How important is citations for an online business?

[Gavo]

If you run an online business, just how important is citation building? Our client does not want to disclose her physical home address from where she operates and the campaign does not consist of any local keywords.

Should we then focus on link building and growing the site's DA instead? As well as getting onpage elements optimised.

Many thanks in advance for your input!

[Alick300]

Hi Gavo,

Citation is really important for local SEO but your case is different because your client doesn't want to disclose physical address so you have to focus on other things e.g 1>Quality backlinks 2>Perfect on page optimisation

also read this article on citation @ https://moz.com/learn/local/citations

Thanks

[DonnaDuncan]

I agree with Alick,

That's not to say you shouldn't set up a Google My Business listing as well as a few others where you can hide your client's address. Those things lend to the credibility of your business and are factored into your domain authority as well. Just don't focus on citation building. Your plan is a good one.

[MiriamEllis]

That's right, Donna. Good answer.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Gavo,

Citations are critical infrastructure for local businesses, but in order to qualify for them and for them to be useful, the business must:

1. Have a physical address, even if they are only going to list themselves on directories that allow the address to be hidden

2. Serve local consumers face-to-face

If your client doesn't serve clients face-to-face (which I'm wondering about as you mention her marketing doesn't include local keywords), then, no, citation building isn't appropriate. But if she meets both of the above criteria, then she should be marketing locally and building citations. And, she should also be building DA, as DA directly impacts local rankings.

[Gavo]

Thanks, everyone, for your responses. They are very helpful and much appreciated!!

Cheers.