How do I rank for a different business categories on google local?
-
Hello,
How do I appear on the local listings for google in different categories or services that I offer? For instance, we're a physical therapy clinic by trade but we specialize in orthopedics, sports medicine, and lower back pain.
Thus, how do I rank on google local for these types of services? Currently, we rank for physical therapy but we also miss out on a big part of our business by not ranking for these listings on local. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Scott
-
Hi Scott,
My apologies for you not receiving a speedier reply. First, be sure you're using as many Google categories as are applicable to your business, while not being redundant. In other words, you can have both "physical therapist" and "sports medicine clinic" as categories if they accurately describe what your business is. Review the categories you've chosen in your GMB dashboard to be sure you've made the most of what's available to you.
Next, if you have a menu of different services you offer, you can use a google menu to list those out. I can't guarantee that this will impact what you rank for, but it is at least a feed of data you are giving Google about what you business should be a candidate for.
Beyond this, your ability to rank for different terms is going to be based on a number of different factors including your reviews and your organic strength. You will need to focus strongly on the organic content of your website and the links this content earns that describes these various services in hopes of this building your authority around these topics in a way that is strong enough to influence how Google views your business in relationship to these secondary search terms. Highly authoritative brands can rank for many, many terms in their overall service or product menu, so building authority over time is your goal here.
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
-
Single Local Result on Google... Wut up with that?
I'm seeing, for several different locations, single businesses suddenly coming up for searches on local services, where there used to be 3-Pack results. Now it's like a knowledge panel result on the right. Anyone else seeing this? Any ideas as to what's going on... and if there's anything that can be done to revert it? (influence the type of local result). Thanks!
Local Listings | | WP-Pro1 -
Tracking Google Local Click-Thrus (Maps)
We've expanded our business to be in multiple cities. We are tracking our local rankings in each city and have Adwords campaigns for those cities with location extensions. We have a separate contact page for each city but haven't setup landing pages for each city which would be fairly tricky as our services are identical for each city. So really the landing page would be almost identical to our home page content with maybe a photo of the city and the city's name thrown in here and there - definitely a risk of duplicate content detection. What I'm wondering is if anyone knows if there a Google Analytics report we can run to show us links from our Google Places for Business Listing segregated by location? My guess is that we would need to make each URL for each Google Places listing unique to that location, like http://www.oursite.com?{name of city} Or is this not even necessary by using some report settings in Google Analytics? -- update -- Well this is a 7-year old article but I suspect it might still basically hold true? In other words, it's not easy and straight forward. What I'm wondering is, if I use the ?{cityname} URL only in my Places listings URLs, well, let's make it ?place={cityname} then really all I need to do is run a report filtering by URL contains ?place= Can it really be that simple because if it is, then this old article and others like it seem to be really over complicating the strategy for simply seeing your googe places listing traffic in total and by location? https://moz.com/blog/tracking-traffic-from-google-places-in-google-analytics Furthermore, if we plan on eventually building home pages for each location, maybe the better URL structure would be mysite.com/places/{city name} and just do a 301 to the home page until the custom page is built. The big question then arises if we are only using this URL in our Google Places listings does it have any farther reaching effect on Google's organic view of our website? In other words will it try to add a unique Google Places URL to the organic results database? Will it cause a suspension of the Google Places listing? If we create the URL as an alias to the home page instead of a 301 will it risk dupe content penalty. Wait a sec... if we use a 301 won't that render tracking in Analytics useless as it's only then going to count the pageview for the home page and not the original URL, right? I guess we could use an alias and then in the robots.txt dissallow indexing of any URLs with /places/ ? Now I think I'M over complicating things. Seems like the best/easiest/safest method is to just a ?place={city name} to the Google Places URL. Then once we have unique places landing pages, just go update the URL in all our places listing.
Local Listings | | Wizkids9640 -
Where does the small description on a business listing come from in google maps?
Hi All, Simple question, but I'm struggling to find the answer, so I hope someone is able to help. The business I run is Oakdene Forest Park; Google Maps URL: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Oakdene™+Forest+Park/@50.8114372,-1.8598721,18z/data=!4m12!1m6!3m5!1s0x4873980ce90e4ef7:0x755579d631c25b33!2sOakdene™+Forest+Park!8m2!3d50.8114796!4d-1.8582842!3m4!1s0x4873980ce90e4ef7:0x755579d631c25b33!8m2!3d50.8114796!4d-1.8582842?hl=en Under the business name, it has a small description and for the life of me I don't know where Google is getting it from because a part of it is wrong. It looks like this: Oakdene™ Forest Park Rural Resort with Entertainment & a Spa I would like to remove the term 'Rural Resort' but where do I find it?? Thanks in advance for your help.
Local Listings | | Shorefield_Holidays0 -
Google “My Business” Map Listing
We are Heritage Printing & Graphics, serving 2 areas (DC & Charlotte, NC) with Commercial Printing (books, magazines, catalogs) and Event Signage (banners, backdrops, custom displays) Our current location in NC is 2739 Interstate St. and we will soon also occupy 2731 Interstate St. (next door) which we would like to promote as Heritage Custom Signs & Displays. Do you think this is a good idea as far as Google “My Business” map listing? Thx, Kevin Smith
Local Listings | | KevnJr
Marketing Manager
Heritage Printing0 -
Google box
Hi All I am having trouble getting my business listing on the right hand side of the page for branded google searches. I have added the rel publisher tag to my website and have also connected my website through my google business profile. It shows as verified on my google+ page but it still does not appear. Can anyone offer some advice? Kind Regards
Local Listings | | TheZenAgency0 -
Google Maps Spam
Has anyone had any luck with the Google webspam team getting spammy results taken down or changed? If so can you please tell me how you did it.
Local Listings | | apittsburghplumber.com0 -
Help Understanding Localized Search Results/Ranks
I have a Moz campaign for duvalasphalt.com where I want to track a non-location specific keyword, then variations that include a location. For example, here are the rankings for a keyword and the 2 location variations. asphalt company (not in top 50) asphalt company jacksonville (ranked 6) jacksonville asphalt company (ranked 6) When I do a search for just "asphalt company," I see duvalasphalt.com ranked 11. Why does Moz not show an 11 rank? I understand Google tries to show me location specific results even if my search is not location specific. Is Moz's ranking crawler searching from a location where Google will not serve Jacksonville-related results? It would make sense, but how can I get Moz to capture the rankings that are important to my client? The rankings we want to see are the results made from in and around Jacksonville. Any help here is appreciated!
Local Listings | | ElykInnovation0 -
How do URL's influence Google Rankings?
Hi There, I have a new client who wishes to rank in Google UK for 'Antique Fireplaces London'. Currently they rank 49th. They do not know their logins for Google Local (where they have 40+ positive reviews). And have very mess social activity (which i am trying to sort out). The domain is around 8 years old - website has just been redone (drupal) where a lot of the former SEO errors were corrected) but they seem to be outranked by much newer websites that have much lower domain authority and less inbound links. My client also has much more recognition in online trade magazines and newspapers than most of their competitors. Would buying some additional domains with the keywords they wish to rank for help? Or will this look dodgy to google? Any other quick tips to give them a boost?
Local Listings | | skehoe0