Online Account Citations
A must for online marketing visibility
Online Account Citations and Content are the new “Link” for search marketing. It is no SEO secret that search engines need quality, relevant data to bring forth as results for search queries. However, this basic knowledge is not widely known by Insurance Agents and small to midsize businesses that are trying to increase their sales online. Citations or mentions of a business’s consistent name, address, phone number, email, and website address on other websites such as directories, review sites, and other third party sites, provide credibility to search engines. The sites that are optimized with the proper key words, categories, and links also give search engines content to offer search queries. In summary, without a good number of optimized citations and content, it is unlikely for a business to show up as a search query result on the front page of search engines.
Quality, optimized, online account citations and content are the foundation of an online marketing and advertising plan. Therefore it is important to know about the Online Citation Ecosystem. That is, how the online accounts share and distribute the citation content. Perhaps one of the best sources for general knowledge about the Citation Ecosystem is David Mihm’s group getlisted.org. David and his team of experienced and knowledgeable online marketers have provide valuable (and free) online marketing information to the public over the last few years. I highly recommend his website www.getlisted.org for further education on citations. He created (the below infographic) a useful Local Search Ecosystem Infographic in 2oo9 that he recently updated, which depicts that flow of citation data.
Data Aggregators
Another useful resource for learning more about online account citations is Infogroup. They are one of several important data aggregators for content distribution; others include Acxiom, Factual, Localeze, and Universal Business Listings. Infogroup now offers a free ”expressupdate” listing service that is worthy of mentioning. I also like their resource page, which shares lots of good, free, information.
Below is a graphic by Localeze that explains The Life of A Business Listing.
This blog, our site, and our online marketing products and services are dedicated to providing a library of useful online marketing training and resources that will help Insurance Agents and other small businesses understand how to build a successful, long-term, online marketing presence, which creates a dominant online authority. For a free consultation call Roger at (804) 481-9550.