How to optimize Google Places listing?
-
I have a couple friends who need more traffic from their Google Places listing. They are in very niche businesses. One is a home remodeling contractor and one is a music teacher.
Does anyone know some good services to help optimize their listings? I feel I've helped them out as much as I can by getting real reviews to their Google Places page. But I feel that someone who's had the experience in Google Places optimization can pick up on something I'm overlooking.
-
Hi RicktheMarkt,
The main components of a strong Google+ Local page are that:-
There are no violations of the Google Places Quality Guidelines
-
You've chosen the best possible categories
-
All relevant fields have been filled out with correct information
-
You are earning reviews, and if the page is fully merged, adding posts
Beyond the existence and correctness of the Google+ Local page, there are many, many more factors that contribute to local rankings. These include, but are not limited to,
-
The authority of the website
-
The quality, quantity and accuracy of citations on third party sites (local business indexes, directories, etc.)
-
Traditional SEO metrics like age of site, quality and quantity of links
-
Social Media participation
In order to begin getting a handle on all of the components that contribute to local search rankings, I recommend that you and your friends study the Local Search Ranking Factors 2013 survey. There is no better place to get the big picture of all the contributing factors.
Now, all this being said, I believe that your friends may need to adjust their stated goals. You write:
"I have a couple friends who need more traffic from their Google Places listing"It's very important to understand that there was a very big change recently with Google's display of the Places/+ Local pages. In the past, a single click from the main SERPS would take you directly to a business' +Local page. This is no longer the case. Now, if a company's listing shows up, their will most commonly be a 'review' link attached to it. In the past, this would have taken a user to the +Local page for the business. These days, it only takes them to a popup showing the reviews. In other words, it is now much more unlikely that the average user will ever make it to a +Local page.
So, while the accuracy and completeness of a +Local page still play a vital role in rankings, the goal of getting traffic to the page may not be viable, given the fact that the pages have, in essence, been somewhat buried by Google. An odd turn of events, but there it is. It could change tomorrow.
In sum, your friends should formulate a more appropriate goal, such as earning higher rankings, achieving broader brand visibility, generating better conversions, etc.
I hope this is helpful! -
-
You can go through the listing and check if the description is optimized for the keyword terms that they are going after. Make sure the categories are correct. Make sure to get 100% score for the listings. Carefully take note of the Name, Address, Phone, Email, and Website and create listings in Yelp, Bing Local, Citysearch, Yahoo Local, Foursquare, and other relevant directories. For Google Local rankings having your NAP (Name, Address, Phone, Email, and Website) across the board will really help with ranking. And just like you have done with Google Places encourage reviews to Yelp, Citysearch, Bing, and Yahoo, etc.
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
-
Solved Recommended title length for Google search results
I read the recommended title length is 50-60 characters depending on alphabets, etc,.
On-Page Optimization | | Mike555
Anyways, my question is, is there any harm of having longer title?
If all my important keywords are within the 50-60 characters that will show up on search results, I can still make the title longer, it's just that those keywords outside won't have any effect on search results?0 -
Google is showing erroneous results on SERPs page
Hello, All, In April, two months ago, we caught a hack on a client's website. It created about 40 pages in what looked to be a black hat link tactic. We removed the pages, resubmitted the sitemap.xml (it reprocessed) and ran it through screaming frog to confirm all the pages were gone, but the forty pages still show up in the search results for a site search. We have both the www. and non www. version of sites claimed and set a preference. Nothing is awry with the robots.text. We're not really sure what to do to resolve it. We asked Google to recrawl (fetch) the site. I'm not sure what's going on with it. The website's name is fortisitsolutions.com The site search bringing up the pages from the hack is below. site:www.fortisitsolutions.com Any ideas?
On-Page Optimization | | Cazarin-Interactive0 -
Google Page Rank has no any rankings as of now. what to do?
my domain and page authority is working well right now but my Google Page Rank has no any rankings as we speak. What to do now? can some of you give me advice on this? Thank you very much in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | Panoramictrip0 -
Google Stopped Displaying Rich Snippets Stars
Background Google stopped displaying stars next to the website "szallas.hu" in the SERPs, eg: http://goo.gl/RXSS58 Google used to display the stars there is no technical problem, since I can see the stars in the Rich Snippet Testing Tool: http://goo.gl/bQUSNr Why did Google stop showing the stars? What can I do? I already filled in a form at https://support.google.com/webmasters/contact/rich_snippets_feedback.
On-Page Optimization | | Sved0 -
Category listing page coming above product pages
A new SEO client we have taken on seem to be hitting most of the points right on with their site and SEO. However one thing that is bugging me is that their category pages i.e. "Footwear" which title tag includes the brands they stock. Is almost always coming up above (if they are ever even found) the product individual pages. Anyone seen this sort of things happening? Very frustrating.
On-Page Optimization | | iboxsecurityltd0 -
Branded keyword domain not appearing in Google
Hi, I have a site called www.emv-cards.com but the site has a very poor showing on Google for the search term 'emv cards' and this does not make sense to me. It has position #6 on Bing but is not in Google's top 50. Any assistance would be appreciated. regards, George.
On-Page Optimization | | sirgeorge0 -
Removing old URLs from Google
Hello, I am sure that this question has been asked many times, but I am still not sure what to do about the following: Our site's URL structure has changed a few times in the past few months. Recenty, we have changed our URLs to become more SEO friendly. However, Google has indexed the old URLs as well. To give an example: The following page in our website shows the following URLs in Google Webmaster Tools: Confúcio e Seus Ensinamentos /artigo/68_38/2/as_religioes_iv_confucio_e_seus_ensinamentos//aula/14_6132/vestibular/confucio_e_seus_ensinamentos//aula/1_14_6132/vestibular/confucio_e_seus_ensinamentos//aula/_14_6132/Vestibular/confucio_e_seus_ensinamentos//aula/ensino/confucio_e_seus_ensinamentos/ The correct URL is the last one. What should I do about the other ones? Almost all the pages in our website have this problem. We have redirected the old URLs to the new ones, but is there anything else we should do? We were asking Google to remove them, but Google has informed us that it has reached the limit. Please advise us on waht we should do. We have removed the old sitemap with the old URLs. What else must we do? Thank you very much.
On-Page Optimization | | Tev0 -
How long would it take for On-Page Optimization to have an effect on Google Rankings?
Hi there, I have a page on our website with an Interview with the author Tess Gerritsen. There has been a reasonable amount of Social Media buzz related to the page and lots of links. According to SEOMoz we are an A grade for the keyword Tess Gerritsen, we currently rank 29th on Google.co.uk for a 'tess gerritsen' search. My question is - how long would it take for any new changes to have an effect? I presume the answer would be whenever the page is crawled again. But is it wise to change one thing, then get crawled and see what the effect is, then the next day change something else and see what the effect is. Or is it wise to change one thing and then leave it a week or so to see the full effect of the change? Apologies for the vague question, if you need any more clarification just let me know. Thanks. Benj
On-Page Optimization | | Benj250