Google Phone Numbers
-
What process is performed to get a company's phone number to show as "A" on google maps. Google displays the phone number for the company on the map as "A" first. It would be beneficial to get that position.
Is there a sub-category of seo that does this?
Thanks in advance!
-
Hi Joseph,
Like Corey, I'm reading your question as being about getting a high local ranking. If this isn't your intent, please correct me.
Corey has linked to the Local Search Industry's premiere annual report, which surveys some of the top Local SEOs in the world. It's an extremely helpful document, and it outlines what participants feel are the top local rankings factors. Now, the 2012 report (I'm a yearly participant) was undertaken before the rollout of Google's big new local product - Google+ Local - which basically replaces the Google Place Pages of former times. So, be aware that there have been some major changes since publication, though the basic advice remains solid.
Local SEO is the practice of obtaining high rankings both in the blended/local packs of results (the ones with the lettered pins on them) as well as high organic rankings for local terms that don't bring up the actual pinned local results. The lettered local results' rankings are derived from a combination of both organic signals (like the strength of the website, link profile, etc.) and local ones (like having a violation-free, complete Google+ page, number of citations from other local business directories, proximity to the centroid of business in a given city) etc.
To qualify for inclusion in Google's local products, a business must meet all 3 of the following criteria:
-
Have a unique, dedicated physical street address (not a P.O. box, shared address or virtual address)
-
Have a unique, local phone number in the city of location (not a toll free number or shared number)
-
Have in-person transactions with clientele either at the place of business (like a restaurant) or at the client's place of business (like a plumber)
If any of those 3 things doesn't match the business model, then you cannot seek inclusion in Google+ Local.
Most Local SEOs consider Mike Blumenthal to be the leading expert in the field, so if you're just getting into this, you should start reading his blog on a regular basis: http://www.blumenthals.com/blog
You might also find a couple of recent articles from my blog to be useful in getting you into the right mindset about this unique field of SEO:
The Zen of Local SEO
http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=1314
The Rudiments of Local SEO
http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=1344
The main thing to understand about Local SEO is that it is constantly changing...arguably even more so than traditional SEO, so constant study is a must in this field. It's a really dynamic area to work in. Hope these resources help!
-
-
Well, if we're talking about Google Maps, this falls within the dense world of Local SEO. By 'the phone number showing as "A" in Google', I assume you're referring to being the #1 local listing, shown with an "A" when searching maps.google.com?
If this is indeed the case, here are a hundred or two considerations to help you start planning how to get there: http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml
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
-
Google News and Meta Title
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPalmer
1. I just read this article: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-news-titles-h1-19876.html
Google want the same title. no problem. but what about the brand? for example
POST TITLE BLA BLU | My Brand
The "post title bla blu" is the H1 and title of the article and | My Brand is my brand...
I can keep it as is with the My brand? or remove it? what about posts with long title for example "POST TITLE BLA BLU POST TITLE BLA BLU | My Brand"
What is you suggestion, I know Google doesn't show all the text and we'll see "...". it's still important to write the brand name in the title or just the post title? (without the brand). Thanks,0 -
Google is showing 404 error. What should I do?
Dear Experts, Though few of my website pages are accessible, Google is showing 404 error. What should I do? Even moz reports gives me the same. Problems:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Somanathan
1. Few of my Pages are not yet catched in Google. (Earlier all of them were catched by Google)
2. Tried to fetch the those pages, but Google says, page not found.
3. Included them in sitemap, the result is the same. Please advice: Note: I have recently changed my hosting server.0 -
Google Indexing Feedburner Links???
I just noticed that for lots of the articles on my website, there are two results in Google's index. For instance: http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/articles/tools-for-creating-wordpress-plugins.html and http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/articles/tools-for-creating-wordpress-plugins.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thewebhostinghero+(TheWebHostingHero.com) Now my Feedburner feed is set to "noindex" and it's always been that way. The canonical tag on the webpage is set to: rel='canonical' href='http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/articles/tools-for-creating-wordpress-plugins.html' /> The robots tag is set to: name="robots" content="index,follow,noodp" /> I found out that there are scrapper sites that are linking to my content using the Feedburner link. So should the robots tag be set to "noindex" when the requested URL is different from the canonical URL? If so, is there an easy way to do this in Wordpress?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbrault740 -
Google cached pages and search terms
Here's something I noticed. We have a rank A page and it's ranking 10 on Google search results. When I hover my mouse over our search result, Google gives us a preview, but Google also highlights in red where the search keyword is present on the page. Reviewing our page, even though we have it as the h1 header and intro paragraph, Google is highlighting it half way down the page. Any ideas why? I review rank 1 - 5 and Google highlights the keyword on the intro paragraph and h1 header Have you guys experienced anything like this? It makes me think..Google could be crawling my site and thinking I haven't got it in the h1 or intro paragraph etc.. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
Can links indexed by google "link:" be bad? or this is like a good example by google
Can links indexed by google "link:" be bad? Or this is like a good example shown by google. We are cleaning our links from Penguin and dont know what to do with these ones. Some of them does not look quality.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bele0 -
Google News URL Structure
Hi there folks I am looking for some guidance on Google News URLs. We are restructuring the site. A main traffic driver will be the traffic we get from Google News. Most large publishers use: www.site.com/news/12345/this-is-the-title/ Others use www.example.com/news/celebrity/12345/this-is-the-title/ etc. www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/12345/this-is-the-title/ www.example.com/celebrity-news/12345/this-is-the-title/ (Celebrity is a channel on Google News so should we try and follow that format?) www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/this-is-the-title/12345/ www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/this-is-the-title-12345/ (unique ID no at the end and part of the title URL) www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/celebrity-name/this-is-the-title-12345/ Others include the date. So as you can see there are so many combinations and there doesnt seem to be any unity across news sites for this format. Have you any advice on how to structure these URLs? Particularly if we want to been seen as an authority on the following topics: fashion, hair, beauty, and celebrity news - in particular "celebrity name" So should the celebrity news section be www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/celebrity-name/this-is-the-title-12345/ or what? This is for a completely new site build. Thanks Barry
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Deepti_C0 -
Google indexing issue?
Hey Guys, After a lot of hard work, we finally fixed the problem on our site that didn't seem to show Meta Descriptions in Google, as well as "noindex, follow" on tags. Here's my question: In our source code, I am seeing both Meta descriptions on pages, and posts, as well as noindex, follow on tag pages, however, they are still showing the old results and tags are also still showing in Google search after about 36 hours. Is it just a matter of time now or is something else wrong?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ttb0 -
Getting Google Authorship to Work
Hi I set up authorship about 10 days ago at the suggestion of this great forum but haven't seen anything happen yet. Could someone take a quick look and check I've done it right? You can see a typical post here: http://www.touristisrael.com/neve-tzedek-tel-aviv/354/ Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ben10000