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
-
Would google consider this the anchor text?
Hi guys, For a button based link, can you define the anchor text google will use. I have attached screenshot of what i mean. Cheers. geavig
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bridhard80 -
Could i add my website in Google News
Hi , I am looking to add article news section of my website http://goo.gl/De5MKo in google news. We'll remove all content from this news section http://www.99acres.com/articles/real-estate-news and upload unique news, might be possible we use graph/chart and images from some other news site and other sources but the content will be unique and fresh. Any specific guidelines for URL structure for this news section? We are thinking about to create URL like xyz.com/news/ <title>. Is it okay and will not harm our site? Google News can consider my section as a news?</p></title>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vivekrathore0 -
Google snippet chosen why?
We have a page about buying property in the Megeve area of the Alps in France. We are No.2 on Google.co.uk for the term "megeve property for sale" and No.1 for "megeve property". http://www.prestigeproperty.co.uk/MegeveProperty/Properties.asp If you search for "megeve property for sale", Google serves our META description as the snippet: Ski chalets, homes and apartments for sale in this exclusive, prestigious Rhone Alpes village - 520000-16500000 EUR. However, we noticed that searching for just "megeve property" serves up a much better snippet taken from the text on the page: A crucial factor for potential property buyers is that there is a strong rental market in Megève and this remains high all year around with properties close to the ... Does anyone know why Google would serve this particular snippet instead of the META description. Is it the number of strong and descriptive words used, or some other reason?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PPGUKLTD0 -
Why is this page not being delivered for Google search result?
Hey folks, Figured I would try to get an experts insight on this. On google search result for BLACK TITANIUM RINGS + TITANIUM-JEWELRY.COM the page that I "think" should show up is this one: http://www.titanium-jewelry.com/black-titanium-rings.html However, it does not. Imho, this page is highly relevant. I used Rank Tracker here on seomoz.org and the page is not even in top 50 of search engine results for google. Our 'About Black Titanium Rings' page ranks #2 (http://www.titanium-jewelry.com/about-black-titanium.html) but the /black-titanium-rings.html page doesn't even rank. Any suggestions on what I could look at to figure out why this page is being penalized? We are not under a manual penalty (anymore!). Thanks! Ron
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yatesandcojewelers0 -
My own brand name disappeared from google?
Hi, about 20-30 hours ago my own brand name disappeared from google results (We redirected old domain to new one about a month ago) My website is: www.websiteplanet.com If you search for Website Planet in google you will not find our homepage any longer.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ouzan
Not only that the brand name disappeared but we also dropped in rankings and lost about %50 of the organic traffic we had. It's important for me to say that we have never done any sort of blackhat or even greyhat SEO, at all. I could probably come up with many ideas of why it happened but maybe one of you mozzers already experienced this and could enlighten me. Will really appreciate any kind of response/help. Thanks.0 -
Google + Local Pages
Hi, If I have a company with multipul addresses, Do I create separate Google + page for each area?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bryan_Loconto0 -
Google+ Pages on Google SERP
Do you think that a Google+ Page (not profile) could appear on the Google SERP as a Rich Snippet Author? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | overalia0 -
Check Google ban on domainname
Hello all, If I wanted to know if a domainname has a google ban on it would the following be a good idea to test it. Place an article on the domain page with unique content and then link to the page so its gets indexed and then link to the article from a well indexed page. If it doesn't get indexed there might be a ban on the page, if it does get indexed there is no ban on the page... Or are there other points I should keep in mind while doing this. All help is very welcome. Cheers, Arnout
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hellemans0