Google Business Places SEO Question
-
Hi All,
I have set up different Google Business Places listings for each of my locations for my business. I want each location to rank for their retrospective keywords.
So from an SEO point of view to help these rank..
When choosing Keywords/Categories for my listing , should I use my main keyword + my location
example - I have a carpet cleaner hire depot in London and I want to rank for London so should my keyword be just carpet cleaner hire or Carpet Cleaner Hire London. My other depot is say in the location of Watford so should that listing have keywords that contain Watford in them ?.
Also - Should the description contain my localised keywords ?
I have looked around and cant' find much on this topic
Any pointers would be greatly appreciated
thanks
Sarah
-
Hi Sarah,
Good questions!Regarding choosing categories - no, do not use geo terms in the categories. This will likely lead to penalization. Some tips: it's best if you can choose at least 2 of Google's pre-set categories as your first 2 categories if you can't find pre-set choices for all 5, but if you have to use your own custom-written categories for the last 3, that's fine. Be sure they follow the 'is-not-does' rule. So for you, your business IS a carpet cleaning company, so a category like that is fine, but your company DOES carpet cleaning and that is not an allowed category. Similar examples: plumber is okay, but plumbing is not. Dog walker is okay, but dog walking is not. Hair salon is okay, but hair cuts is not. So, be sure to follow this rule.
Regarding what to put in the business description field, again, strongly advise against using any type of geo terms in this field (no cities, zip codes, phone numbers, regional terms, county terms, etc.). While there has never been a public rule against this, it has long been observed that the use of geo terms in the category field can dock your listing. So, avoid that. The best use of the business description field, in my opinion, is to offer up your key selling points in this area. For example, if you've won a Best-Of award. Or if you offer a free initial consultation. Or a money back guarantee. Or have 35 years of experience. In other words, share your unique value proposition here.
I also try to avoid using any of the keywords in the description field that I've already used as a category. Again, this isn't a publicly acknowledged rule, but it has been observed in the past as possibly being problematic.
The only thing you need for Google to understand the locale of a given Google+ Local page is its address and phone number field. Fill these out accurately and depend on that rather than using geo terms any place else on the listing - not in the business title, categories, description or anywhere else.
Hope this helps!
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
-
Negative SEO & How long does it take for Google to disavow
Following on from a previous problem of 2 of our main pages completely dropping from index, we have discovered that 150+ spam, porn domains have been directed at our pages (sometime in the last 3-4 months, don't have an exact date). Does anyone have exerpeince on how long it may take Google to take noticed of a new disavow list? Any estimates would be very helpful in determining our next course of action.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vuly1 -
Google has penalized me for a keyword,and removed from google some one know for how long time is the penalty
i have by some links from fiverr i was ranking 9 for this keyword with 1200 of searches after fiverr it has disappeared from google more then 10 days i guess this is a penalty someone know how long a penalty like this is how many days to months ? i don't get any messages in webmaster tools this is the gig https://www.fiverr.com/carissa30/do-20-unique-domains-high-tf-and-cf-flow-backlinks-high-da?source=Order+page+gig+link&funnel=a7b5fa4f-8c0a-4c3e-98a3-74112b658c7f
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alexmuller870 -
Homepage is deindexed in Google
Please help for some reason my website home page has disappeared, we have been working on the site but nothing that I can think of which would block it. There are no warnings in google console? Can anyone lend a hand in understanding what has gone wrong, I would really appreciate it. The site is: http://www.discountstickerprinting.co.uk/ Seems to be working again but I had to fetch the home page in google console, any idea why this has happened cannot afford a heat op at this age lol?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
If there any SEO downside in using Google+ brand page for news curation?
We are thinking about using our Google+ brand page to curate relevant news from different sources and organize them in Collections. We are confident that we can generate backlinks, followers, and engagement with this strategy. My fear is to suffer some penalty due to the fact that will not be sharing our own content. We will be redirecting the clicks to the website of the owner of the content; using Start a Fire tracking links (https://startafire.com/). Since I am not aware of any Google+ brand page that executed this curated news strategy with success, I decided to post this question. Our goal is to get high ranks for our Google+ brand page for searches to our brand name and for the name of the Collections. BTW, our curated news posts will be automated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grinseo0 -
SEO - is it site or page
Hi When we're talking about SEO does the search engine only look at the whole site in general or do they look at the individual page when we're talking about SERP? So if you have a keyword "my search term" Does the search engine look at the site first or the page with the term on then rank you or is it the page then the site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
International SEO
We want to expand to a few new regions internationally. My question is if we register sites in different geographies and upload our exact site to these web addresses (exact duplicates) so our web addresses will then be www.mysite.co.uk (current site) www.mysite.com (new intended site) www.mysite.com.au (new intended site) and add rel=“canonical” linking elements to prevent duplicate content issues.Will our content production on our current site www.mysite.co.uk retain its value within all the other sites. Is this the best way to do it? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aquaspressovending0 -
Mobile SEO vs. normal SEO?
Hi everyone, I wanted to ask you abour your opinon on mobile SEO. Do we already have two different Indices, one for mobile, one for desktop? Except a few mobile listings I don't see a difference yet. If yes, do I need to do special mobile SEO for my site or is it enough to have e.g. a responsive webdesign which detects the device and shows a different page? Are there any other extra Mobile SEO measures that should be considered? I know of the Mobile Sitemap and directories but is there anything else? Best regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CrazySEO0 -
Advice on further SEO
I am frustrated by a lack of progress for a major keyword I want to rank for. I have made several pages, optimized with Onpage and even a whole site but I can't seem to get my ratings up. I am hoping somone can take a look at my pages and efforts and offer me some advice... Keyword is "National Currency" One site is devoted to this keyword: NationalCurrencyValues This site is ranked 30th and is down 9... and this page on another site is devoted to the same keyword ranked 26th is: http://www.antiquebanknotes.com/National-Currency.aspx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Banknotes0