The importance of consistency in citations

Having citations is one thing, but they’re not effective if they’re not consistent. For a citation to be valuable and help instead of hinder your local SEO strategy, it has to be accurate. For starters, the NAP (Name, Address, Phone)you list on your website should match what you’ve indicated in your Google My Business listing. Formatting is extremely important, and you want to err on the side of being overly detailed about how these listings appear. For example, if you refer to yourself as Smog Check Santa Barbara LLC in one listing, and Smog Check Santa Barbara in another, those two are actually very different.

This is the same with your address. Choosing to sometimes use a suite number, but omit it other times, is inconsistent as well. The phone number must be consistent as well. And it is wrong to write a phone number with area code and in another listing without an area code.

Pick one method and stick with it. Make your name a hundred percent consistent, always use your suite number, and be sure to include the area code alongside your phone number. Now, Google will do its best to fill in the missing pieces through normalization, but I prefer to remove as many unknown variables from the process as possible. And for that, I recommend sticking to the same exact format. Now, I suggest starting at your Google My Business listing and then reviewing the format that Google uses when you publish your information. You can write a citation form and put a template in that document and take that format, and reproduce it across the Web.