(This is the 3rd in a series of 5 articles about Panda 4.0) ( previous ) ( next )

Citations are simply your businesses information on other websites – like your business’s name, address and phone number (or “NAP”).  If your business’s information is properly tagged on your website with the proper local business information schema , then Google can identify other websites with that same information.

How does this help?

Think like Google – if a website has an address and phone number, but that address and phone number doesn’t appear on any other websites, would you think it’s a legitimate business? Would that be a business you would want to hire or buy from?  If that website didn’t have an address or phone number, what would you think?

Another example – what if you found a business that has a good website, but has 4 different websites and each one has a different business name, address and / or phone number (NAP)? What if the phone numbers are different on their Google+ page, their YP.com page and their superpages.com page?  Something would look fishy, right?

Not only would you be completely confused, but what if you were Google?  Why would Google want to display 8 different phone numbers on page one of their search results?  You may lose faith in Google’s ability to provide accurate, relevant results.

By contrast, what would you think about a business that has a proper address and local phone number and that business’s information can easily be found on most online directories, has their business information on websites like the BBB, the local chamber and several industry or trade related websites?  What if Google displayed 4 or 5 of these web pages on Page One that all had the same NAP information?  You would have found what you’re looking for right?

Google is trying to display results of businesses that are active in the community.  Why?  Because that’s what people want to see.

The plan is simple – 

Find your business on every web page you can and make sure your business information is identical everywhere – same exact business name, same exact address and same exact phone number.  If your official postal address is “123 Main St. Suite 45”, make sure it appears that way everywhere.  If a website has the address listed as “123 E Main St. Unit 45”, then change the word “Unit” to “Suite” and delete the “E” before Main St.

If you belong to any organization like the BBB or a trade organization – make sure your NAP information is correct on their websites as well.

If you find a place that will list your business, but you do not have a listing yet, fill-out the information.  These include websites like manta.com , superpages.com  and local chambers.  There are hundreds of these websites, so pick only the website that look credible.  If you Google your competitors, sometimes you’ll see these websites appear on page one.

Is this a lot of work? YES.  Your competitors are doing it, so you either need to hire an SEO professional to do the work, or learn to do it yourself (or hope people start using the phone book again).

PLEASE NOTE: Panda 4.0 has absolutely no impact on the Pay-per-Click Ads that you may be running with Google AdWords.

The post Panda 4.0 – Fix your Citations appeared first on Third Marble Marketing.