The other day I was searching online for a place to get my hair trimmed. There was a salon that looked promising, so I decided to give them a call. Except…they had three different phone numbers listed. One on their Google profile, a different one on Facebook, and yet another on Yelp.
Who ya gonna call?
I knew I was only dealing with one business, since the name and address stayed consistent. But I wasn’t thrilled about having to call multiple numbers before I could actually get in touch with someone to get an appointment. It was an inconvenience for me and made it less likely that I would actually follow through and try to get in touch with this particular salon.
Hair salons are not the only businesses that have this problem. I see this all the time with small businesses in general, simply because most small businesses are run by one person–and it’s hard to keep track of everything! But consistency in your business citations is really important. Staying consistent helps your clients trust you and easily get in touch. And guess what? Google and other search engines also pay attention to this kind of thing, and they’re likely to see you and your business as less reliable if your citations don’t match up.
So…are your business citations consistent across the board?
Fortunately, it’s easy to find out. And it’s easy to fix if you find discrepancies.
What is a Business Citation?
First off, let’s just make sure we’re clear on what a business citation is:
A business citation is just a mention of your business information. You’ll have this on your website, social media channels, Google Business profile, and in online directories like Yelp or Foursquare. It’s very basic info, like your business name, location, phone number, and maybe email address. It simply allows people to figure out who you are, where you are, and how they can reach you.
How to Check and Fix Your Business Citations
Now that you know exactly what you’re dealing with, how do you check to see if your business citations are consistent everywhere? And what do you do if you find out they’re not?
1. First, create a document that shows exactly how you want your business name and info to appear. Even little differences, like calling yourself XYZ Photography on Facebook and XYZ Photo Studio on Instagram, or having an LLC after your business name on your website but not your Google profile, can make it confusing for people and search engines. So, list your correct business name, current phone number and email address, and the physical address of your studio–exactly as you want it to appear.
2. Next, make a list of all the places you know that your business name, location, and contact info appears (probably because you listed it there). Your website (all the pages), your Google business profile, social media channels, Yelp, etc. Add those to your document as well.
3. Third, go to each of those sites and check their listing of your business info against what you typed in your document. If it’s different, log in to the site and make a quick edit. Even if it’s just a tiny bit different, like your phone area code being in parentheses on one site and not another, you’ll want to change it. That’s why it’s important to actually type out exactly how you want everything to look, so you can easily double-check whether it’s listed correctly or not.
4. After this, you can also search for your business name online and see if there are any other places it’s listed that you might have missed on your first time around. If there are any you didn’t catch the first time, add those to your document.
And you’re done! Be sure to keep your cheat sheet someplace accessible so you can easily access it anytime you need to check a new listing or make a change (like if you change your email address or move to a different studio). You’ll know exactly where to go and what changes to make to keep your business citations consistent.
