Local Citations: A Quick and Easy Way to Rank Your Dental Website

Is your dental website not ranking well in the search engines? Local citations could help increase your website’s ranking. Not sure what local citations are, or how they can help your SEO and internet marketing strategy? Keep reading to find out!

What are Local Citations

Local citations are listings of your business around the web. These listings include NAP (name, address and phone number) and typically include additional business information such as your website URL, hours of operation and reviews. Here are a few examples of how a local citation can look: This MerchantCircle citation for Raleigh dental practice, Glenwood Smiles, shows the basic listing information: Name, Address, and Phone Number. This Yelp citation for Glenwood Smiles is a great example of a complete local listing. It contains NAP, and even includes dental related business categories, a link to their website, hours of operation, photos, and a map listing, giving potential patients a great introductory view of the practice.

Why Local Citations are Important for Dental Practices

Local citations are important for dental practices because they prove to Google, Yahoo & Bing that your practice is a valid business and member of the local community. This helps the search engines trust the information being pulled from the various citations across the web, especially if the information is consistent. In addition to providing validity and consistency to potential new patients, local citations are an integral component of the major search engines ranking algorithms. Assuming all other factors are equal, dental practices with more local citations will most likely rank higher than dental practices with less citations. Keep in mind that not all local citation sites are created equal. Certain citation listings, such as MerchantCircle, Yelp, and Google+ Local, carry more weight than others, making them more valuable to your SEO and internet marketing strategy.

Tags: Dental Marketing