Citation Building + Citations in Text

[UnderMe]

Hi,

One curiosity led to another and hence I have a couple of questions which I am not sure if they are related or not.

1. What is citation building, what value does it have and what is the best way to go about it?

The above question came up whilst trying to find information for my next question.

2. Do 'citation' HTML attributes in the text content of my web pages have any value for SEO. These citations are where you highlight a word and then add a kind of alt text tag to it that appears when you hover your mouse over the relevant text. The HTML for it looks like this.

<cite title="is a reference to a published or unpublished source">Citation</cite>

3. Should I be using 'title' attributes rather than 'citation' attributes?

Thanks

[UnderMe]

Thanks Tim

[RepLoc_Tim]

#1.  "Citation building" refers to something completely different than #2 citation.  It is typically used in local seo marketing for local businesses.  In this case, a citation is a business mention.  More specifically, it involves the business's Name, Address, Phone (NAP).  Citation building helps build authority to local businesses online.  They work like traditional link building, but without the link necessarily being required, meaning the search engines can recognize the signal as being a mention about that specific business.  It can help any business with a physical address, especially ones that want local customers from a specific geography.

#2. Proper coding of citations using the cite attribute is the correct thing to do when referencing the title of someone else's work, regardless of SEO value.  Having said that, just having a "cite" element by itself may not add much SEO value.  It may however help enhance the impact of certain co-citations which are becoming more important, but that is a completely different topic (not to confuse the issue;-)

#3.  They are different elements used for different purposes that are pretty well defined, so you have to decide case by case.