The bread and butter of expanding one’s business are through organic word of mouth and citations. When people use the name and logo of your business, on their platform, they’re giving other people the thumbs up and the green light on your operation. What more can you ask for? The only issue in this process is that you have to make sure people are using your name and business information properly. This is especially important when you’re on directories and aggregators, online or otherwise.
You may think you gave the proper information—and you most likely did. But what gets on an aggregator and a directory is a different story. So what can we do to make sure the proper information is put out there? What kind of services can we seek to make that happen? Well, there is an entire branch of information management called citation audit and they work to keep the info about your business updated and correct.
Here are a few reasons why you should always have one on call.
Clerical Errors
Clerical errors happen all over the place. It’s quite possibly the biggest reason why there’s any mess-up in any industry. Clerical errors mean someone may have entered the wrong data or confused one piece of data for another. It’s frustrating. It’s the bane of so many data entry-heavy operations. But in the end, one has to take it with a bit of sway. These things will happen and there’s not much one can do to stop it. That is, until now. If you have a citation audit that uses these tools for business, you’ll be able to spot potential clerical errors and inform the individuals who made said errors. This is not just for compliance purposes. This is so that you have the right info out there. On the scale of importance, it doesn’t get too much higher than that. Most of these errors are not done on purpose. They’re just minor misses that snowball into larger, more unmanageable problems. But if you have a professional audit company take a look at it and audit it properly, you not only have solutions, you have a clear path to moving forward.
Sabotage
The business world is fraught with competition, infighting, and regular sabotage. It’s not that business is inherently like that. On the contrary, most businesses operate in a fairly clean manner. But there are exceptions, and the range of exceptions vary. Some people may not like how high your business has gotten in the ranks. Some people, for whatever reason, may think they should take over. In the face of these kinds of challenges, making sure that there is no kind of a strange foul play on the information put out there about you is key. One can never be too careful. Of course, it’s not practical to stress about citation listings all the time. But having someone go through the public information out there about your business is still the best way of controlling the info out there.
Search Engine Optimization
Citation signals are big in the search engine optimization world. If you have your citations up and around, that means that people are engaging with your business or actively searching for it. That brings the ranking up. Of course, this is a simplistic way of looking at search engine optimization, but the gist is there. You want the ranking to go up. You want people to engage with that aspect of your business. Why let it grow with lousy information? An audit nips any issue with search engine expansion in the butt. It lets you, the business owner, know that the basic information out there is correct. If not, then you’ll be wasting all of that notoriety and momentum online. People will be calling the wrong number. Emails from potential clients would go someplace else. It is best to make sure all the ducks are in a row before your company expands any further
Citation audits are not the first thing that people think of when it comes to information management. That’s a shame. One can have the most amazing business model and an unparalleled marketing team. But if people end up calling the wrong number, sending inquiries to the wrong email, or showing up at the wrong address, all of those are useless. It would be an absolute nightmare knowing you lost out on potential customers or clients because of this. So cover all your bases. Make sure these things don’t interfere with your growth. Get a citation audit for your business. It’s a smart choice.
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