If you own a business and participate in any form of online advertisement, citations and backlinks through online business directories such as Yelp, Yellow Pages, or Angie’s List can be either your best friend or your worst enemy. This is because citations and backlinks can make or break the success of your advertisement campaign. Without proper citations and/ or backlinks in online business directories, your business will have a poor trust profile on Google.

A strong trust profile on Google is crucial to any business with an online presence. Google’s trust profile is Google’s way to determine the legitimacy of your business. A strong trust profile on Google will let Google know that your business is serious and not just an online scam. However, if your business has a poor trust profile on Google, they will have no way of knowing if you are running a legitimate business, and therefore will treat you accordingly. Not too much is known about the complex algorithms involved with Google creating a business’ trust profile. However, from what is publicly available, it is known that business citations and backlinks help improve the strength of your trust profile.

Small Business and Local Google My Business May Gain Visibility Through Good Citations

Trust profiles on Google specifically are so important because Google is the most popular medium for searching on the internet. If your business has a strong trust profile, Google will push its advertisement or home page farther up the page when a potential customer searches for services that your business offers. This will lead to more clicks on your business’ home page, which therefore results in more customers requesting your services.

Citations Are A Key Part Of Local SEO Services

Citations and backlinks are the easiest way for you to help build your business’ trust profile. However, there are a variety of factors to consider when deciding how to approach creating either citations or backlinks.

When considering where to use citations, you may want to target well known online business directories such as Yelp or Yellow Pages. Because these are so popular, your business’ citations will be seen by more people. However, because so many businesses use these directories for citations, the field will be very crowded. You may instead choose to use a directory that is industry specific. Although these may be less frequented, you can be sure that anyone who sees your site will be looking specifically for your services.

Backlinks are also very helpful in building your trust profile on Google. Backlinks are simply links from one webpage to another. The more backlinks your business has on reliable websites, the more likely it will have a strong trust profile on Google. Backlinks can be especially helpful because they can grow naturally if your business is very reliable. Although you can create your own backlinks to promote your business, if a customer has a particularly good experience with your business, they can link your business’ home page to their own website. In this scenario, your business will be getting both a free referral and a boost in its trust profile on Google without any work on your end.

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