Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
What is the ideal length of a business description for citations?
-
I am trying to write a business description for building citations. What is the ideal length or word count for this? I am using Yext to help get them listed, did a lot of searching for an answer and was unable to come up with a definite answer.
Any help would be great! The business I am working on for this is James River Church, they have 2 locations. So I am trying to write a unique description for both locations.
-
No amount of length is ideal, but make sure your NAP is consistent across all citations. Generally I work with a 200+ character description. I have not seen any ranking differences due to business description length.
Also, if I was you I would not out your clients website like that here or anywhere for that matter.
-
Hi Steven,
There is no ideal length. Different platforms have different minimum and maximum requirements, and if you're using Yext, I would expect they have that, too. In Moz Local, we have a 250 character minimum, which is pretty average. In manual citation building, it's long been considered a best practice to write a number of descriptions of varying lengths for use on various platforms, but with the advent of automated citation building tools, you typically would just write one. So, I'd say 250 minimum, but definitely write more if there's more to say. Be concise, but take the time to highlight the key points you feel will influence customers (or the congregation, in your case!) most. Hope this helps!
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 do I need to do for SEO when moving a business out of state?
Hello! So I have a business that I run out of a single location for the last 3 years. I am unfortunately having to move here in the next few weeks My question is what do I need to do in order to have the best chance at SEO for the new location? When should I make the changes? Does it take a long time for me to stop showing up in the previous location? and is there something I need to do to remove those? Also, is there an app or a website where I can find and update all listings at once or at least a bulk of them? I know that there are some weird sites that have my business info in them that I did not put there. Obviously these would have the wrong address. Some do not have a contact info or a way for me to log into them. What would I do with these sites? Thank you!
Local Listings | | Rmarkjr810 -
Google My Business for Municipalities?
I'm working with the City of Lakewood, WA, on an image campaign that overlaps a bit with some SEO goals. If you Google "Lakewood, WA", in the knowledge panel to the right of the search results is an image of building on fire. I'm not sure where this image comes from or why it has been selected as the image to represent the City of Lakewood but its been there for a while. If this was a small business, I would simply claim their Google My Business page and feed some good images into it. Problem solved. But Google doesn't offer an option to "Claim this City". LOL. Can you create a GMB page for a municipality? Does anyone know the right thing to do here to make this picture go away and give the city more control over its own image?
Local Listings | | TheKatzMeow2 -
Seasonal Setting Options for Google My Business
Hi there, Not sure if anyone will have any insight but I have a seasonal business that I am closed for from September to March. I don't want to mark my business as "permanently closed" through Google My Business as I don't want my customers to think I've gone out of business. I've seen a few times through forums that you can change your business to temporarily closed, but I can't find the specifics on how to do this. Any insight, suggestion or resources would be great! Thanks!
Local Listings | | MainstreamMktg1 -
Disadvantages to Hiding Business Address on Google Places?
From a Local SEO standpoint, wouldn't hiding a business address on Google Places for Business create an SEO disadvantage in that I would expect in the local portion of the search results, there would be a bias to showing businesses that have not hidden their address as then you can place a pin on the map at the location? Or from a Local SEO standpoint does it not matter if you hide your address or not?
Local Listings | | Jazee1 -
Google Business - Adding location into business name
Hello, I've a client that has many services in different locations and addresses with the same website and phone number. But the thing is they want me to involve location name to business name. Is there a way to add and verify as bulk ?
Local Listings | | omeryamac0 -
Why are my citations not showing up?
We're managing a website for a client and decided to use Yext to build citations. We've gone through and manually verified that they are live. Moz Local cannot find this website or the citations, nor could Ahrefs, or Majestic. Google has indexed 154 pages of the website, Bing has indexed 10. This dealer has two websites (I know that's a faux pas, it's by client request), so that they can "test" our website before giving up their old one. They're tied to the same NAP, but have different web addresses. We got permission to claim the listings for the website we sent live and put them up about two months ago. I can't figure out for the life of me why none of my tools will verify the existence of this website and the citations. I checked for a no index and no follow command in the HTML (which shouldn't be a problem because Google has indexed the site) and it was clean. The only thing I can think of is that the old site is getting credit for the citations even though we've listed a different website address. Can anyone verify this?
Local Listings | | jtaylormoon0 -
Google My Business- Will a large service area dilute local search results?
I am considering adding our actual service area to our Google My Business profile, but I don't want this to dilute our local search results. As it is, we come up in the top 3 or so when searched in our HQ's city and several nearby cities when you search for us in Google Maps (although when I look at the top 10 organic for Google for some reason when you search for these cities + our keywords Google doesn't show any local results). Our actual service area is fairly large, comprising the states of CA & Hawaii & parts of CO, AZ, and UT. I would be adding the service area by zip code rather than radius, as a radius wouldn't make any sense in this case (particularly considering the distance between HI and CA). Is it better to keep our relatively high ranking in local results? Will adding the service area not affect local results negatively? Also, do you know why Google isn't showing me local results when I look for our keywords + our nearby cities? When I look for these keywords in larger cities like LA or San Diego, Google always shows me local results.
Local Listings | | BohmKalish1230 -
What To Do With Two Business Having The Same Name?
Hi friends, We have a client who is in a peculiar predicament... essentially his business and his biggest competitor share the same name. Officially on their business licenses they are differentiated by the year they were each established, but in all their marketing, on their website, and in the community they are both known by the exact same name. When the company name is searched for, the competitor shows up #1 organically with the map pin as well as in the knowledge graph, and our site shows up number 2 without any any map pin or Google+ page site link or anything. We thought we could differentiate ourselves by changing his Google+ page name to his official business name (with the date) and building a bunch of really good citations with that official business name, but we still haven't made a dent for his branded keyword, and our Google+ page site links aren't even showing up. Has anyone run into a situation like this and any suggestions?
Local Listings | | localtrifecta_im0