Google +1's and Google+ Local
-
Hi fellow Mozers,
I manage 5 brands at the national level, each with their own Google+ profile and then under each brand, there are several hundred physical locations, each with their own Google+ Local page. My question is, should we be encouraging visitors of each location's Google+ Local profile page to +1 the page? Does it have an influence on local rankings and overall SERP results?
Our goal is to ultimately get our local websites to rank better than our less targeted brand sites and have our Google+ Local pages show in search results as much as possible. Our local businesses convert to leads, where our brand sites are one step out from that and are used to feed into a "find a location" result that takes the visitor to the local site.
-
Brad,
Questions around this seem to be prevalent lately so I am assuming more and more are realizing there may be value in the G+ piece. As to your question, First I will suggest you read this great post by Cyrus Shepard that certainly got some circulation. Pay attention to the Update at the end as it explains a bit re why it may be true.
Next, for your brands the first question is around the type of businesses they are. If they are a service area businesses you need to make sure you keep the brand pages (Google Plus) and the local unmerged. Read this from Mike Blumenthal.
I do not know that driving the traffic from the local 'places' pages to the G+ will help you as much as getting reviews on the Places will or potentially, having content on G+ that drives traffic to the locations. By the sites having individual G+ buttons, those +1s will help that site/page IMO. (OK, over time, etc.)
Hope this at leasts adds a bit of information for you.
Best
Robert
-
exactly what I was after. thanks!
-
Hi Brad,
According to the "predicted" http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors +1 Authority and +1 # counts is fairly low. That is mainly because for local ranking it is not thought to be a highly significant factor. This might change in the future in the comments Phil Rozek does say: "Pretty soon some of the “social signals” on Google Plus - like circles and +1s - will probably become significant."
For overall SERP results, Matt Cutts (spokeman, SEO celebrity, on behalf of Google) did say that +1's dont lead to higer rankings: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2290337/Matt-Cutts-Google-1s-Dont-Lead-to-Higher-Ranking
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
-
Google + Brand Page for Multiple Locations
We have had our Google Places pages up and running now for a bit, and we are looking to start our Google + Brand page. What is the best way to handle a Brand page with multiple locations? Create a page for each location so we can connect them to their Places equivalent? Create one overall brand page and not connect it to the Google Places? A lot of the information I am seeing is around a year out of date with Google saying "something is coming" but no updates since then, so how have others in similar situations handled it?
Branding | | BeOnAir0 -
Loop-hole to Google's Penguin update? Anyone else have some input?
So I have this theory and I’m wondering if anyone else has some input. I believe I have found a loop-hole to Google’s Penguin update. Let me explain. I work for a pretty competitive party planning company. Our biggest competitor for search is also our bread and butter to our company, our consultants. In addition to outside competitors trying to manipulate business from those consultants. Anyways, one of my top priorities is to not only rank for multiple pages on our site, but to also have our social sites rank on the first two pages. Recently I have watched a spamming MLM YouTube video review of our company crawl up the YouTube charts and out rank us for our Company name in YouTube search. And now, this week, the video has crawled up to rank 3<sup>rd</sup> behind our main site and Wikipedia for our brand keyword! So how does a YouTube video that is simply a review out rank us for our company name in our social platforms? Mind you he is also outranking our core social sites of which we have thousands of comments and interactions on per day? Looking at all of the metrics of the video, according to how I believe ranking to work in Youtube, there is no way this guy should be ranking as high as he is. The video has a decent amount of copy, it has fewer than 10,000 views, 76 thumbs up, 5 thumbs down, fewer than 2,000 subscribers and his channel only has 12 videos. It wasn’t until I was looking at our search results in Seomoz that I realized what this guy was doing to move up so quickly in rankings. He has 1,671 linking root domains to his video. He has been building excessive links to this video on Youtube. Well, since Google isn’t going to penalize its own website, the old technique of excessively building links to one page… seems to be working. Has anyone else come across something like this? Where building excessive links to a video or other social platform substantially has increased rankings?
Branding | | ScentsySEO0 -
Google Authorship
Hey Guys, For about a few days now, my google authorship photo no longer appears in search results. Also, I am unable to access my google places page, as every time I try I get an error from google (error #500). The places page still works, but I cannot log in as an administrator. I have no idea why this is happening, as the rich snippets tool indicates that everything is fine and dandy. I have also made no changes to the structure of the site. Can someone please explain why I am encountering these problems. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Branding | | dtlalaw0 -
Do you have to have a Google+ profile page for a person before you can build a Google+ brand page?
There was some debate at MozCon 2012 about this issue. I have my personal Google+ page which I didn't want attached to the brand of one of the sites I manage. I saw no other way to create a new Google+ page for this brand except to create a new profile under a different gmail account. The problem is, I had to put in my personal name to create the profile (you can't put in a business name, Google won't accept it), so now I have two "Dana Tan" author pages in Google+, the second one is where I built the page for this separate business "Celebrate Communion." Unfortunately, this has muddied the waters because people are following me in both places (it's fragmented my circles). I would like to add customers who are already on Google+ to my business pages circles, but the business page won't do it. Is it possible to build a Google+ business page without all of this brand confusion? If so, can you send me directions? I have found nothing online that says you don't need a profile to do a brand page. Also, once the page is built, what is the best way for me to reach out to customers with google accounts? I don't see a good way to do that on businesses pages either. On my profile page I can load all the emails into my contacts list, but then those contacts can only be added to my profile page and not the brand page. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! Dana
Branding | | danatanseo0 -
How to set up Google Local for regional branches?
Hi our company is expanding and we are opening up branches throughout the UK. I want to register a Google Local for each of our new branches. How is best to do this? My exposure to Google Local is somewhat limited, though I have set up single businesses before, I've never dealth with multiple addresses. Any help or advice would be great! Thanks Aran
Branding | | Aran_Smithson0 -
Changing a "city" or "town" location in google maps
Hello Mozinators! I have a client I currently work with doing SEO that has a rare problem that I have not come across before nor have I been able to find any information on how to make changes for it. The problem being that the city/township is more of a community that has yet to officially be labeled as a city, yet is still marked as a town on google maps. This is a great step in the right direction however the google maps location is over the wrong place. I have attached screenshots of the google maps for this location. In the top is a place called "Lakewood Ranch" and it is not in the correct spot. Lakewood Ranch should instead be in the bottom corner of the overview screenshot, where the town center is and the medical center off of the "University PKWY" exit. I have absolutely no idea on where to start to get these changes put in place, nor if they can even be put in place. Please let me know! Thank you so much in advance! a86TM.png u1ipV.png
Branding | | jbster130 -
BRAND STACKING!!!1!11! (angry fist)
I have been noticing a pattern with my highest ROI keywords. The company I work for sells a ton of different brands. Over the last month one by one my ranks are droping down by about three to the parent companys brand stack. Now I know that Google favors brands but it seems in the last month they have become much more aggressive with brand stacking. Has anyone else noticed this problem or has there been some action on the part of Google to make this happen?
Branding | | Brother220