Search Algorithm.

Now this may seem like a daunting task, but if you are in a low competition niche or industry then chances are you can get your listing to rank for some keywords by following these steps. Now remember, this is only a piece of the puzzle and very small one at that, if your competitors are doing SEO then you may have to build a lot of high quality citations to beat them.

Aside from citation building, you will have to perform many other types of traditional white hat SEO processes if you are looking to rank in competitive area like Miami, Florida. It’s also important to note that if you are in an industry that is very competitive and saturated with online lead generators that do SEO then you are probably going to have to hire a SEO company to do the job for you because it will take a lot of work and experience to tackle a job like that.

Feel free to call or email us by filling out our contact us form on our contact us page or at the bottom of this page. Alternatively you can call us to speak with a Google certified specialist who has successfully ranked many websites for many very competitive keyword terms, skip the salesmen and talk to a REAL SEO NOW! (954) 732-4787

About The Author

Jason Hawkins / http://www.themiamiseocompany.com

Jason Hawkins is the CEO & Co-Founder of The Miami SEO Company. He has over ten years of experience in search engine optimization, conversion rate optimization and lead generation. His core responsibilities include identifying ways to increase value of services rendered, training staff on advanced SEO topics, and A/B testing internal processes to consistently improve client return on investment.