In SEO, a citation is when your business name, address and phone number (NAP) are mentioned on different websites and search directories. While it may seem like an easy task to build citations, franchise SEO can complicate the process. With multiple locations to consider, it’s often more effective when you hire someone to help you understand and implement multi-location citation services. If you would like to try by giving it a shot yourself, the following are some mistakes you should avoid when getting started.
Being Disorganized
Just like anything you embark on, it’s harder to complete a task if you are disorganized. The same is true for SEO citation building for multiple locations. One easy way to keep yourself organized is to create a spreadsheet that your entire marketing team has access to. As information becomes different over time, the spreadsheet should always reflect that. By giving everyone access, mistakes can be caught more quickly, helping your business to avoid more serious backlash from one simple piece of wrong information.
Not Auditing the Citations
Audit, audit, audit. Too many businesses don’t conduct an audit before the citation process begins. Without the information from an assessment, you can’t effectively build SEO. You won’t know if you’re missing NAP, if NAP is incorrect, or if there are duplicate listings. You also won’t know where opportunities are for you to start SEO citation building.
If you don’t assess where each location is currently at, how will you know how each one is doing online? You may have conducted a citation audit before, but it was probably just for one location. Putting every location together and performing an overall audit is the way to go if you want the citation building process to run smoothly.
There are various platforms to choose between when deciding where to upload all your information. Decide which is best for your needs and upload the information for every location. Some businesses may choose to upload each location separately, and others will pull from Google Business Profile to add each location. After you have all the information uploaded into the template, the citation report can be run.
Not Identifying All Your Opportunities
After an audit is completed, it’s essential you take a look at every result. Not identifying each opportunity and which are the most important for your citation building process can actually hurt your business.
The first thing you might notice is some locations are void of any listings. If you see “No listing found,” take it as an opportunity to create a new citation. Part of what makes an audit so helpful is it will give you a suggested value for each opportunity. Building new citations are often some of the most valuable.
Next, you’ll take a look at listings that were found with “NAP errors.” Don’t worry that there are errors because you have now found them and can take care of them. You now have an opportunity to fix what is broken, and with the right tools and knowledge, there’s nowhere to go but up!
Finally, you may notice duplicate listings. While this may not seem like an issue right up front, any form of duplication is a bad thing in the world of SEO. Read through the audit to discover which listing is the duplicate so you can get rid of it.
Not Acting on Opportunities
Knowing which opportunities you have and not acting on them will continue to hurt your online presence. The longer you wait, the more time your customer base will be affected. After identifying opportunities to build better citations, decide which are most important and get to work right away. With a marketing team that works well together, you can dive right in and get the job done. Creating a schedule is a good way to remain organized as you get started with the ongoing process.
Listing the Wrong NAP
Have you ever driven to a business you found online just to discover they listed the wrong address or have moved? How about trying to call a local company to find out their hours of business, but discovering the number listed directs you somewhere else or is out of order? If you have listed the wrong NAP, it can frustrate customers to the point that they take their business elsewhere.
Because you’re dealing with multiple locations, this can become an increasingly tedious task. As was mentioned above, it’s critical that you stay organized and your spreadsheet is always up-to-date. It’s important you have a team of professionals who are consistently keeping up with the changes in franchise locations. It’s also important you conduct frequent enough audits (which will be discussed below) to ensure you haven’t missed a small detail anywhere.
Not Properly Categorizing Your Business
As you build citations, remember to categorize your business correctly. For example, if you run a pet grooming service, be sure you categorize your business as such. Imagine your frustration if your business never shows up in the “pet grooming services” section on Yelp. As pet owners search for groomers in the area, they will never even see your company name. You may wonder why if you don’t completely understand SEO and citation building, but the simple fact is you didn’t give it that category when building the listing.
Not Implementing Dedicated Landing Pages Correctly
Each of your locations needs a dedicated landing page and it should always be connected to the corporate website whenever possible. Citation quality is directly impacted by NAP, and even when your dedicated landing page contains it, your business can suffer if the corporate website doesn’t acknowledge each specific location.
In some situations, managers from different locations will try to claim a new page, even when the corporate site and dedicated pages already exist. It’s easiest to have a separate marketing team that handles those specifics, rather than asking each location manager to take care of their own. Information gets lost in translation, one manager tries to take over for another, and locations try to compete with each other. A dedicated marketing team can ensure NAP presence on the corporate site and each individual site, and that each location has the same amount of exposure.
Something to keep in mind about dedicated landing pages is they need unique content. You cannot simply copy and paste information while inserting unique locations. While it can have the same type of information, search engines are looking for unique content and will penalize you for copied content, even if it is from your own company.
Keeping the Citations Uniform
While it’s important that each location has the same amount of exposure, their citations should not be uniform. Every citation should be unique to the location and industry. That is what will differentiate your business from the next. It will also help customers understand there are multiple locations with one near them.
Not Getting Help From the Professionals
If citation building is beginning to seem too complex, or if you simply don’t have the time it takes to get the job done, it’s okay to contact the professionals for help. V Digital Services has ongoing support for companies just like yours, ensuring you have help with all the complicated SEO activities you’re unable to manage on your own.Contact V Digital Services to get started with multi-location citation services today.