In this video tutorial, Semify executives Adam and Chad answer the question - What is co-citation? Otherwise known as citation seo, seo citation, or co-citation analysis, co-citation is done by earning links on websites that already have links pointing to other respected websites as well. Co-citation analysis, a tried and true seo technique, is an integral part of an seo campaign. Surround yourself with good company, and write solid, relevant content, and you'll be performing citation seo in no time. Check out the Co-Citation Video Tutorial below to learn about citation seo from Chad and Adam.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Hey, Adam. Happy Tuesday.
Hey, Chad. It looks like you made it through the hurricane OK. You've got power?
A couple of our hours without power, but other than that, we made it through. Hopefully everyone else to the north of us is doing OK.
Cool. Well, we're here to talk about search marketing. Here's a cool question. It's sort of an old one, but I think still relevant and good. Question for today is what is SEO co-citation?
Great. I took a quick look at the campaign that we're going to be talking about today, so I put together a little graphic that I wanted to use. Let me pull it up. OK, so I have a fictitious website that I've called dogs.com. And if you look in the yellow area to the left, what you see on the homepage, it's about dogs. I have a page about dog food, dog grooming, and dog toys. And we all know that a website with targeted content is sort of the most basic thing you have to do in SEO. But right after that is unique links to your website so that it has any chance of ranking on things like dog grooming or dog toys.
So to the right, in the green, I have an example of three websites that I was able to go out and get articles placed on. One is called doggiehealth.com, dogplay.com-- well, actually, I have two called dogplay.com. Assume the third one was something else. But I have an article under those with links back to my website-- anchor links on things like dogs or dog toys and dog grooming. And this co-citation goes a long way in basically building the authority of my website, dogs.com.
But in the top box, I have another point here. On the same article that has a link from Doggie Health to my website, dogs.com, that article also links to Wikipedia, animals.discovery.com, and pets.webmd.com, all of which rank very highly on the keyboard dogs. And that's an example of co-citation, that in that article on doggiehealth.com, there's a link to my website, but there's also co-citation to other very authoritative websites, which makes the value of the link to me a little higher.
So that's sort of complicated. What you're saying is the traditional thinking of I need links-- it goes beyond that. It's what do the links to me also link to? Is that what you're saying co-citation really is?
Exactly. If you think about it, you have a study that you, in the traditional sense of writing a report you did in college or high school, and obviously one of the things that we always were taught is make sure you cite the sources you used for the facts that were in there. Well, co-citation analysis is very much is the same case, that if Doggie Health is citing these very authoritative websites, but also references you, it means that it puts you in better company. So you inherit some benefit from having a link on the same page that links to these other sources.
Cool. And one last question before we close this one. I know that this topic is not discussed nearly as much as it was, say, two, three, or even four years ago. Do you think that that's because Google had phased co-citation out of the algorithm? Or is it just because it's not the hot, new thing and SEOs always like to talk about the shiny new objects?
I think the shiny new object thing, and I think that co-citation is definitely still an important part. And you see it quite a bit in people that are held up as examples of good SEO are still using this, and so I believe it still is important. What do you think?
I agree with you. And the reason I agree with you is only because I've seen seo citation work in some of our experimentation. It's also because, when you think about it, an article that links to several places all very relevant with a lot of authority about the same topic is ultimately more usable for that reader. So again, if you step back from your link building and think of it more as content marketing and how to be the most usefully you can for the end user, you're going to end up doing co-citation without knowing it. But if you wondered what it was, Chad, I thought that was a great explanation and a good overview.
Great OK. Well, thanks a lot.
Talk to you soon. See you.
Bye.