G+ places/local - Company Categories and Pages question

[choiceenergy]

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,

[MiriamEllis]

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.

[choiceenergy]

Wow, thanks this makes perfect sense.

[choiceenergy]

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

[gfiorelli1]

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

[MiriamEllis]

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!

[choiceenergy]

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...

[MiriamEllis]

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:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.