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.
Unsolved GMB Local SEO question
-
I am trying to diagnose how one particular competitor is smoking us in local rankings. I came across a text field “Service Details' within Google My Business Services.
This allows me to put in a brief description of each service we offer. My thought is that this could be a good place for keywords. That said, the descriptions are not public facing (or to the best of my knowledge) so I am reluctant to do all the work for nothing.
I am wondering if anyone has filled these out and if there were any noticeable results.
Any insight is appreciated
-
You should fill out the service description with information that would provide value to your customers (not just local SEO keywords stuffed in there).
However, as someone has already pointed out this may not give you a big leg up.
Could you share your business name & website and your competitor's business name & website?
If you'd like to triage it yourself, you can break down what your competitor is doing for various local SEO categories (GMB Optimization, Reviews, Posting of Updates, Photos, and Social Media).
-
-
Hi, so, yes, to improve your company's local SEO, you will need to fully fill out the Google My Business page.
-
Good morning! And very good question. Definitely do add a list of your relevant services (not just a list of keywords) to the services section of your Google Business Profile. However, doing so is unlikely to impact your rank much, or that of your competitor. To find out why your competitor is smoking you, I would recommend you do a full competitive audit. Let me give you a link here with instructions of how you can do so:
https://moz.com/local-seo-guide/assessing-demand-analyzing-marketsGo to the section of this page near the bottom, entitled: Finally, assess the strengths of the top competitors in each market
Follow the instructions in that section, using the free spreadsheet it contains, for comparing your business to a competitor. This should help you identify factors which are likely to be giving them higher visibility. Hope this helps!
-
Moving this over to our Local SEO category!
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 Do You Think My Local SEO Multi-location Geotargeting Strategy Will Work?
I have a question. I just got a full-time job at Zavza Seal, an upstanding insulation contractor targeting neighborhoods of Suffolk and Nassau counties in New York. I was hired as an SEO content specialist. (Thanks Rand! You're one of my mentors~!) So, they handed me a spreadsheet of pages for city-specific terms, and they had a system in place for local rankings. But I was taught to do service-specific city pages a certain way. If the search term is for people looking for a service in that town, that's what you give them. However, I was told to proofread them, and as an SEO specialist, I couldn't keep my hands off of them. The pages were skimpy. (Example: h2, paragraph, bullets, short paragraph summary, short paragraph about the city.) What threw me off is that the content, while it was service specific, it was blog topics localized. Those are great (when long enough and optimized to compete in SERPs) but I've never seen them done on service pages. (Example: Why is Mold Remediation Necessary in Baldwin?. Now, this went in two directions in my mind. (and I wanted to do the best for the company, because I'm a wicked brat for teams, AND I get commissions on leads, so that was motivation, too.) 🐷 Anyway, 1. This could be a new approach and worthy of an SEO study on my startup site, where I take on part time clients after work, because I've never seen it done before and it could, if optimized for the target service and city rank high in SERPs AND build thought leadership and authority as a local expert. (Whereas city service pages in standard format would just promote your service. ..) What do you guys think? I just put the topic up for discussion for my team, asked them about it in detail and asked if they wanted to A'/B test a few to see what get's better traction organically. Mr. Fishkin was one of my mentors. I really wish I just had his number for this one LOL.
Local SEO | | ThisTimeWereOn0 -
How to optimize landing pages for local search?
I'm trying to understand how to optimize landing pages to appear in local search. For example, if someone in Chicago searches for "plumber", Yelp has a page "Top 10 Plumbers in Chicago." They are generating these pages for numerous business types and cities. I can't see anything on the page or metadata that indicates a geographic location or business type. What optimizations are they doing to get Google to know that it's a page for a specific city and type of business?
Local SEO | | Tourizee0 -
Unsolved How to check the Domain Age?
Check the Domain Age on THE SEO TOOLS KING
Moz Tools | | seotoolsking
Get Free seo tools only on THE SEO TOOLS KING5 -
Unsolved What are the best SEO plugins for WordPress?
Before embarking on a programming language learning journey, the first thing to think of is your motivation.
Local Website Optimization | | Kate_balls0 -
block primary . xxx domain with disavow tool
Hi friends I discovered spam url attack on top sites with good google positions for specific keyword. Can I block primary domain like .xxx with disavow tool? There is hundreds of different domains but primary domain is always the same. for example like this domain:xxx? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | netcomsia0 -
How .ae and .com domain in SEO performance for UAE region?
I have a domain for my UAE based project called https://mydubaiseo.com/ and however, one of my colleagues suggested going with .ae option.
Technical SEO | | 0eup.ombitao
Whether if we change the domain like as suggested get earlier results than .com domain or what?\Which domain .com or .ae ranks faster in UAE location if the SEO strategies followed in the same way?0 -
International Versus Local Backlinks?
I'm running a dentist's website and I've been wondering if there is any additional benefit to achieving local backlinks from other medical sites versus larger international ones? For example, if I had a blog article that I wanted another site to link to, would you choose the local medical website within the same city or the international one that has more viewers?
Local SEO | | Undergrnd0 -
How to find best local websites?
For example, I'd like to type in a zipcode and get the highest ranking websites by DA/whatever metric the software uses, within a 25 mile radius? Does that type of service exist? I'm looking to build up our local links, but most of the websites have extremely low authority. I'm trying to find some good ones without having to manually check each one. Thanks, Ruben
Local SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup1