A local listing is a citation that includes your practice or doctor’s name, address, and phone number. These practice listings occur on local business directory websites.
They are different from listings on hospital websites, college and association websites and on social platforms.
Medical practices should actively manage these citations to ensure accuracy and consistency so they help patients and referrers discover your practice and reinforce your practice information to search engine algorithms.
Local Listings Impact Search Engine Rankings.
The number of citations a business accrues, the consistency and accuracy of the data they feature, and the quality of the platforms all influences your website’s ranking credibility.
Search engines like Google amass data about each business. If their search bots encounter consistency, your search engine trust factor increases.
Conversely, inconsistent data erodes search engine ranking.
Local Listings Impact consumers.
Accurate citations help people discover a local business, which can result in web, phone, and foot traffic, culminating in new patient bookings.
Inaccurate citations, however, can either confuse or misdirect patients, leading to loss of reputation and revenue.
Practice owners can add or request listings and backlinks from a variety of local platforms such as
Many Medical Practice Listings appear without any action. They can be scraped from public data and added to a Directory website. This can be both good and bad.
Unclaimed medical citations can be inaccurate, leading to out of date and inconsistent data on the internet. In most cases by claiming the citation your practice has the opportunity to take control and correct the listing info, preventing patient confusion or any negative impact on local search rankings.
The core components of a citation are your practice name, address, and phone number and can also include a reference or link to a designated page of your practice’s website.
In addition to this, a citation may incorporate some or all of the following elements:
Practices should be concerned about rankings, reputation, and revenue. Local citations are vital, given that they factor into all three of these areas.
Every practice should understand the risk/benefit scenario of a passive vs. an active approach to citation management and include local citation’s as a part of their marketing strategy.
Neglecting citation development and management risks the following damage to rankings, reputation, and revenue:
By weighing these risks/benefits, you’ll soon determine that active citation management can be neglected. It simply isn’t good business.
Citations are publications of your core practice data on the Internet.
They influence patient discovery and local search engine rankings. Accurate citations positively impact rankings, reputation, and revenue, whereas inaccurate citations detract from these assets.
Due to the high stakes of these assets, active location data management is a necessity for all practices.
Managing your Online Citations is a process and can help you grow your online visibility. We can help your practice list and manage these listings.
Contact Us and we can perform a Free Listing Audit of your practice.
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