Local SEO, how much additional information to fill out beyond NAP
-
Hello,
When filling out citations, do you flush out each site with extra profile information like picture, categories, service area, etc or do you just fill out NAP and website link and move on?
I'm concerned about the time factor but I want to do good SEO that lasts into the future.
What do you skip and what do you add?
-
If it's always a planned action then I don't know. If none of the experts have noticed a difference then perhaps it doesn't matter. Maybe something to keep in mind in case one day things change. Thanks Miriam
-
Hi Bob,
A citation campaign is going to generate a lot more than 2-3 duplicate listings. Just a glance at GetListed.org's Local Search Eco-system shows how much data is fed, scraped, shared:
http://getlisted.org/resources/local-search-data-providers.aspx
My point being, it's just baked into the system. Think about when people use a service like Localeze and the distribution that occurs from that. I agree with you that naturalness is generally desirable, but directory inclusion isn't really a spontaneous and natural occurrence (like reviews are supposed to be). It's a planned action on the part of a business. So, I'm just not sure what natural would look like in this scenario. Know what I mean?
Appreciate your reply, Bob!
-
I think I need more information to answer that, Mariam. I would need to know how a quality local company that does no local SEO naturally would gain citation descriptions (if they would at all) to be able to answer that.
Whatever is closest to natural would be my guess to emulate.If it's natural for a company to have very few or no unique descrptions then I'd say we are totally OK using the same ones.
I know they are scraped but five to ten different descriptions scraped is different than one to three. Maybe naturally one to three is normal
I'd be interested to know your thoughts.
-
Will do.
-
Cool. Please follow up if you get a reply, vzPRO.
-
My 2 cents: I don't think this would affect the small business at all. It would be an issue when comparing two internet yellow page aggregators - they're the ones that lose out because the duplicate content makes their page less likely to rank than Yelp or another large IYP that features the same content.
-
I asked this question to Matt Cutts on Google Moderator.
-
Hi Bob,
That is such a good question. Honestly, I've asked myself that very question, too. What about duplicate content? I welcome the opportunity to share my thinking with you on this and hope you'll tell me if this sounds like good horse sense to you:
When you create a listing at one of the major data providers, it is going to automatically create additional listings on the sites it feeds data to. These auto-created listings will be identical in nearly every way, including the description you've provided. There is no way around this except to avoid listing your company on these major providers (which no sane person would want to avoid doing, right?)
So, the way that data is aggregated and shared, you cannot avoid what might be called duplicate content. Every local business with a citation profile has identical descriptions attached to these kinds of listings, and if there was a penalty involved, it would be affecting all of them, right? And I've never seen any indication of a penalty. Now, there's a chance I could be wrong about this, but my guess is that Google would be sophisticated enough to know that this type of duplication is baked into the way data is shared between the various indexes.
What do you think about that? I'd value your feedback. It's something I've wondered about, as I've said, but I've never taken the time to bring it up amongst peers.
-
Thanks Miriam,
One question: If I have descriptions ready wouldn't I run into duplicate content issues? But my original question has completely been answered, very happy with the feedback here.
-
Hey Bob,
I like VZpro's answer on this one. One area I always try to take advantage of is that some directories allow for a much longer business description than others. At the beginning of a citation campaign, I write descriptions of different lengths so that I have them at the ready for using on the different platforms. Those longer description field allow for a very robust (and optimized) description of the business, so that's something I never pass up.
-
Interesting question... If i would be at your place i would have added extra more information about the band the idea behind it is simple like vzPRO said, this submission, you are not going this for search engines only... but you are doing this for REAL people who are going to take a look of it.
I would defiantly say not to add tons and tons of paragraphs of information but at least add the information that is appealing to your targeted audience and help them convert. Images, Video, Payment information, parking info are the things that are usually helpful for people looking for small businesses like restaurants, bars and similar.
-
Agreed with vzPro - It's generally recommended to fill out as much of the extra content as possible. If nothing else, it makes you more likely to be featured on the internal search for those local websites.
Photos, categories, tags, all contact information, and products/services are a must in my book.
-
I happen to like to fill out the "extra" stuff. My philosophy is that you never really know who will be looking at that particular profile. It's not that much extra time to do.
What do you skip and what do you add?
As I mentioned, you never know who will be looking at that particular profile but if time is an issue I like to add at least the images and description as the images can be titled with your keywords and the description is sometimes used as your meta on certain citation sources.
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
-
CDN image links passing SEO benefit?
We used a CDN to host all of the images on our site, and the paths are such:
Image & Video Optimization | | PixelKicks
http://cdn.onedirection.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/harry-styles-tongue5.jpg Frequently we get a lot of other websites using our images, which we're fine with, but I would like to know if we get any SEO value from these image links? Interestingly they do appear in the "Just Discovered" section of OSE. Cheers, Chris.0 -
Link building to Google+ profile: any local SEO value?
Has anyone found value in building links to Google+ profile for local seo rankings? My gut tells me that it will, but I am not 100% sure. If it does, then does that mean that all the traditional SEO factors that would go into ranking a site organically also work for ranking locally for certain keywords? So far, I have found that the best thing for moving up rankings is reviews on Google+, but then does that make local SEO (from a high view point) just a race for high reviews and building the most citation? I am feeling like the differentiator for local SEO is UN-structured citations and links to Google+ profiles. Any thoughts? See you at MozCon!
Image & Video Optimization | | tonyflorespsa0 -
Additional listings in directories
Hi Everyone, I have been listing our website on various directories . We have a total of 70 stores though out New Zealand and I was wondering if there are any additional SEO benefits from listing each of the 70 stores and including the web link. Or will Google not acknowledge the additional links from the same site? Thanks, Pete
Image & Video Optimization | | Hardley10 -
Multiple Store locations Google Local
Hey there, Is it best to create an individual page for each store location? Or is it best to create one page and plot different locations? Thanks, Dan
Image & Video Optimization | | Sparkstone0 -
Local SEO
Would like to read articles on local SEO that have been recently published in the past few months. Has anyone come across good articles on this topic?
Image & Video Optimization | | casper4340 -
Youtube Channel, Video SEO
I am providing some SEO consulting for a friend's company. They are an Investment Research and Portfolio Management firm. They started a blog about a year ago with most of their posts being short Youtube videos between 3 to 10 minutes in length, providing their take on what is going on in with the markets at the moment. Additionally, they've created a youtube channel which has a little over 1,500 subscribers. The videos do fairly decent getting between 1,500 to 20,000 views (the later happens when a big financial blog links to them) but they are not taking full advantage of this great content in my opinion i.e hosting videos with a 3rd party like Wistia. I think they should begin using Wistia or Vimeo Pro to maximize the SEO benefits as well as gather analytics about views. Then after they've milked them all they can put them on their youtube channel and target them for different keywords. My question is, should they go back and switch out the videos on the old posts with videos hosted by a 3rd party, submit sitemaps, etc. or should they just leave them the way they are and only host new videos with a 3rd party? I think they should switch out the old youtube videos but am not sure if this could cause any negative repercussions.
Image & Video Optimization | | TVI0 -
Hosting All Content Images On Flickr For Blog - What are SEO implications?
Hi, I am starting a travel blog and thought of the idea of hosting all the content images over at Flickr and just calling them into my blog content when needed. Benefits: push traffic over to my Flickr account pull traffic from Flickr to my blog However, I was just wondering about any SEO implications of having 3-4 links per post pointing to Flickr. Is this spammy? Will I lose my juice? Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks.
Image & Video Optimization | | DigitalLeaf0 -
How much link juice do SVG images pass?
I have been experimenting with SVG images for SEO in the last 7 months. I can definitely get pages indexed using embedded links within SVG images but have not had much success measuring link juice. Have you tried anything along similar lines? How much link juice does an SVG image pass?
Image & Video Optimization | | rmteamseo0