Google places VS position one ranking above the places.
-
Hi Guys,
Will creating a new Google places listing for a business have any effect their current position one spot for their major geo location keyword?
I.e restaurants perth - say they are ranking no 1 above all the places listings if they set up a places listing would they lose that position and merge with all the other places accounts?
Or would they have that listing as well as the places listing?
I have been advised it could be detrimental to set up the places account if this is the case does anyone know any ways around this issue as the business really needs a places page for google maps etc.
Appreciate some guidance
Thanks.
BC
-
I have a client where we put the specific local listing page url (example.com/locations/phoenix/location1) in the Google Places URL field. It works out really well as we get the home page ranking organically (depending on the query) and the specific places result locally. Sometimes they are combined and other times they are not, but we are in the mix somewhere almost always.
-
Curious if anyone of you guys has experience pointing the places listing to a different URL other than the homepage?
I have read a few articles that stated various different outcomes, some mentioning that it didn't effect their Organic result, but was harder to rank the places URL. Just curious of findings!
-
Hi Bodie,
Yes, I think this is playing in the grey area. If the business owner actually wants to make his used and new car dealerships two companies with completely separate legal business names or DBAs, addresses with separate walk-in entrances, phone numbers and websites with completely unique content, then yes, you'd be talking about two different businesses, but that seems like an awful lot of real-world trouble to go to just to get a second Place page, eh? Chances are, a car dealership with both used and new cars is simply a single business with different specialties and should only be running a single website with a single Place/+ Local page.
What would happen if you went ahead with this plan, anyway, without the company actually being two legally separate entities? Honestly, you might be able to get away with it for awhile. Google is often not super sharp about upholding their policies and iffy stuff can ride for a long time. But...the risk is big. Should Google ever decide that they don't like what they are seeing, they could penalize or remove the listing from the index and if there is any association at all between the 2 listings, they could penalize the whole profile. This isn't a risk I would take for my clients, and for a business model like you're describing, like a car dealership, I would not advise the hypothetical approach you are considering. Rather, I would recommend that the client build the strongest local profile he can for his business and then consider other forms of marketing such as Social Media, Video Marketing, new content, development, etc. to continue to build additional visibility.
Hope this helps!
-
Think more along the lines of a car dealership with a 'NEW' and "used car' department? would i be pushing it ? My question to you is how would the association be made between the pages and businesses if the new site was branded differently and had a new address and a unique non associated domain? The only way i can think is if they were interlinked, but many non associated sites are linked. Is this playing in a grey area? Thanks again
-
Hi Bodie,
My pleasure. Are you stating that you work at a large business that has more than one front entry door for clientele (like a hospital with an emergency room and a separate radiology department?) If so, then you are allowed to create more than one listing for the business under the following Google Places Quality Guideline:
Departments within businesses, universities, hospitals, and government buildings may be listed separately. These departments must be publicly distinct as entities or groups within their parent organization, and ideally will have separate phone numbers and/or customer entrances.
If this is an accurate description of your business model, then I would simply have a single website with unique landing pages for the different public offices and tie these pages to the distinct Place Pages/+ Local Page for the business. Anything that doesn't really fit the above would not be a good idea.
I would not recommend associating an identical business name with two different websites and Place Pages if it is really the same business. What Google wants is for you to make a totally realistic representation of your business on the web; not to try to appear like you are larger, more diverse, or different than you really are in real life. I know how important it is to do all you can to gain the broadest visibility, but I believe that all efforts must be founded on an authentic presentation of any business, and this appears to be Google's view, too. Hope this helps!
-
Thanks for your response, would it be deemed black hat to set up a new site specifically for the Google places listing if it had a strong geo location in the URL and was attached to a different address?
ie website Hillarysrestaurant.com.au (ie hillarys is the suburb) and i was to register Perthrestaurant.com.au and attach that to a different address as the restaurant takes up 3 blocks ie 6-10 so i run the real website as it always was on 6 and set up the new site as a push site/squeeze page on 10 and use it just for google local?
i really hope this makes sense. Thanks again for your help and SEO wisdom!
P.s its not a restaurant im just using this as an example.
-
We have the same experience as Cody. Google Places is like ADDING another listing to the SERP. From what I understand the Google places, is supposed to rotate around. But your #1 or #2 spot should stay firm - unless you get knocked off by a competitor! We have several clients that are in #1, Google Places and then #4 or 5 - so it is possible to take up quite a bit of real estate on a SERP.
-
Hi BC,
Yes, you can typically expect the organic rank to be subsumed into the Places rank if you create a Google Places/+ Local page for the client. This is a very common outcome and it remains uncommon, though not impossible, for businesses to have more than one results per SERPs page.
-
I work with around 50 companies, and that's typically what I see. My #1 listing will just get changed to a Places listing, but it will still be in the #1 position.
-
In my experience, I had a client with the positioning like yours. We created the Places account and it just went into the local / maps results. The good news was that the SERP didn't contain any other organic listings at the top. If you have prominent and consistent rankings and are confident in your strategy, then you might not need to create a places account. Just be aware that moving down 1 spot could really be 8 or 9 spots on the real estate of the SERP. Moving down to #2 organically could mean being below the entire local results. You will need to judge the risk / rewards. Hope that 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
-
Should I Report A SEO Agency to Google
Our competitor has employed the services of a spammy SEO agency that sends spammy links to our site. Though our rankings were affected we have taken the necessary steps. It is possible to send evidence to Google so that they can take down the site. I want to take this action so that other sites will not be affected by them again.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Halmblogmusic0 -
I lost traffic from my website and the rankings also gone down... What should I do?
I've started working on a project recently (for 20 days) and it got average 1800 visitors per day and the ranking were seemed good. When I started that project, I saw that there were too many plugins installed. I removed unnecessary plugins and keep the importance ones. And I started modify some pages considering SEO perspective. Few days ago I created a backlink in reddit; from where I got way too much traffic in the site at the time and the server gone down. So I have to change the server. Now I see the drastic drop down in both ranking and the traffic. I am wondering if the ranking affected when I changed the server? Or Is there any other way to check why my ranking and traffic gone down?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HuptechWebseo0 -
I have 100+ Landing Pages I use for PPC... Does Google see this as a blog farm?
I am currently using about 50-100 domains for geotargeted landing pages for my PPC campaigns. All these pages basically have the same content, I believe are hosted on a single unique ip address and all have links back to my main url. I am not using these pages for SEO at all, as I know they will never achieve any significant SEO value. They are simply designed to generate a higher conversion rate for my PPC campaigns, because they are state and city domains. My question is, does google see this as a blog/link farm, and if so, what should I do about it? I don't want to lose any potential rankings they may be giving my site, if any at all, but if they are hurting my main urls SEO performance, then I want to know what I should do about it. any advice would be much appreciated!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jfishe19881 -
Without prerender.io, is google able to render & index geographical dynamic content?
One section of our website is built as a single page application and serves dynamic content based on geographical location. Before I got here, we had used prerender.io so google can see the page, but now that prerender.io is gone, is google able to render & index geographical dynamic content? I'm assuming no. If no is the answer, what are some solutions other than converting everything to html (would be a huge overhaul)?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | imjonny1231 -
Google messages & penalties
I just read the following comment in a response to someone else's question. The Responer is an SEOMoz Authority whose opinion I respect and have learned from (not sure if it's cool to mention names in a question) and it spurred my curiosity: "...Generally you will receive a warning from Google before your site is penalized, unless you are talking about just specific keywords." This is something I have been wondering about in relation to my own sudden ranking drop for 2 specific keywords as I did not receive any warnings or notices. I have been proceeding as if I had over used these keywords on my Home page due to an initial lesser drop, but identifying the cause for the huge drop still seems useful for a number of reasons. Can anyone explain this further?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gfiedel0 -
Is Google now punishing anchor text?
Hi All, I was just wondering if Google is starting to punish anchor text links? I've noticed that one of my clients domains has slightly reduced and they have slipped a few places in rankings for a key term since. I found this bizarre as the last few links I built were both relevant and strong but I did use an anchor text? Any feedback would be useful, I'm slightly confused here?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Benjamin3790 -
My ranking dropped 3 pages on 18 november 2012
Hi There my site ranking dropped suddenly today for my main keywords such as security companies in london and security services in london from first page to 4th-5th page. these keywords were ranked on homepage http://www.armstrongsecurity.co.uk/ other keywords from some internal pages, such as this one http://www.armstrongsecurity.co.uk/security-services/event-security-london.html theygot hit slightly and went couple of listings down the road for event security london, event security companies london as well. same slight hitting happened on this page for main keywords http://www.armstrongsecurity.co.uk/bodyguard-for-hire-london.html can anyone help me, how to get the rankings back? my site authority is around 60 which is far better than most sites ranking higher than me now. these are some problems that i understand so far. keyword rich anchor text link profile for my main keywords over optimised pages let me know if anything you might find suspicious on my site that i can fix either on site or in my link profile. looking forward to your help. thanks gill
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | spciuk0 -
Why Proved Spammers are on 1st Google SERP's Results
This question is related exclusively to few proved spammers who have gained 1st Google search results for specific terms in the Greek market, targeting Greek audience. Why he looks spammer and very suspicious? For instance, the site epipla-sofa.gr, sofa.gr, fasthosting.gr and greekinternetmarketing.com look suspicious regarding their building link activities: 1. suspicious spiky link growth 2. several links from unrelated content (unrelated blog posts forom other markets, paid links, hidden links) 3. excessive amount of suspicious link placements (forum profiles, blog posts, footer and sidebar links) 4. Greek anchor text with the keyword within articles written in foreign languages (total spam) 5. Unnatural anchor text distribution (too many repetitions) So the main question is: Why Google is unable to recognize/trace some of these (or even all) obvious spamming tactics and still these spammy sites as shwon below reside on the 1st Google.gr SERPs. Examples of spam sites according to their link building history: www.greekinternetmarketing.com www.epipla-sofa.gr www.fasthosting.gr www.sofa.gr All their links look very similar. They use probably software to build links, or even hack authority sites and leave hidden links (really dont know how they could do that). Could you please explain or share similar issues? Have you ever found any similar cases in your industry, and how did you tackle it? We would appreciate your immediate attention to this matter. Regards, George
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Clickwisegr0