Local Ranking Factors Question
-
Local SERPS continue to confuse me. I feel like I can tell what's going on but I'm never right. How do these two listings rank for "best bar" in the local Chicago SERPS? It's the same if you search for "best bar in chicago".
or
This has had me stumped for months. I've analyzed everything and there aren't any good indicators as to how this was done. The former doesn't even have a website. The latter example has some category keyword stuffing, which I don't get why they're account hasn't been suspended because of it. It also has a very small and not very powerful link profile.
Any insights would be much appreciated!
-
I found alot of conflicting info on the topic...
It appears in September of 2010 they did change it, but I think it is only enforced and it is almost even worded as if you just cannot elicit the content of the review...
But It seems to be sort of a grey area as alot still do it and flourish (much like everything else in Google)
I have never personally tried this incentive strategy myself but Have done the citation route many times and seen EXTREMELY good results.
And in my look around incetivizing increased reviews by over 100% (of course) so this may have been why they stopped it, as those with the most money could have the most reviews causing an unfair advantage (but isn't that sort of true in everything?)
Just in my personal opinion since I am not a lawyer nor do i work for Google
Incentive's for reviews are good for all as long as you are not incentivizing the content
1. Customer -
Get the chance to either come back and enjoy another meal/service or If they had a bad time the owner gets to try to make it right...
2. Perspective Customer -
They get to learn about the experience and see the transpareny of the owner either rectifying or not. (of course i understand some clients/customers are unreasonable, but hey it is a part of being in business
3. Business
They get the Benefits in both Word of Mouth and Search Engine Marketing plsu the chance of repeat business OR the chance to right a wrong therefore helping brand image.
It also entices the business owner to strive to be better to make sure they do not incentive themselves into a bad review
But hey this could get you in trouble, but their are lots of risks taken every day in business, must weigh the ROI potential.
w00t!
-
Greetings, Michael!
Thanks for coming to Q&A to ask your question. While a complete audit of both businesses would take some doing and is really beyond the scope of what I can do here in the forum, I think the obvious reason one of those business is ranking for 'best bar' is that the name of the business is 'best bar (b que)'. Google may be understanding queries for 'best bar' as having an intent to find this business.
Other members are taking a proactive stance in asking you what you are doing for your business. Are we all reckoning correctly that these 2 businesses are your competitors? If so, have you done everything possible for your own business, in terms of a local search marketing campaign. Specifically,
How strong are the local hooks in your website?
How strong is your local content?
Have you got a good link profile pointing to the site?
Is your Google Place page violation free and complete?
Are there duplicate listings or other problems that could be tanking your rankings?
Are you actively encouraging Google-based user reviews? Does any competitor have more reviews than you?
Are you listed in major third party local business indexes and review sites?
Are you building up a strong citation profile to your Place Page?
Shane Thomas is right to mention the importance of reviews - but I did want to be sure to mention that Google and most other review entities specifically forbid the use of incentives in exchange for reviews. You must inspire happy customers' goodwill rather than attempting to give them bonuses if they will review your business. And Yelp doesn't want you to ask for reviews at all (though this is something of a grey area).
It's smart to look at the competition, absolutely, but the only thing you can control is what you are doing with your own business. Hopefully some of these ideas will be helpful to you! Good luck!
Miriam
-
I'd also use Schema when putting your business info on your website: schema-creator.org
-
Hi,
This is a good place to start..
http://www.seomoz.org/dp/seo-directory#local
Go through every site on this list (most are free) and if your business applies (which you would apply to most)
eitther submit your business or claim your business and make sure your business:
Name
Address
Phone
and Website
are Identical to your Google Places listing.
This will greatly help your rankings.
I also notice they have some reviews. It may be a good idea to start some kind of campaign on your tickets or receipts to give a 10% discount the next time they come in if they leave a review or something like that.
Moral of the story you need more reviews and local citations and you will see good results!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What (Local SEO) NAP to use when your country doesn't use Suite #s?
New Zealand does some good things, for example we grow hairy fruit called Kiwifruit, put other fruit into bottles and call it Sauvignon Blanc, but we can also be a bit, well...fruity. My problem is that when we Kiwis list out NAPs we do it like this: ABC Company, Level 1, 123 Example St. Now the fruity bit is we don't have Suite #s, there is never: ABC Company, Suite #400 Level 1, 123 Example St. We just expect you to go up to level 1 and bl@ody well find the office thanks very much (yea there are signs). It seems like a Local SEO shared office situation but it's the whole floor! I'm worried if I get an office in an office building then I will have my results merged with Extremely-Boring-Accountant and Angry-Lawyer who happen to be on the same level. What's a Local SEO aware guy to do?
Image & Video Optimization | | BruceMcG0 -
Any Legit Local Address Services Out There?
I have a client who lives in the UK but runs a US ecommerce site. I'd still like to get him some local trust signals but he has no options when it comes to getting an address here. Has anyone found a reputableplace where you can rent an address that isn't already being used by umpteen other companies?
Image & Video Optimization | | iAnalyst.com0 -
Local SEO NAP issue
Hello, All of my citations addresses have the street address 913 S. Latah Street except there are other businesses in this building with the same address. Should I have included "Room H"? Also, is "S." different than "South"? Is "St." different than Street? Looking for correct consistent citations.
Image & Video Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Question about Wistia and possible other Video Solutions for better SEO?
We are considering using Wistia as a more SEO-friendly video solution. In our preliminary tests, we like what we see with the exception of one thing. There is no way for video users to toggle the interactive transcripts on and off. From an aesthetic viewpoint, our team finds the scrolling text extremely visually distracting. For usability and SEO purposes, we know that having the transcript there is important. Unfortunately in the embed codes, you are limited to either including the interactive transcript, or leaving it out. There is no mechanism to allow users to view it if they want to, but leave it off if they don.t Has anyone here created a workaround for this problem or found another solution, like Wistia, that has a more aethetically pleasing and user-friendly presentation of trascripts/captions? Thanks! Dana
Image & Video Optimization | | danatanseo0 -
What are you most concerned about or interested in for Local Search?
Hi All, I'm speaking to a local SEO meetup at the end of this month. If you were attending (hypothetically), what would you be most interested in hearing about for local search? The audience is a mix of SEO professionals, web developers, internet marketers, and business owners. I suspect that there will be a number of people who understand the foundations of SEO, though not all of them will be practiced at implementing it. I believe the number of people who get really indepth with Local is quite small. At the moment, I'm thinking about covering things such as: The local search universe in general--which data sources are doing what these days, where it's heading. Google Local+ recent changes Migration to Local+, data cleanup, merging (or not merging!), and other Local+ nuances Current ranking factors, and where I think they're going. I'd love to hear, and greatly appreciate, any ideas you might have. Cheers, Bede
Image & Video Optimization | | BedeFahey0 -
How do I get my site to rank in Google Videos?
I have a site that has quite a few videos. When I do a search from Google video's using keywords for our site, the site is not listed with the video site although it is listed with the html site. So how do I get Google to recognize that the site has all the videos. eg google video search with keywords: social media "damon adachi" website: biztvcanada.com Thanks Janice
Image & Video Optimization | | jwdavis0 -
Google Places - Category Question
Hi All. Just wanted to double check something with you folks. I've always been under the impression that you should complete the first category option in Places with a default category from Google's list of options, followed by 4 categories of your choice. However, does the 1st category need to be a default option or can it be any one of the 5? Also, do you think anything is gained in the rankings by adding a category of your own choice as the 1st category? There's nothing in the Quality guidelines that suggests the 1st category needs to be a default option, so I thought I'd throw this out there... http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?answer=107528
Image & Video Optimization | | PerchDigital0 -
Has anyone created a top (Insert # Here) list of local business listing sites?
Has anyone created a top (Insert # Here) list of local business listing sites we should manually submit to? I have around 20 or so but I was wondering if someone could give me a list to cross reference. I have quite a few local business that I work with and I want to make sure I'm hitting all of the main local listings. I also spend time searching for niche listing sites too for each client, so if you have any suggestions on easier ways to find these as well, I'm game. If you have created a list and its out in the wild somewhere I will be happy to link to it from my site. I'm always open to giving some LL to helpful people. Who's up for building a tool that will search through X number of local directories and report back to you if you are listed or not. (Not getlisted.org) You can select a checklist of sites that you want to check. (; Thanks Aaron
Image & Video Optimization | | Shipyard_Agency0