Updated: Oct 28, 2022
There are four main pillars that underpin any online marketing strategy, these four pillars are:
Trusted location info, a diverse and quality link building strategy, a website which is locally focused and supplies relevant and unique content and finally reliable and trustworthy reviews. If you are looking to provide trusted information about your business location details, then you should be considering making use of local citations.
However, when using citations ensure that you concentrate specifically on accuracy across the high ranking and trusted citation sites, then your Google listing will be affected if your details including your business name, phone number, mail address and office location are not identical across all of them. Every business needs citation, because they offer a trusted and credible source of information about those businesses listed upon them and tend to rank well in the search engines.
Factors that influence local search results based on a Moz survey:
If a business combines citation signals with Google My Business (GMB) then it could make up to 32% of the finder ranking factors or local pack pie chart according to a Moz survey. These citations also have a huge impact on factors associated with localised organic ranking, filling around 15% of the complete pie chart.
It is widely considered that citations and Google my business (GMB) results if used consistently and published correctly using the correct name, phone number and address details can have a significant impact on a business’s local rankings and as a result could positively influence the rankings associated with local organic searches too.
Further benefits of citations:
Apart from increasing the local pack rankings as well as localised organic results, a citation can also help to achieve the following for any businesses that uses them:
1. Expands your footprint across the web:
With proper use of citation you can increase the number of your local customers as well as your online clients. This includes third-party sites such as Bing, Apple Maps, Foursquare, Yelp, MapQuest etc. and even niche sites.
2. Expands footprint on the organic results pages of Google:
Listings and websites containing citations are mostly ranked closer to the top search results of Google organically for brand searches as well as keyword searches. This is because search engines trust such websites as well as their published content to be of high relevance, ensuring you have a proper citation on such websites as well as on your Google my business account will help to get your business noticed.
3. Backlinks, both “do-follow” and “no-follow”: Most of the citation websites provide backlinks as part of their service offering. Most of these links are of type no-follow, but sometimes these links might contain do-follow links too, especially the paid listings.
4. Third party reviews:
Most websites that are used for citation purposes are also review websites. These websites provide valuable feedback on niche sites and also third-party generic websites. Such review sites have a considerable impact on local rankings for websites that use them as well as impacting the general search term rankings too.
5. Vertical and town specific directories:
Apart from data aggregators, the use of GMB and top tier citation websites is considered to play an important role in establishing an online presence for any website owner
The benefits of citation are so substantial, that they are considered to be one of the first and most important stages in building any online presence for a local business, get it right and the benefits are plentiful, however if you should get it wrong your website could be penalised for simple errors including duplication & content discrepancies.
Getting it right the first time is crucial, so no matter if you are a startup or a well-established online business, if you have little or no experience with online marketing we would always recommend seeking the advice of an award winning SEO company just like SEO Flatrate who specialise in helping small to medium sized businesses across the UK to raise their profile on the web.
Designing a website with your brand in mind is challenging at the best of times, on-page SEO is time-consuming, but if followed out correctly you will get the intended results on the search engines. Did you know that carrying out search engine optimisation (SEO) is of little or no use if your website is not set up correctly to allow the search engines to find and identify your content as relevant?
One question you need to be asking yourself is: “Is my website SEO ready?”
We have listed 6 additional questions below that you need to be asking yourself and your website designer when creating or updating a website for your business.
1. Is your website domain name user-friendly: be sure to have an SEO-friendly URL that has a keyword or keyword phrase within it, make sure the URL makes sense and describes what the webpage is all about. This is both good for the search engines to identify its purpose and to rank it accordingly, but this is also beneficial for its users who are searching for the products or services.
Keep it simple, easy to read, and if possible, make it easy to remember.
Suggestions:
a) Experiment with Keyword-only URL’s these have proven to be easier to rank. Search engines are constantly updating their algorithms, so remember what applies today, may not necessarily apply in the future. (December 2018).
b) Avoid using non-readable or default assigned URL’s, if the URL makes no sense to a human being, it simply won’t perform as well as if it was in a readable format.
2. Make sure the keywords used are appropriate to the cause: You will need to use the keywords that can be related to your product, service or brand, this allows the search engines to categorise you correctly and to rank you accordingly.
3. Make sure you use unique content: Always create and upload unique content to
your website, do not copy and paste content from other websites or internet sources. Information taken or gathered from third parties and that has not been written or researched by yourself will not pass as your own. The Search engines have a content checking algorithm in place, that can very quickly identify if you have written the blog or content yourself or if you have copied it from someone else. The best ranking websites rely on unique content only, so if you want to outrank your competitors please bear this in mind.
4. Make sure your website is responsive: A responsive website should function well on all screen sizes and on all modern mobile devices that the end user (your customer) may be using when they visit the website. Long gone are the days when websites only needed to run on a PC or desktop computer, with the number of smartphones, tablet computers, smart watches and mobile devices now out numbering the use of PCs, websites now need to be designed to ensure the user experience is maintained; no matter which device the website is viewed upon. This process is called “Responsiveness”. Having a responsive website to improve the user experience has become so important to the end user, that the search engines will no longer rank your website high in the results, if the end-user experience is not of the same high quality across all devices.
5. Does your website have an XML Sitemap: An XML sitemap guides search engine spiders otherwise known as bots, to understand your website structure and its content easier when it is crawled. Failing to add a sitemap to your website may result in your content being overlooked or missed when the spiders crawl your content. The larger the website the more likely it will become that some of your content may be missed and therefore will not be indexed by search engines. For this reason, websites that do not have a sitemap tend to rank lower in the search engines.
6. Heading and Meta Tags: Make sure you use your headings and Meta description tags to emphasise the importance of the content on your website. This makes it easier for the search engines to understand which information is of value to your users and will highlight an important message to the search engines for them to show in their results page. When we search content on the search engine’s we are provided with a wide range of results for us to choose from. These results are gathered using the information highlighted upon websites using the heading and meta description tags and will be ranked accordingly based on the Search Engine algorithm. Heading tags do not just have an impact on usability but affect your SEO too, websites failing to correctly make use the headings and meta descriptions will find they are less likely to appear in the search results for a given keyword or key phrase.
Finally:
Once the above has been completed, you are now at least on the right path to successfully promoting your website on the search engines. On-page SEO in combination with the correct number of high-quality backlinks and online marketing services otherwise known as off-page SEO or SEO for short, can in time improve your Search Engine Rank Position (SERP). SEO is a trust-building process for the search engines, only the best content and the most trusted websites will rank at the top of the results page. The Search Engines are constantly evolving and improving their algorithms to ensure that only the very best unique and resource rich content is shown to its users to choose from. Remember, the Search Engines are directories, there purpose is not to rank websites, but to provide answers to questions posed by their users. If your content is of a higher quality to that of your competitors and if it meets the criteria of the Search Engines’, then your website should show in the results page higher than content that is of less relevance to the search query. Remember content relevance is decided by the search Engine, so it is important to realise that just because you deem something to be of higher importance it does not necessarily follow that the Search Engine will agree with your findings and rank other content higher.
SEO Flatrate Welcome In Your Home Massage to SEO & SEM Services:
"In Your Home Massage"
In December of 2017 In Your Home Massage approached Bournemouth based "SEO Flatrate with the request to host and update their current website www.inyourhomemassage.co.uk. At the top of the list of priorities was a fresh new look and a service that included VPS hosting as well as Business Email services and on Page Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). After the initial consultation it was decided that our all inclusive Platinum Rent A Website Service was the right choice as it offered all of the above without any contracts or minimum term agreements.
This is what Claire Masser Founder of In Your Home Massage had to say.
"In Your Home Massage is a UK wide mobile massage directory for mobile massage therapists looking to find new clients in their area, after many years of working as a professional masseur in Dorset and Hampshire myself, I was well aware of the challenges and the time constraints mobile masseurs face on a daily basis. I wanted to use my experience and knowledge to provide a one stop online directory for all types of mobile massage service providers throughout the UK. In your Home Massage specialises in providing both a cost effective sales platform for all professional masseurs looking to advertise and provide massage services to their clients as well as an easy to use and functional website directory that caters for all those searching for professional massage services no matter where they are based in the UK. So no matter if you are looking for a one off relaxing massage, a birthday gift for a loved one or if you are in need of ongoing massage therapy services as a result of a sports injury or strain, Inyourhomemassage.co.uk has an ever growing member base of professionally trained mobile masseurs offering a wide range of bespoke massage services for you to choose from along with full contact details and customer reviews from the masseur of your choice for piece of mind."
Visit the In Your Home Massage website today www.inyourhomemassage.co.uk
SEO Flatrate provides a wide range of services and advice for all types of online businesses throughout the UK and for most English speaking countries globally. Offering bespoke consultation for keywords and Key-phrase research for both new and well established businesses, we can reserve and secure desired domain names for websites & email services. We provide both web design and rent a website services, professional email and hosting for all of the above on our own servers based in Bournemouth UK.
In Your Home Massage asked SEO Flatrate for the Rent a Website service & ongoing Search Engine Optimisation including Business Email Services. We look forward to working with them and supporting their SEO & Marketing needs moving forward.
If you would like to hear more about our services please contact the SEO Flatrate team 01202 911141 or email the office, we are here Monday to Friday 9am - 5pm
t. 01202 911141
e. support@seoflatrate.co.uk
w.www.seoflatrate.co.uk
