G+ places/local - Company Categories and Pages question
-
I have two questions about google places/local and Personal/Company Pages
Regarding Local and the categories section.
Should you be using strictly the predefined categories they have? or should you be creating your own? Also say you're a car repair shop for instance. If you should be creating your own such as 'truck repair' should the city be in there as well 'Truck Repair New York/New York Truck Repair(keyword or location first?)'
When it comes to company and personal g+ places, i understand doing the rel author and its bennefits but what is the correct way about tagging this?
For instance in Wordpress, Studiopress has a section in the profile for the user g+ profile that will rel author it, and Yaost SEO says 'if you have a business page, insert it here and link your personal page as a contributor to the business page'
Should we be filling in both sections? or does this cause a conflict? Adding these items is very easy to do, but would rather do it right the first time then circle back and have to correct everything.
Any feedback/input is appreciated.
Thanks,
-
Hi Travis,
Yes, that's correct - no geo information in any way in the business description field. If you want to use service keywords in this field as part of your description, I would advise that you not repeat any words that have already been used in the categories.
What I like to put in the business description field, where I can, is whatever the company has most bragging rights to. Things like:
Voted #1 by Local Living Magazine.
100% money back guarantee.
Serving our neighbors since 1935.
Lifetime warranty on all our work.
Or, if this client carries a certain brand or performs a popular service that was not already used in the categories, I like to focus on those keywords. For instance, a dentist's description might include:
Let's build the smile of your dreams with Invisalign technology.
I like to use this field to set my client apart as more popular, safer, older, better, or what have you. Note, this may not be every Local SEO's favorite use of the description tag, but I have seen it work well for my clients.
-
Wow, thanks this makes perfect sense.
-
If i'm reading this correctly, you're saying that in the description field - no location based info whatsoever.
the actual example is home inspection which i've been steadily climbing over time and is actually a pet project of mine. Which I'm currently in a rework/push to clean up any 'spam'ish' material/loose ends.
So going back to the description -
Certified, Licensed and Insured Home Inspector --- MORE text Here [offering services x, y, z?]--
-Would be the right way to go, and not -
Certified, Licensed and Insured Home Inspector --- MORE text Here [offering services x, y, z?]-- Located in City, St
On the site i'm updating, I've done the schema format in the footer for the address/business and hcard via the contact page.
This leads me to the content pages, should not be geocentric beyond service area/contact pages
-- Once again i appreciate your help, and I'm really just trying to work out the kinks in this project, since a lot of articles cover this as a whole, but very few really get down to the very fine details that really dictate what that whole comes out to be. I'm a firm believer in 'it's the little things that count', and since I've seemed to of violated the 'measure twice, cut once', I'd really like to get back there
-
Hi Travis,
about the implementation of both the rel="publisher" and rel="author", you should insert both.
Let me explain me which are the differences between the two mark-ups.
REL="PUBLISHER"
The rel="publisher" is the mark-up that "links" your Google+ Business Page (or Local Google+ Page in your case) to your site. That way Google knows that the two are both expression of one entity: your brand.
Visually that means that whenever someone realizes a search in Google using your brand or a keyword + your brand (branded keyword), in column of the right respect the organic results, a box with a big snippet of your Google+ Business page will be shown. From an user point of view, this box reinforce the idea of having to deal with a recognized brand.
From a pure SEO point of view, this also means that all the effects of your activity on Google+ (aka: +1, shares of your posts, the raw number of people following your G+ page and the quality of the followers) will give relevance not only to the Google+ page, but also to your site, as it is linked to it.
REL="AUTHOR"
This mark-up link an author (who could be you) to a site. That means that thanks to this mark-up Google recognize that a real person is collaborating with a site a content producer. That's why the rel="author" must always reference to a personal Google+ profile (not a business page) and that's why the author must confirm this collaboration explicitly with adding a link in his G+ profile to the site (yours) as "Collaborator".
Visually it's the rel="author" which cause the SERPs snippets enriched with the authorship photos and G+ author profile metrics (i.e.: number of followers).
The authorship as a great impact on CTR in the SERPs, and a trusted author, who have great metrics on G+ surely helps a snippet to be clicked.
More over, if the author own an authoritative Google+ profile, maybe even if that is thanks to his collaboration with other sites (i.e.: guest posting, as I do with SEOmoz itself and State of Search), all that will impact positively to the your site.
Doing a metaphor, is like saying that the New York Time (the Publisher) not only is authoritative because of what it publish, but it's also authoritative thanks to the authority of its journalists (the authors).
I hope i was able to explain the reasons why you should insert both in Wordpress SEO
Ciao
-
Good analogy, Travis. And, just a reminder, be sure you're not putting those geo terms in the business name or description field, either. The only place geo terms belong is where you provide the address. Just thought I'd mention!
-
Mariam,
Thanks for taking the time to reply, and what you are saying makes sense. I also agree with your gut, as that what i was thinking along the lines of.
Just as someone may have a 'heavy hand' when pouring a drink, I myself can get a bit overzealous with the optimization and sometimes finding that I have to stop myself and step back and look at the big picture...
-
Hi Travis,
I can answer the local portion of your question. If there are 5 pre-set Google categories that accurately match your business, then you can do all 5 as pre-set categories, but many businesses find that fewer of the pre-set categories than 5 are appropriate for them. Perhaps 2, 3 or 4 are a good match, and then the rest need to be made up from custom categories your write yourself. My rule of thumb is that you should try to select at least 2 pre-set categories as your first 2 choices.
When writing custom categories, follow these guidelines:
-
Do not include any type of geographic terms in your categories. No New York, no New Jersey, no Boston, no San Francisco, etc. Never put anything like this in a category.
-
Make sure that any custom category you write follows the is-not-does rule. This means it should say what your business is, not what it does. So plumber, not plumbing, electrician, not electrical services. In your case 'truck repair' is not an allowed category, but truck repair company would be.
-
I try to avoid being too repetitive in my categories. For example, I wouldn't want lawyer, lawyers, accident lawyer, car accident lawyer, auto accident lawyer. Note, this is a gut feeling rather than a well-documented rule. Thought I'd mention it though.
I hope these tips help. I am not sure about your WordPress and Yoast questions and will ask one of our great SEOs to stop by for additional advice.
-
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
-
Facebook ignores multiple slashes for business listing - true duplicate page issue?
Hi everyone, I am doing an external link audit for a site that contains a large number of public business profiles in it. As a part of each profile, there can be a website listed for the business, as well as a FB page and twitter etc. Pretty standard. There are thousands of business profiles on the site and I noticed that in a small group of links to FB profiles there seem to be typos. These are not the actual businesses that I found, but I have taken common public profiles and modified to show what I am seeing to give examples. https://www.facebook.com//nissanusa/ https://www.facebook.com//pizzahutus/ https://www.facebook.com//WhiteHouse/ https://www.facebook.com//TrekBicycle/ Notice the double slash. You can put as many slashes as you want and it makes no difference, e.g. https://www.facebook.com///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////TrekBicycle/ FB shows a 200 for all of pages when it should show a 404. There is no 301 to the correct URL. Facebook also does not canonical these other pages to the one slash URL. You could call this a potential duplicate content issue due to typos. These types of pages would be important for brand related searches for a business. Google may be smart enough to ignore them, or maybe the typo does not happen often enough that it does not really matter. I am just surprised that FB does not 404 or 301 these pages. When I checked my personal FB page URL and some of my friends, this does not happen. FB shows a 404 if you add extra slashes to personal pages. So, the duplicate issue seems to only be with business type FB pages. Curious about what the group thinks or if they have seen similar situations like this one. Thanks!
Social Media | | CleverPhD0 -
I understand Authorship is Dead, but here's a question on the Google+ Profile
I guest write for some blogs, as well as several blogs I manage myself. What is the correct usage of the "Contributor to" field and the "Links" field? Contributor to: The overall blog itself and; Links: To individual blog posts themselves? Or the reverse? Thank you!
Social Media | | booboo220 -
Google Places and Google Local
I am pretty confused about how the difference between Google Local, Places and Business Pages. I created a Google+ Page and have about 800 followers. https://plus.google.com/100975632641377061238 To control our listing on Google Maps and what shows up on the right side of a Google Search, which includes a map and business hours I had to create a Google Local page. Now this page only shows we have 4 followers. https://plus.google.com/110649807298590030594 Is there any way to combine the two?
Social Media | | joebuilder1 -
How to Optimise Your Facebook Business Page
Buongiorno drom hot & humid wish the clouds would clear ofdf wetherby UK 🙂 On this page https://www.facebook.com/philpottsltd and illustrated here
Social Media | | Nightwing
http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/philpotts-official-page-as-is-1_zpsf900b6b3.jpg
Is the reason the Philpotts Facebook page does not appear for target term "Philpotts Sandwiches" down to no mention in the description & no mention in the url? Would like to know the classic way to do on page optimisation ( I know this is will be very limited ) for a Facebook business page. Grazie tanto,David0 -
Can You Aggregate Likes from Pages on Your Site to Your Homepage?
I think the Facebook widget is great for social proof if you have a lot of people who like you. (the widget that shows faces of people who like you) Let's say that you create a resource that gets 100 likes. Do those "Likes" only count at the page level or can they be aggregated into a total "Likes" count that you can show on your home page and on the Facebook widget? Or are "Likes" in the Facebook widget only for people who like your Facebook page? (not those who "Like" your site).
Social Media | | Charlessipe0 -
Facebook Advertising Noob Question
Hello Mozzers, I have a noob question for which I have not been able to find a clear answer on the internet. When a client asks you how much would I have to spend on FB ads to get 100,000 fans how do you go about making a "media plan". I can understand you can calculate clicks using your budget and CPC but fans? Also, ad impressions on Facebook? FB doesn't even give that metric anymore on its default ad dashboard where you have campaign reach, social reach, CTR etc. So if a client wants 1Million Facebook Ad Impressions (I know, I know), how do you tell them how much its going to cost them. In a nutshell, clients want to know how much they should be spending to get x number of fans and impressions and vice versa, how many fans and impressions will $XXX get them. So how does one go about making a media plan for Facebook advertising, what do you include in it and well, anything else that I should know? Thank you, Rishad.
Social Media | | AsadMemon0 -
1.5m pageviews / 400k uniques. What are we missing though?
We have built up our site to 1.5m pageviews / 400k uniques per month. But I am sure there are a ton of things that we aren't doing correctly. Please take a look at DenimBlog.com and let me know if there is anything we can do to improve the site. We would love to figure out a way to get to 2m pageviews. Also we would love to have you take a look and check out our google analytics. You can see our 3 years of great data and see if you see anything we aren't capitalizing on. Just drop me your analytics gmail account and I'll add you. Ywo13.png
Social Media | | denimblog0 -
Linking to a twitter account? Best to use the /#!/ or not? or no difference?
So if I am linking to someone's twitter account should I use the ajax code #! or not? http://twitter.com**/#!/**thos003 vs http://twitter.com/thos003 Bonus Question: I have also seen in the past that google splits a domain that has as a secure protocol. https://twitter.com vs http://twitter.com Does does that split link juice?
Social Media | | Thos0030