Where do we know that citations are needed?
-
Hi, there,
I 've read much about citations and that there are very good for local SEO. I also watched the webinar about them in SEOMOZ. My question is where does the information that citation are needed and help in Google ranking? Is there a proof from Google or just it is found by seo specialists? I've never heard about it just 1-2 years ago so I am interested where this information comes from?
-
You are very welcome.
-
Wow, well I think my definite question is not so meaningful after your two answers because at all the most important thing is that citations are truly very important, not where we have found the information about their importance.
Thank you again, Dana!
-
Hi again,
Again I want to be sure I am understanding the question. Are you asking how to determine which citations are the most valuable and whether or not the value of those citations is determined by Google or by the SEO community? If so, I would answer that neither Google nor the SEO community determines which citations are the most valuable.I would say it's determined by the followers and subscribers of any particular source. For example, Yelp is extremely popular and many people go to Yelp to read restaurant reviews, find restaurants based on type of food, etc. Because so many people visit and use Yelp, Google then looks upon a citation in Yelp as pretty necessary for certain types of businesses. If you are a restaurant and you have no presence in Yelp, it could cause Google to view your restaurant as less of an authoritative business.
That's a pretty long-winded answer on my part, lol. I hope it helps a little. Again, I might be misunderstanding your question so I apologize if my answer isn't helpful.
Hopefully I am helping a little.
Dana
-
Hi, Dana,
thank you for linking this tool. I tried it - it is working for USA only or nearby country may be but I will also need this for some web sites - thank you again!
My question is about historically to say - from which sources we have learned about the importance of citation sources - does members of Google said that or somebody in the SEO community found it out?
-
Hi Vladokan,
I hope I am understanding your question correctly. It sounds like you are wanting something that will show you what citations you already have, which ones you are missing and perhaps even which ones are there but not quite complete. As it turns out, SEOMoz just acquired a company that can help you do just that. If you go to http://www.getlisted.org and put in your information you can find out what citations you already have, which ones you should have (but don't) and which ones you might have partially complete that should have more information.
I am not sure how well this works (if at all) for international sites, so am interested to know what you discover for your own site and what suggestions some other members here might have.
Dana
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Do we need to maintain consistency in page titles suffix?
Hi all, We usually give "brand & primary keyword" across all pages in website like "vertigo tiles". Do we need to maintain this suffix across all page titles? What if we change according to the page? Will Google downlook for not maintaining these page titles suffix like I mentioned? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Puzzling Penalty Question - Need Expert Help
I'm turning to the Moz Community because we're completely stumped. I actually work at a digital agency, our specialism being SEO. We've dealt with Google penalties before and have always found it fairly easy to identify the source the problem when someone comes to us with a sudden keyword/traffic drop. I'll briefly outline what we've experienced: We took on a client looking for SEO a few months ago. They had an OK site, with a small but high quality and natural link profile, but very little organic visibility. The client is an IT consultancy based in London, so there's a lot of competition for their keywords. All technical issues on the site were addressed, pages were carefully keyword targeted (obviously not in a spammy way) and on-site content, such as services pages, which were quite thin, were enriched with more user focused content. Interesting, shareable content was starting to be created and some basic outreach work had started. Things were starting to pick up. The site started showing and growing for some very relevant keywords in Google, a good range and at different levels (mostly sitting around page 3-4) depending on competition. Local keywords, particularly, were doing well, with a good number sitting on page 1-2. The keywords were starting to deliver a gentle stream of relevant traffic and user behaviour on-site looked good. Then, as of the 28th September 2015, it all went wrong. Our client's site virtually dropped from existence as far as Google was concerned. They literally lost all of their keywords. Our client even dropped hundreds of places for their own brand name. They also lost all rankings for super low competition, non-business terms they were ranking for. So, there's the problem. The keywords have not shown any sign of recovery at all yet and we're, understandably, panicking. The worst thing is that we can't identify what has caused this catastrophic drop. It looks like a Google penalty, but there's nothing we can find that would cause it. There are no messages or warnings in GWT. The link profile is small but high quality. When we started the content was a bit on the thin side, but this doesn't really look like a Panda penalty, and seems far too severe. The site is technically sound. There is no duplicate content issues or plaigarised content. The site is being indexed fine. Moz gives the site a spam score of 1 (our of 11 (i think that's right)). The site is on an ok server, which hasn't been blacklisted or anything. We've tried everything we can to identify a problem. And that's where you guys come in. Any ideas? Anyone seen anything similar around the same time? Unfortunately, we can't share our clients' site's name/URL, but feel free to ask any questions you want and we'll do our best to provide info.
Algorithm Updates | | MRSWebSolutions0 -
Does my website need the SSL Cert / HTTPS Update?
So, I own a car shipping company called Car Shipping Carriers ( www.carshippingcarriers.com ) and I am trying to find out if I need the SSL Cert / HTTPS for the site. I attached a picture that shows I dropped a HUGE amount of rank back in the beginning of August 2014 and that the SSL/HTTPS update happened at nearly the exact same time. I do have a quote box on my website asking for: Name, Phone, Email, Origin, Destination, Move Date, Year/Make/Model of Vehicle, and Carrier Type. I was unsure if I needed the HTTPS because I am not asking for sensitive data, but it seems that I might need to bite the bullet and update the site to HTTPS. What do you all think? Any expert opinion and/or advice? JWV4N1o
Algorithm Updates | | Dutko23850 -
Need to be reindexed quickly - SERP is showing a 404
So there was a mistake made where a 404 error was placed in the canonical URL for the pages my company made. We need to have these pages quickly reindexed. I asked GWT to fetch them and have an updated sitemap but the SERPs are still the same. Any tricks anyone knows that would allow me to get reindexed faster?
Algorithm Updates | | mattdinbrooklyn0 -
A web audit for web traffic? Need answers please..
Hi, We are a PR agency based in Dubai and we produce a lot of web content. The website is build on ruby on rails and we have implemented keywords and SEO strategies but sadly the traffic pattern has not changed since the past three years. What surprised us today that we created a page 2-3 days ago for a client who is participating in Arab Health (a very prestigious healthcare event) and suddenly our page comes on top 3 on google.ae as well as google.com We are kind of convinced that there is something wrong with our code.. Do you think this could be a possibility? and the lack of change in the traffic pattern might not be an SEO issue but a code issue? What could be the possible reasons for this pattern? In such a scenario what would experts like you recommend we do? Do a SEO Audit? Web audit? code audit? hire a seo/ web / code consultant? Thanks - helpful answers are really appreciated and just btw if anyone feels they could professionally help us out of this mess, we are willing to work with him/her. Thanks in advance
Algorithm Updates | | LaythDajani0 -
Does anybody know of solid statistical examples of websites improving CTR via rich snippets?
There has been a fair deal of broad speculation that "rich snippets improve CTR". The recent rich snippet infographic that SEO Moz came out with mentioned this. However the only solid examples I could find was from an example on Search Engine Land. http://searchengineland.com/how-to-get-a-30-increase-in-ctr-with-structured-markup-105830 Does anybody know of any other success examples with solid data of improved search share CTR rates when rich snippets were implemented?
Algorithm Updates | | southernresearch0 -
HI, i am pro member of Seo moz, i just want to know , How much time take Seomoz for Crawl Diagnostics.
HI, i am pro member of Seo moz, i just want to know , How much time take Seomoz for Crawl Diagnostics. Because last evening i have changes in my website pages as seomoz suggested but i am not getting any changes in Crawl Diagnostics.
Algorithm Updates | | jaybinary0 -
What do i need to do to drive more traffic to my site
Hi i built a site around ten months ago but at the moment i am only receiving around 3 visitors a a day. it is a travel site that i write new content for but because i am still learning seo i am not sure what i have been doing wrong. I am not sure of the basics from getting people to the site or the correct way of generating free links or if i should be submitting my site to all these free site submitters which includes to lycos and other free services that you can find on google. If anyone can please explain what i am doing wrong and how to generate more traffic for free then that would be great. also can anyone recommend any free service that would help with increasing traffic and links
Algorithm Updates | | ClaireH-1848860