How to improve Google Places Account
-
Hello,
A friend of mine has a google places account. Her website is
You can see her places account listed under
"life coach scottsdale arizona"
I've attached a screenshot of her categories.
I just added "NLP Coach" and "Personal Coach" today, so results are only for the other categories.
We're looking for ways to improve it. We've had 43 clicks for driving directions. 4 map clicks, and 0 website clicks (how good is that, by the way)
Thanks!
-
Very Greatful for SEOMoz. Thanks.
-
You're very welcome, Bob. The geo terms Debi targets will depend on whether her business model operates out of a location to which clients come or whether she is running a go-to-client business model. For example, a brick and mortar paint store in San Francisco is dealing within the city, whereas a painting contractor based in San Francisco may also be serving in San Jose, Oakland, Berkeley and etc. and will need to formulate a plan for targeting all of those geo terms. So, the answer to your question is based on Debi's business model. *Also, the business model type needs to be totally clear so she knows whether or not her address needs to be hidden or not on her Google Place Page to be current with the recent guideline change, see: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-you-may-need-to-hide-your-google-places-address-asap If she can't currently afford to hire a Local SEO, then she will need to put in the time to study this subject for the benefit of her business. The more she knows, the more she can dominate. I sincerely wish her luck! Miriam
-
I think you have about answered everything really well.
I have one last question.
I know from experience in the area that
"life coach" + geographic location
and
"NLP" + geographic location
are the 2 main terms for us (I have a similar site in Boise, Idaho)
According to local SEO, how many geographic locations are usually targeted? I know it depends, but could you give me an idea? I don't think Debi will be able to afford a local SEO.
That's about it for my questions. You've been so helpful. Thanks again.
-
Hi Bob,
I'm delighted my response was helpful! Regarding your questions:
-
This is why I am recommending that Debi form a relationship with a Local SEO. Someone needs to do a full discovery assessment of her business (where are her clients, where does she see them, at her office, at their homes, at a medical center, what are her core terms, what are the most logical geo terms to add to her core terms, what types of content need to be added to the site, is the site currently using hCard or rich snippets or what have you?). There isn't a one-size-fits-all answer to this. The Local SEO has to really examine the nature of the business model, the goals of the client and the needs of the customer to formulate an educated plan of action. You can try making recommendations to your friend that you think will help her, but as you say, Local just isn't your thing. My opinion is that Debi needs to work with a Local SEO so that whatever she invests time in will be part of an overall plan rather than just a stab in the dark. Does this make sense?
-
You raise a very interesting point regarding citations and links. Google's link-related penalties are well documented but in the half a decade I've been doing Local, I have never heard of a citation-related penalty. So, while I wouldn't be worried about citation penalties, I understand the need to find reliable citation. In addition to Whitespark's tool, which I've linked to in my original response, I recommend you look at Myles Anderson's much lauded list of the top 50 citation sources for the USA and the UK, here:
http://searchengineland.com/top-50-citation-sources-for-uk-us-local-businesses-104938
I hope my suggestions are useful, Bob. I know how it can be when you are helping a friend, or even a client. They may need guidance with specific practices that just aren't your area. That's when it's time to refer them out to someone you really trust and who does specialize in the type of consulting or implementation the valued friend of client needs.
-
-
Miriam,
Exactly the kind of response I was hoping for!
We will impliment your suggestions.
A couple of questions:
- I recommended Debi taking 4 of her pages and optimizing them for 4 different geographic keywords of suburbs/cities near her. I recommended that she add (for example "life coach Pheonix" and "nlp Pheonix" to that page's title, meta description and that page's content one time) with the home page being optimized for her nearest geographic location ("life coach Scottsdale" and "NLP Scottsdale"). How can you improve upon my suggestions, as Local SEO is not my strong suit.
2. I only believe in adding citations (or directories in organic SEO) - because of long term experience- that the citation site looks like it will be there for the long haul, a permanent citation. I've had too many problems with losing backlinks and the penalties of that and I imagine Google is doing that with citations as well. Provided that I do this which I believe is best, how do we find citations that are there for the long haul?
I'm thankful for your comments Miriam. Take Care,
Bob
-
Hi Bob,
How nice of you to help your friend out. Let me give you some ideas here:
1. Debi should add at least 5 photos to her Place Page...preferably 10.
2. Debi should add at least 2 videos to her Place Page (not one, but two, as adding one video may actually make her listing less complete than more so due a mysterious glitch in the system)
3. I'm not liking the description. Think of the Places Description as a sales pitch. What can Debi say about her business that would inspire me to phone her? Has she won awards? Will she help me achieve a specific goal? Is she the most skilled in the area? Does she have certain credentials others lack? Figure out the USP and make that the description. A little more on this...until a year or two ago, the Google Places Quality Guidelines specifically forbid the repetition of any word in the business title or categories, or any geographic term, within the description field. Google removed this from the guidelines a few updates ago, but I have remained suspicious that it may still be factor. Because of this, I don't use my local SEO clients' business names or category phrases in their descriptions. I don't know what Debi's USP is, but I would write a hypothetical description like this:
Voted 'Best In Town' by Desert Living Magazine. Empathetic, skilled coaching. Achieve your goals at affordable rates.
Something like that. Something persuasive.
4. Debi needs to earn reviews. Help her put a plan in place to encourage them.
5. Debi needs to earn citations. Get her listed in all the typical free local business indexes. Consider using a paid citation finding tool like Whitespark's at: <cite>www.whitespark.ca/local-citation-finder/</cite>
6. Remember that the optimization of the Place Page is only a small part of her overall local rankings and visibility. The strength of the website is the most important factor, especially since the Venice update. Nearly all local rankings are now blended in nature (meaning organic seo + local seo is the winning combo). I glanced at Debi's site and think it needs a review by a good local SEO as it it lacking in some basic best Local SEO practices. In your shoes, I would give Debi the above info and then advise her that she should invest in working with a quality Local SEO in improving her website. This will be her smartest move.
Hope these suggestions help, Bob!
Miriam
-
In general it would be good to put as much information onto Google Places as possible. I would add product images or promotional images as well as their logo.
Ensure you have a website address on your google places page and ask existing customers to write reviews where possible.
Unfortunately because I'm a UK user Google Places isn't showing your listing for the phrase you entered above, probably because I'm not in Arizona (Google Places only works on local searches, I believe)
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 get google reviews on search results?
Hi, We have good google reviews. (4,8) Can we get this rating stars also on our organic search results ? Best remco
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | remcoz0 -
Improving Crawl Efficieny
Hi I'm reading about crawl efficiency & have looked in WMT at the current crawl rate - letting Google optimise this as recommended. What it's set to is 0.5 requests every 2 seconds, which is 15 URLs every minute. To me this doesn't sound very good, especially for a site with over 20,000 pages at least? I'm reading about improving this but if anyone has advice that would be great
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Google Flux in Rankings Or Something More Serious
Hi all, Two weeks ago i noticed that one of our pages which normally ranks in the top 5 of search results dropped out of the top 50 results. I checked to make sure there were no Google penalties and checked to make sure the page was crawlable. Everything seemed fine and after a few hours our page went back into the number one position. I assumed it was a Google Flux. This number one ranking lasted about a week, today I see my page has dropped out of the top 50 yet again and hasn't come back up. again there are no penalties and there doesn't seem to be issues with the page. I'm hoping it comes back up to the top by tomorrow. What could be causing such a big dip multiple times?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | znotes0 -
Google is not indexing an updated website
We just relaunched a website that has 5 years old, we maintain all the old URLs and articles but for some reason google is not picking up the new website https://www.navisyachts.com. In Google Webmaster Tools we can see the sitemap with over 1000 pages submitted but shows nothing as indexed. The site is loosing traffic rapidly and positions, from the SEO side all looks fine for me. What can be wrong? I’ll appreciate any help. The new website is built over Joomla 3.4, we have it here at MOZ and other than some minor details it doesn't show that something can be wrong with the website. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FWC_SEO0 -
Why has my site dropped off the face of Google???
Hi All, My site was ranking well for a long time and suddenly can't be seen at all any more. I have been trying to figure this out for some time and can't get to the bottom of it. Funny thing is also even when searching for my site with a keyword "snowboard gulmarg" my URL www.klinehinmalaya.com does not appear and somewhere way back in the listing my another page www.klinehimalaya.com/packages.php comes up. Any help would be good right now. Thanks in advance, Catherine.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | caherinechan0 -
Can google read ajax
Looking to load a one page product view instead of 10 pages of pagination. Does google read ajax and see all 10 pages as 1 page.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Archers1 -
Google Places Alternatives
Hello, I have been looking into Google places alternatives. Any suggestions? On a related note. I am based in the UK and looking to add a UK business to Bing Local but having read this thread ( - http://www.bing.com/community/maps/f/12264/t/653672.aspx -) I don't think it's possible. Anyone had any luck or experience? Cheers dj
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0 -
Removing a Page From Google index
We accidentally generated some pages on our site that ended up getting indexed by google. We have corrected the issue on the site and we 404 all of those pages. Should we manually delete the extra pages from Google's index or should we just let Google figure out that they are 404'd? What the best practice here?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dbuckles0