Merged +Local Page - About Section Formatting?
-
Hi All,
I'm having an issue: I recently merged my Google+ business page and +Local page, and I'm happy it's verified for local search purposes.
However, I am having a supremely difficult time getting the formatting and anchor text links I inserted in the "Edit Business Section to apply; It's just one large chunk of unformatted text. Of note is the fact that the text content did actually change when approved.
I made a post on Mike Blumenthal's blog about this, and he said that he generally does not recommend merging at all.
Any ideas how to get my formatting and text links approved by the Google+ team?
Any thoughts on the pros and cons of merging Local+ in general?
-
Hey David,
Yes, it will be exciting when the new dash is fully rolled out! I do wonder if the upgrade from local to social will be as easy as they say. With Google, few things are easy, right?
-
Hey Miriam,
I did know that they were adding enhanced capabilities to the new Places, although I did not know it was going to now be that easy to verify.
Traditionally, I've found it a real pain to verify, especially when a PO Box is involved. I did recently realize that I could simply call the Google Local team, though, and things have proceeded much more smoothly from there.
I'm keen to get switched over to the new Places dashboard myself, although when I asked if I could be switched early, they said I'd have to wait until my account was randomly updated (not surprised, I wasn't really expecting them to.)
-
Hi David,
Yep, Mike is pretty much 'the man'
What I am so interested in seeing is the ultimate effects the rollout of the new Places for Business dashboard will have. For new businesses, verifying the listing in order to acquire full social features and such is supposed to be just a click a way (so they say) but I haven't gotten to experiment with this with a new listing yet. Mike got to create a test listing. We'll see what happens. Good you know about Mike's blog as he has written a ton over the past couple of weeks about the new dashboard.
-
Thanks, Miriam.
I had kind of figured Mike was probably right, since he's a very reliable Local SEO guy. It's pretty bothersome that Google would release a product for public use with so many bugs, but I guess it's not really that surprising.
At this point, I am beginning to wish that I had never combined these pages, and am glad I only did it on my own personal account and not for a client.
I think in the future I may just let Places be Places and Plus be Plus until the kinks are all ironed out.
-
Hi David,
Unfortunately, Mike's reply is right on the money. The rich text feature of merged pages is really unreliable and I don't know of any solution to this. For some time now, none of the Local SEOs I know have recommended merging to clients, because the whole thing is so wonky. Sorry to hear you're having trouble with this, but I'm not surprised. The ball is in Google's court now to improve their product so that the things they offer actually work.
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
-
How Google decide reading time of a page?
Dear friends, I have a question. How google decide bounce rate? For an example- I open a website through organic keyword from Google. Now I have tab of landing page in browser I do not close this tab for 10 minutes and continue doing my other things after some time I come back on that tab and close. Can Google know? This page has been read till 10 minutes. Can Google decide the bounce rate for this session? If I do some click boost for my negative reviews can I do same thing in my website? Is it useful? If I open one tab and come back after one day than what happen? Silly question but confusing me so please help me. I will be very grateful to you! Thanks all
Branding | | docbeans0 -
Why is Google suddenly not Ranking my page in a second language in its appropriate target country?
Hi, One of my clients has company Facebook pages in several languages. The page in Arabic, which was targeted at Saudi Arabia, used to rank 5th place on the search for the brand name. The page has a steady growth of followers and a high engagement rate. for the past week it suddenly completely fell off ranking and instead the English page ranks #5 in the results for the brand name in Saudi Arabia. What could have caused this change and what can we do to bring the target language page back to its ranking?
Branding | | JonsonSwartz0 -
Changing My Home Page Focus Keyword
Hello, We recently launched a new home page design on our company website, but we still have the same focus keyword in the title, H1, and in parts of the page copy. However, this focus keyword no longer represents our entire brand. We want to change the focus keyword and have done some research on the keyword difficulty and local searches in Google, but are still uncertain on the potential effects. Let me explain our situation more in depth. Instabill provides business owners with merchant accounts and other services. Our current focus keyword is offshore merchant accounts. However, over the past three months, we have been helping businesses establish US merchant accounts (retail, mobile, and online--but retail and mobile to US only while online to merchants everywhere) and intend to continue to increase our US merchant base. We are also still able to provide offshore merchant accounts. Our fear is that when a US merchant comes to our website (http://www.instabill.com), they will see Offshore Merchant Accounts in big H1 letters and leave our site since they want a local US merchant account. However, we still want to make sure our international merchants know we can still work with them. Thus said, we would like to change our focus keyword to something more broad, but still descriptive of our brand: merchant services. To elaborate, we want our H1 heading to read Merchant Services for Retail and Online Businesses. Merchant services is more descriptive since we provide more than just merchant accounts. We also provide the payment gateway, free shopping cart modules, help registering businesses, help obtaining an SSL certificate, and a discounted PCI Certification Service through McAfee. We have more than one page on our website that ranks for the term online merchant accounts, but none that rank for merchant services. However, we are willing to put in the work to ensure we optimize our website properly and put in the effort to make the change successful. Merchant services is also a keyword we would like to optimize on our website, so making the change on the home page will only help the steps in the process. Statistics:
Branding | | Instabill
Offshore Merchant Accounts has a 35% difficulty level and we consistently rank for SERPs #1 and #2. This term, according to the Google Keyword Tool, only receives 70 monthly searches in the US, 50 in the UK, 10 in Canada, and 10 in Australia. These are the four countries of most importance to our website. Merchant Services has a 57% difficulty level and we do not rank for it in Google at all since we have never tried to optimize for this term in the past. Also according to the Google Keyword Tool, this term receives 14,800 monthly searches in the US, 1,600 in the UK, 590 in Canada, and 260 in Australia. Clearly, merchant services could potentially get us much more traffic than offshore merchant accounts if transitioned correctly. I suppose my bottom line question is this: Would it be a bad idea to change my primary focus keyword on my home page? What type of results should I expect to see if searching Google for my company name? Thank you for all of your help. Meghan
Senior Copywriter of Instabill0 -
Legacy Locations and Google Local - How to Handle
Hello - I'm working with a client who has some transitioning brands - and they're hesitant to change the legacy branding in Google Local and on their website because they're afraid of losing traffic from the old brand. Is there a standard practice for keeping traffic on the old brand terms, while still adjusting to the new branding on Google/Yahoo/Bing? Thanks,
Branding | | WebTalent0 -
Should I add follow my followers in a company page on G+ ?
Hi All, On one hand, if I follow them they are happy and receive a notice that they are being followed and will probably be more agile to plus my writings. On the other, it is unreasonable for me to follow everyone... and I think that as a brand I should watch very carefully who I follow. Thanks
Branding | | BeytzNet0 -
Googe+ personal profile & business page conundrum
I have asked this question before and am still seeking help. My apologies for being repetitive and hopefully not too pesky but I am sincere in my search for guidance. I am looking for advice on how to manage my personal G+ profile along with my business G+ page. My challenge is the coordination between the two and getting people to add our biz page to their Circles instead of to me personally through my personal profile. Google+ requires that we have personal profiles- especially for authorship, but it's my business that I want to represent and promote. I do have the Google+ badge on my website and blog posts. And I am duplicating my posts on both the personal and business pages. I have joined a couple of communities and know that i need to find more and engage in those. And also, another question this brings up: in terms of the social signal aspect for our company website/blog, does it matter where I am building my Circles?
Branding | | gfiedel0 -
Why has Google started to re-write my page titles?
Since earlier this week I've noticed that Google has started to re-write several of our page titles and I'm not entirely sure why - does anyone have any info? We are a UK business and currently have top spot for the keyword 'toilet cubicles' - however, our index.html page title has changed as follows: FROM: Toilet Cubicles | WC Panel Systems for Washrooms | Cubicle Centre TO: Cubicle Centre: Toilet Cubicles | WC Panel Systems for Washrooms Is this Google favouring a more brand-led approach to search? Be interesting to hear everyone's thoughts... Cheers, Craig.
Branding | | cubicle_Craig0 -
Does a +1 or Share appear in SERPs site-wide, or only for the page that is specifically shared?
Take the example Danny Sullivan posted: http://searchengineland.com/how-being-friends-on-google-leads-to-better-rankings-87376 In this case, Ford shared www.ford.com, and its friends and followers see that in the SERPs. Hoever, how does that compare with, say, sharing http://www.ford.com/cars/mustang/? Does the entire domain reap the benefit, or just that page? Would people see a "Ford shared this" beneath a search result pointing to ford.com (the home page), even if Ford had only shared this specific interior page? Or is it too soon to know for sure how this is all going to work?
Branding | | kpclaypool0