A robust online presence is the first step toward success. Your customers and prospects need to be able to find you, both online and on the street. Ask yourself, when was the last time you went out to eat at a new restaurant or planned to see a new movie and did not look it up online first? Chances are, you did some research beforehand, and it's incredibly likely that your customers are doing the same. When customers and prospects look you up online, ensure they can find you and that the information they come across is correct.

It’s good for Google. Citation building remains an important part of local SEO, and building and maintaining an accurate and truly local set of citations is key.

Google will reference directories and local listings sites to find out more about a business. If you have key business information listed accurately and consistently across the web, then you are more likely to be viewed as an authoritative site by Google.

Local business owners should take advantage of relevant local citation sources. While sites with high domain authority are valuable, SMBs and multi-location businesses can gain more local authority by getting listed on sites that are prevalent in their local area.

That comes from getting listed on niche local sites, such as event sites, local clubs and authorities, and hyper-local directories.

A directory is a local business listing that contains a business Name, Address and phone number (NAP) along with other details. There are a lot of directories and websites like Google, Bing, Yelp, 411, Foursquare etc.

For SEO, priority is given to good customer experience on mobile devices. Consumers will use mobile devices to find desired goods or services and begin these searches with a category or brand search. For example, a brand search is “Joe’s Pizza in Denver”, and a category search is “Pizza in Denver”. (Note: The “in Denver” often does not need to be explicit on a mobile device.) In the case of a category search, the user intends to purchase something in a category but has not decided or does not care about the brand. The user’s intent is generally heavily skewed toward proximity and location in these searches. So search engines generally deliver the closest locations, so it is important that location information is crawlable, displayed on each page, and is in meta-data and keywords.

NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone. The NAP data is one of the most essential parts of your client's listing. It should be accurate and consistent with the information on their website.

For service area businesses, most listing sites will still require an actual address. Some sites, like Google, can suppress the address so it is not viewable online. However, Apple will not suppress an address.

-Adult Entertainment -Camp -Cannabis shop -Casino -Conference Center -Gun Shop -Hotel (all hotel categories) -Vacation Rental -Wine Store (and other alcohol-related categories)

However, please note that Apple does not allow the suppression of an address. If you do not want your address to appear on Apple Maps, please refrain from activating this product for Apple expressly.