How Can I move a site higher in Google Places?
-
As we all know Google Local Business/Places now has significant real estate for many searches. What I find hard to understand is what makes the difference between the different positions. Is it solely based on the content in Google Places itself or is it regular ranking factors.
I am (like everybody) on a hell for leather search to try and rank above my competition but having studied their Places information I do not think there is much I more I can do.
Suggestions hat have actually worked for you?
-
Just to update people on this topiuc and what has changed / not changed
My URL is http://www.grangewebdesign.com and target keywords are website design Cork, web design Cork and Cork before each of these as well as that is the city I live in
- I made some subtle change to the address (removed the area I was on as Google Maps did not recognise the actual area and now it matches the people above me.
- I made sure my content was solid on the page and guess what
- For the search terms website design Cork where I was 5th on the Google Places list I am now on page 2
- For the search terms web design Cork where I was bottom of Page 1 for SERPs I am now on Page 3
Time for a stiff drink. But really I have really worked hard on this and now it seems I am doing more damage than good..
-
If the order reversal includes shuffling the place name away from "city, ST" you can see dramatic differences.
-
Just to keep you up to date. I got 5 more reviews and now I have 6 and the increased reviews have not moved my placement. I suspect that irrespective of the activity that you do on Google Places that your site's actual authority, links etc etc still have a strong factor in the placement.
I am actually creating an excel table looking forensically at the people above to see what really stands out from their Google Places listing from mine to see if even the smallest tweak makes a difference.
What is interesting is that for a different order of the exact same keywords there is only one Google Places listing presented which I find very interesting as well - any ideas on that one ?
-
Google pulls reviews from across the web, not just Google accounts.
-
It sounds like if you're dealing with subtle tweaks and small details you'll need to get some insight into your specific situation, i.e. add your url and search terms to the discussion, or hire someone to hep with an audit.
To answer your question about subtle difference, yes, I've seen something as simple as being more centrally located within a specific area code give a better ranking in map results. This was a while ago though, and I think it's changed some, but it is an example of subtle difference. Of course this might not help your situation whatsoever.
-
Thanks for that working on getting them as well. 3 so far in last week. It's a pain in the behind when the reviewer has to have a gmail address though as my hundreds of satisfied customers (:-)) don't all have GMail addresses.
-
Reviews, reviews,reviews!
-
Thanks Ryan and appreciatethe speed of your answer. I have actually read this article before and have implemented nearly all the items that make sense. I do notice that the Google Categories have changed slightly recently with Services - XXX as new ones for a range ot items.
However after implementing these it has not made a huge difference. I think this URL is a good Intermediate primer for people but I think that it is very small details in this area that will make the difference for me. Has anyone seen subtle tweaks hat have made differences? My keywrods by the way are far from competitive and are in the 1-2K range.
-
http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml This is an excellent break down of the factors that go in to local search. David Mihm is also on the SEOmoz website so if you need an expert in the field you can contact him.
As you can see from the article there are at least 58 positive indicators and 11 negative indicators that all influence your localized ranks, being a combination of localized content and regular ranking factors. Hopefully by scanning through this article you'll be given several ideas of where you can improve your results.
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
-
Trying to get Google to stop indexing an old site!
Howdy, I have a small dilemma. We built a new site for a client, but the old site is still ranking/indexed and we can't seem to get rid of it. We setup a 301 from the old site to the new one, as we have done many times before, but even though the old site is no longer live and the hosting package has been cancelled, the old site is still indexed. (The new site is at a completely different host.) We never had access to the old site, so we weren't able to request URL removal through GSC. Any guidance on how to get rid of the old site would be very appreciated. BTW, it's been about 60 days since we took these steps. Thanks, Kirk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kbates0 -
Site moved. Unable to index page : Noindex detected in robots meta tag?!
Hope someone can shed some light on this: We moved our smaller site (into the main site ( different domains) . The smaller site that was moved ( https://www.bluegreenrentals.com)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bgvsiteadmin
Directory where the site was moved (https://www.bluegreenvacations.com/rentals) Each page from the old site was 301 redirected to the appropriate page under .com/rentals. But we are seeing a significant drop in rankings and traffic., as I am unable to request a change of address in Google search console (a separate issue that I can elaborate on). Lots of (301 redirect) new destination pages are not indexed. When Inspected, I got a message : Indexing allowed? No: 'index' detected in 'robots' meta tagAll pages are set as Index/follow and there are no restrictions in robots.txtHere is an example URL :https://www.bluegreenvacations.com/rentals/resorts/colorado/innsbruck-aspen/Can someone take a look and share an opinion on this issue?Thank you!0 -
In Google Search Results ....Is it a site link or what? How to get this?
Hello Experts, When I search in google any keyword like abcd in search results for one website after meta description there are showing few links of website ( image attached ) Can you please let me know what is this & how to achieve such type of links? Thanks! mdJBLYb
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wright3350 -
Does blocking foreign country IP traffic to site, hurt my SEO / US Google rankings?
I have a website is is only of interest to US visitors. 99% (at least) of Adsense income is from the US. But I'm getting constant attempts by hackers to login to my admin account. I have countermeasures fo combat that and am initiating others. But here's my question: I am considering not allowing any non US, or at least any non-North American, traffic to the site via a Wordpress plugin that does this. I know it will not affect my business negatively, directly. However, are there any ramifications of the Google bots of these blocked countries not being able to access my site? Does it affect the rankings of my site in the US Google searches. At the very least I could block China, Russia and some eastern European countries.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bizzer0 -
Why isn't google indexing our site?
Hi, We have majorly redesigned our site. Is is not a big site it is a SaaS site so has the typical structure, Landing, Features, Pricing, Sign Up, Contact Us etc... The main part of the site is after login so out of google's reach. Since the new release a month ago, google has indexed some pages, mainly the blog, which is brand new, it has reindexed a few of the original pages I am guessing this as if I click cached on a site: search it shows the new site. All new pages (of which there are 2) are totally missed. One is HTTP and one HTTPS, does HTTPS make a difference. I have submitted the site via webmaster tools and it says "URL and linked pages submitted to index" but a site: search doesn't bring all the pages? What is going on here please? What are we missing? We just want google to recognise the old site has gone and ALL the new site is here ready and waiting for it. Thanks Andrew
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Studio330 -
Should I let Google crawl my production server if the site is still under development?
I am building out a brand new site. It's built on Wordpress so I've been tinkering with the themes and plug-ins on the production server. To my surprise, less than a week after installing Wordpress, I have pages in the index. I've seen advice in this forum about blocking search bots from dev servers to prevent duplicate content, but this is my production server so it seems like a bad idea. Any advice on the best way to proceed? Block or no block? Or something else? (I know how to block, so I'm not looking for instructions). We're around 3 months from officially launching (possibly less). We'll start to have real content on the site some time in June, even though we aren't planning to launch. We should have a development environment ready in the next couple of weeks. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DoItHappy0 -
Stop Google crawling a site at set times
Hi All I know I can use robots.txt to block Google from pages on my site but is there a way to stop Google crawling my site at set times of the day? Or to request that they crawl at other times? Thanks Sean
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ske110 -
How can someone not call B.S. on this site ranking 4th.
We manage a lot of sites that are around pharmaceuticals and lawsuits. I was checking a couple of the sites around the keyword: Actos Lawsuit using the keyword difficulty with serp analysis. Our sites have done very little Adwords except for first month about a year ago and we have always ranked well and the client is very happy with the results. Tonight I notice a site that is http://wikilawsuit.org/drug-recalls/actos-side-effects-bladder-cancer-actos-lawsuit/ They are ranked fourth on Google. Our url which is http://actos-lawsuit.org/ is ranked 9th?? Frankly there are several sites ranked ahead and when you look at the parameters all the way across some we are killing. But Wiki, everyone is killing and it is still fourth. I ran it in OSE and the metrics came back better, but there is at best 3 to 4 real links out of 30 domains. This is a commercial site with a contact form in right sidebar and my guess is they are selling leads to lawyers. So they are about as Wiki as Hooters. That said, we see all the talk about quality links and I am seeing a lot of sites with few quality links and lots of junk links. Should we still believe it matters? Or, is it that it matters when the sites are huge (JC Penny), etc. but not if the site is under some critical number of poor links? Looking forward to a moz Fest on this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobertFisher0