Local search ranking tips needed
-
Hi there, I've been working on my clients website for a while now. About a month ago I created him a local business listing in Google. I was wondering if there are any new tips to get his business up the rankings in local search? I've researched and only really found information relevant to the old way Google displayed local search.
-
Hi Jo Ann,
Local is not about how many websites you have, but how many physical locations a business has. So, one business location = one local listing. If you've got 2 business locations and they each have a unique phone number, that = 2 listings. You can created these listings via the old Google Places dashboard, and that will automatically generate Google+ Local pages, but multi-location businesses cannot merge the social features of a Google+ Business Page with their Google+ Local page at this point. Hope this helps!
-
Hi Associate, If a company has more than one site would you put all the sites under one Google plus site or have different google plus sites?
-
Hey Alex, in the U.S. at least, a good trick for cementing Google's understanding of your client's locations is to manually add each place in Google MapMaker. EVEN IF IT'S THERE ALREADY. Just go through the process and try to add it, when it asks if it's a duplicate, accept that option. It'll then say it's discarding your changes, but click OK and then Save. Mike Blumenthal told me at lunch at SMX Advanced this year that he recommends doing that every couple of months even if there don't seem to be changes. If I remember correctly, he said Google trusts the MapMaker updates a LOT. Pretty sure David Mihm told me the same thing. And from my own client's little projects, I know that they're manually reviewing these, so that makes sense.
See if that helps...it'll just take you 5 minutes to do it, and then a week or two before they review your update.
Google's confidence in a business' current physical location seems to be pretty important to their algo (and it makes sense, as they look foolish anytime they direct a consumer to an empty office!).
MC
-
No problem, good questions! You can include the schema information any way you want, but you'll want to make sure it's nested correctly. See the examples on http://schema.org/Place as an example. If you'd like to format itemprops/itemtypes via CSS instead of doing it in-line, that's perfectly fine.
Search engines generally prefer that schema info isn't hidden. There are some fringe exceptions, but the idea is that you only want search engines reading the local info when it's also relevant for users to do so. Miriam's suggestion to show the location data on each page is a good one for small local businesses.
-
Also.. is there a certain way I should display this schema info or can I just hide it with css? Is it fully controllable via css? Sorry for all the questions.
-
Hi Alex,
It's my pleasure, and thank you for using Q&A!
-
This is all such great advice. i can't thank you enough. I will set at it this week and see if there is any improvement.
Thanks
-
Hi Alex,
So sorry for the acronym.
NAP stands for Name-Address-Phone Number. These are the core factors in your local business data. Everything in local hangs on NAP. It's a standard Local SEO best practice to put the complete NAP of each location on a Contact Page and, typically, in the website footer sitewide.
To further strengthen the signals your NAP is sending to the bots, you can choose to encode your NAP using Schema. Here is the definition of Schema from Schema.org:
What is Schema.org?
This site provides a collection of schemas, i.e., html tags, that webmasters can use to markup their pages in ways recognized by major search providers. Search engines including Bing, Google, Yahoo! and Yandex rely on this markup to improve the display of search results, making it easier for people to find the right web pages.
Many sites are generated from structured data, which is often stored in databases. When this data is formatted into HTML, it becomes very difficult to recover the original structured data. Many applications, especially search engines, can benefit greatly from direct access to this structured data. On-page markup enables search engines to understand the information on web pages and provide richer search results in order to make it easier for users to find relevant information on the web. Markup can also enable new tools and applications that make use of the structure.
A shared markup vocabulary makes easier for webmasters to decide on a markup schema and get the maximum benefit for their efforts. So, in the spirit of sitemaps.org, search engines have come together to provide a shared collection of schemas that webmasters can use.
Local businesses can use Schema to markup their NAP. Here is a generator to help you with this:
*Be sure to choose the 'Organizations' tab from the left menu.
You might also like this:
http://raventools.com/blog/free-schema-creator/#explanation
Hope this helps!
-
Thanks for your response, it waas great. So I guess I learn something new everyday.. today's lesson... what is a Local Business Schema (NAP)!!!!
Many thanks again
-
Hi Alex,
Thanks for sharing your client's identity. My honest opinion on this is that you need to find a top notch Local SEO in the UK to work with, because a full assessment of this is going to be necessary, and I can't really provide that in the scope of Q&A (plus, I'm most familiar with North American Local SEO). But, here's a few things I've noticed:
-
The website really needs some help!
-
It lacks traditional Local 'hooks', so far as I can see. What are these?
-
There is no NAP in the footer. All 3 addresses should be in the footer, preferably coded in hCard or Schema.
-
I know you've got the 3 city landing pages, but you should have a traditional Contact Us page, as well. My opinion is that the bots look for this, and you should have all 3 NAPs again, coded in hCard or Schema.
-
The content on this site is so thin. Only a few words on the homepage, a few on the Roker location page and zero on the 2 other location pages. This truly deserves work.
-
From a traditional SEO and UX viewpoint, the navigation on the site needs quite a bit of work. It is not good that any time I get onto a page, I have to hit the back button to return to the menu that's on the homepage.
-
Also puzzled that of the 11 items in that menu on the homepage, only 3 are links? More evidence that a copywriter needs to be engaged or the owner needs to get writing so that the site has good, unique, rich content for every service.
-
Regarding your question - no, having 3 locations should not have any effect on your rankings, provided you are taking the proper steps to distinguish them from one another. Right now, with the lack of NAP and content, you're not making ideal efforts to do so.
This is just a start, typed up from taking a brief look at the client's site. A full investigation of the client's site, plus citations and other factors is definitely advisable. And, you might also like to check out 51 Blocks' competitive analysis tool for Local Search, though I am not 100% positive it works for the UK yet. It's brand new and I'm not sure in Michael Borgelt (the creator) had included the UK yet. Check it out:
http://www.51blocks.com/online-marketing-tools/free-local-analysis/
Hope my straightforward response on the issues I am seeing at first glance will actually give you and your client hope. There are far more efforts that can be made here, giving you a possibility of moving up in the rankings if you can assess all areas of possible improvement, implement new work and see if it's enough to nudge you up in the rankings. Good luck!!!
-
-
So theres still been no improvement in this. There are 3 business locations within my clients company. Hi Performance 1 in Sunderland, UK, Hi Performance 2 in The Barnes, UK and Hi Performance 3 in Seaham, UK
Do you think this is having a negative affect on the listing? The main listing should be Hi Performance 1. I've tried alsorts but seem to be going further and further down the list now.
-
Hi Alex,
Though the display has changed from Places to +, the work is basically the same. The aspects of Local SEO that have the most impact and over which you have total control are:
-
The strength and optimization of your website
-
Citation building
-
Social Media participation
-
Linkbuilding
-
Avoiding violations of various guidelines
The important aspect over which you have some control is:
- Review acquisition
Other important ranking aspects over which you have little or no control are:
-
Age of domain/citations/links
-
Proximity to centroid
-
Competitors' efforts
If the goal is to move from #3 to #1, you can work to make a superior effort in the first 2 sections of my above list in comparison to the efforts of competitors and hope that this pays off, but the third section of my list is not something you can control. If competitors are older, closer to centroid or making a greater effort, these aren't things you can control, making outranking them quite difficult.
While these recommendations are more or less the same as I would have given prior to the changeover to Google+, people are blogging about their findings as Local changes and grows. If you want to catch up on some of these issues, there are 3 blogs I would recommend you peruse. Go through the posts on these blogs for the past 3-4 months:
http://marketing-blog.catalystemarketing.com/
http://www.ngsmarketing.com/blog/
These are my top 3 picks for really good coverage of the issues, and the three authors also happen to be Google And Your Business Forum Top Contributors, so they not only have their eyes on the ball, they have a special perspective because of their interactive relationship with Google itself.
Hope this helps!
-
-
Thanks for that Matt. Some good resources there, ill definetly give the Whitspark a go. I've already read the post by Rand but it seems to be out of date to the Google that I get when I do a search. I don't get any reviews so can't see where they're coming from. All I've done so far is make sure all of my address and contact details are the same throughout and then I typed in my competitors brand name in google and registered with the same directories as they did as long as they weren't dodgy spammy directories. Most of the appeared to be relative to the website I'm working on.
-
Local SEO is all about citations and matching info.
Make sure the address on your contact page matches your Google+ page and your Bing Local page. If you have other "local" listings - Yelp, etc, match those exactly, too. Phone numbers, contact email addresses, physical addresses.
Then you should work on citations.
https://www.whitespark.ca/local-citation-finder/
Read Rand's thoughts here:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/one-dead-simple-tactic-for-better-rankings-in-google-local
And check out this list of local citation sources:
http://www.poweredbysearch.com/local-seo-citation-sources-us/
That should help local search and if you do it correctly, you'll find yourself in the 7-pack, 4-pack and whatever-pack Local displays on your related searches.
-
Just to add to this, my clients website has much better weight than its competitors but yet it still ranks on page 3 for local search. What am I doing wrong? The search term I'm using is garages Sunderland.
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
-
Looking for Search Engine Ranking Factors more recent than 2013
The 2013 Search Engine Ranking Factors study is a very useful study. However, it was completed more than two years ago, and a lot of algorthim updates have been made since then. Is there a more recent study of this than the one produced in 2013? Any and all information would be valuable. I am also trying to understand the importance of site speed as a ranking factor. Thanks.
Algorithm Updates | | JorgeUmana0 -
Timeline for 301 Redirects to Take Full Effect in SEO Rankings?
Hey, I am working on transitioning a website and all of my current URL's will be slightly changed (moving to dynamic pages). I understand that I will need to 301 redirect all the old pages to their new counterparts but I would like to know how long it will take for the 301 redirects to take full effect in the search rankings. I ask because my site is an e-commerce site that receives 90% of it's business in January and the transition would take place December 15th. If my search rankings are not back up to par by January 1st then I will take a drastic hit to revenue. Please help this SEO noob out!
Algorithm Updates | | Stew2221 -
Creating Content for Semantic search?
Need some good examples of semantic search friendly content. I have been doing a lot of reading on the subject, but have seen no real good examples of 'this is one way to structure it'. Lots of reading on the topic from an overall satellite perspective, but no clear cut examples I could find of "this is the way the pieces should be put together in a piece of content and this is the most affective ways to accomplish it". **What I know: ** -It needs to answer a question that precludes the 'keyword being used' -It needs to or should be connected to authorship for someone in that topic industry -It should incorporate various social media sources as reference to the topic -It should link out to authoritative resources on the topic -It should use some structured data markup Here is a great resource on the important semantic search pieces: http://www.seoskeptic.com/semantic-seo-making-shift-strings-things/ ,but I want to move past the research into creating the content that will make the connections needed to get the content to rank. I know Storify is an excellent medium to accomplish this off page, but only gives no follow attribution to the topic creator and links their in. I am not a coder, but a marketer and creating the backend markup will really take me out of my wheel house. I don't want to spend all of my time flailing with code when I should be creating compelling semantic content. Any helpful examples or resources welcome. Thanks in advance.
Algorithm Updates | | photoseo10 -
Our root domain is no longer appearing in search results
Hi all The root domain for our site, roadtrippers.com, has been disappearing from Google's search results. Subfolders and subdomains still appear, but our root domain isn't found at all. I believe I've verified this by searching "-inurl:trips -inurl:byways -inurl:support -inurl:blog -inurl:places -inurl:guides -inurl:destinations site:https://roadtrippers.com/" in Google and our root domain is nowhere to be found. This may or may not be related to another issue we've had, where the root domain is appearing with a seemingly rotating set of parameters. Sometimes it'll be ?mod=, sometimes it'll be ?tag=translation. Originally they appeared to simply displace our ranking root domain, but now they and our root domain are completely disappearing. Our dev team believes they fixed the problem with recent 301 tags to any unapproved parameter being added to the root domain, but this hasn't fixed the original problem. Any insight into this is greatly appreciated! Brandon
Algorithm Updates | | brandonRT0 -
Why do I have 7 URLs from the same domain ranking on the 1st page?
I have a client that has individual pages for authorized dealers of their product (say "Car Dealers"). When you search for "brand name + location", Google returns 7 "dealership" pages from the parent company's domain as the first 7 results, but there is one that gets pushed off to the 5th page of the SERPs. The formatting of content, geo-targeting, and meta data on the page is identical on every single one. None of them have external links and there is not one extremely distinguishable thing to assess why the one page doesn't get placed on that first SERP. Why is the one getting pushed so far down? I know this may be a bit confusing, but any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
URL Importance In Search
This may have been addressed before. If it is, please link me to the thread. I'm trying to SEO for local surrounding cities my client services. It was suggested I purchase domains relevant to those cities and create separate pages optimized for those local keywords. Wondering if this is a good tactic. For example my client's business is located in Chicago, but services the surrounding suburbs of Chicago. Whats the current, best way to SEO?
Algorithm Updates | | severitydesign0 -
Organic Rank Volitility
Does anyone else see their organic rankings fluctuating wildly. I have been tracking a few key keywords by literaly typing them in each morning and looking at results. The pages I have been doing this for where without any doubt affected by Penguin as you can see the huge drop in traffic directly correlated to the Pegnuin deployment. What is strange is one day these phrases will be on page one position 3 and two days later but on page3 to 5 or not ranked. Four days later back on page 1. These are wild fluctuations so it appears to me that I am observing Penguin tweaking ? Just wish the tweaking would stop on one of the days were our phases for this particular site are on page one. Most people would check rankings weekly, monthly or quarter and would not perhaps be observing these crazy swings? Thought?
Algorithm Updates | | freestone0 -
Videos increase ranking of products in SERPS from Ecommerce Website
Just noticed something I've never seen before..and I just wanted to see if anyone else experienced this. I work for a 15000+ item eccommerce website, and today I noticed that on a few brand searches, several individual product pages were coming up. This is actually unusual because most of our individual item pages (including these) aren't ranked well enough to show up well in a brand search (and don't try to target brand terms either), but a correlation here was that both items contained videos referenced within. These were not videos hosted on our YouTube brand page either..these were videos done by separate manufacturers - one was hosted on their site, one on ours. Google actually pulled the snapshot of the video to the SERP as well... even though it was embedded within other product copy. Has anyone else noticed any preferential treatment given to effectively random items on your eCommerce website because it was augmented by video? I can assure you there was nothing otherwise unique about these products and they're not really that sought after. Neither item or url was new, and neither were the videos within. Also, this was a Universal Google search, not one for videos. (Sorry, I'm not allowed to reference directly). Thanks.
Algorithm Updates | | Blenny0