Google Places - Overcoming a geographical disadvantage
-
We have done some work on the Google Place entry for this website:
http://www.royalhoteliow.co.uk/
We have spent a lot of time ensuring we have consistent address information, to make sure we have a good number of citations, and have worked with the staff at the hotel to ensure that there is a regular stream of reviews coming into a variety of websites that we know are used by Google.
However....
Our target searches are 'Isle of Wight Hotels' and 'Isle of Wight Hotel'.
If you do a Google map search for 'Isle of Wight', it drops a pin in the middle of the Island, which is 30 miles by 20!
The main areas for hotels on the Isle of Wight (dictated by tourism), are about 15 miles from where Google percieves the Isle of Wight is, in the coastal towns.
So it seems that no matter how hard we try, in terms of citations and reviews, GP is always going to prioritise those close to the middle of the area.
Anyone got experience of a similar issue, or got any suggestions?
-
One of the often overlooked factors in local ranking in customer reviews. Implementing a simple email marketing program to request positive customer feedback can boost rankings and expand the geographic area your citation is "relevant" for. Couldn't hurt to buy adwords for your target keywords and include your places listing as an ad extension.
-
This is one of the more difficult challenges. Here are a few things we have done to help with the Geo challenge on maps.
You may notice that the top ranked sites have huge domain scores, but the third place does not. Look at that site and the first thing you will notice is the address is the first title. Add you address on main pages. Maybe on top. It's very difficult to find an actual address on the site. This is very important.
Encourage your reviewers to use the term Hotel on the Isle of Wright, in the first paragraph or title.
Do you sue the term in your meta title and description?
Do you have a page with that title and URL?
Have you run a keyword report on your home page to grade its optimization grade for that term.
Have you built strong quality citations and links. You are competing against of t some well optimized sites.
And last thing for this post. Look at top sites and ask your self, why are these showing up?
We have been successful in overcoming the geo marker challenge, but you do have to stay at it!
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 News results ...can it be SEOed?
Hello Everyone. I simply wanted to know if anyone had some useful insight on what it takes for a legitimate website to appear within the Google News results. I have rarely, or ever, had to dabble in this kind of SEO, but after coming across a situation with a perfectly legitimate website, I'm now scratching my head. The site in question is a very well established website, with 0 "seo" done to it. All links organic, all traffic legit and they have VERY strong social media presence. The site's current DA is 50. Its a 3 letter domain. Some of the points I believe are important quantity and quality of content (% of aggregated vs actually original content) overall % of "news" content vs rest of the site content authors/writers credentials (how would Google evaluate the authority of a writer, so his/her content is newsworthy?) overall site authority rich snippet and code needed to be indexed? I think rel publisher or rel author tags have something to do with it? making sure to have basic SEO in place: canonical tag, unique headers, etc. What am I missing? They have one particular competitor that seem to be ranking for almost everything news related, while being a similar site in content and authority, however they are nowhere. They have submitted to Google News before (not even sure what that means) but have failed to be included -- does this put a "stain" on them for any reason or impede the possibility of being indexed in the Google News results in the future? ANY input is appreciated.
SERP Trends | | 1stOTLJK0 -
G is for Google
So if you haven't heard already - Larry Page released a statement regarding the newly founded company: Alphabet. Crazy to think that the name hadn't even been used before for one but most importantly throughout his write up - there doesn't seem to be much clarity on what it is going to accomplish. What are your ideas/thoughts moz heads? https://abc.xyz/ - check it out. /Chenzo
SERP Trends | | Chenzo0 -
Is Google Knowledge Graph in Other Countries?
Hello, I have a website that receives international traffic from all over the world. A lot of our keywords that we go after unfortunately show up on google knowledge graph. I'm curious to know if KG is showing up in the google search engines for other countries for the keywords that my site goes after. Is there anyway to actually perform a test to see? Thanks!
SERP Trends | | thetimenow0 -
Good rankings with Google but difficulties to enter on Top 50 with Bing and Yahoo?
Hi guys, I'm facing this problem with some websites that I'm trying to optimize for the search engines. I've worked on a good SEO on Page and I've had not so many difficulties to get good ranking results on Google. The problem is that I'm not having any result with Yahoo and Bing, even if I've sent the sitemap to the Bing Webmaster Toll and I'm keeping under control the possible crawling errors both on Google and Bing Webmaster Tool. Can someone please help me with an explanation?
SERP Trends | | OptimizedGroup0 -
Redirection of domain maybe affected by google
I have the domain clinicadentalbarcelona.net that in the past suffered a big traffic drop due to algorithm actualizations, but did not recieved any google letter. Althought the domain still is getting good rakings but has some toxic links I want to change the content to new domain clinicadentalbarcelona.es that as no historic or any linkbuilding my cuestion is if i can redireccion 301 of clinicadentalbarcelona.net (that has some page rank and links) to clinicadentalbarcelona.es/blog to prevent it from afecting the main root domain and to bring the page ranking and some links to a a web that as none. thank you what would you do in my case
SERP Trends | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Pros and Cons Google Site Search
I'm having a hard time finding the actual pros and cons of implementing Google Site Search on a website. Thoughts? Any data on bounce rate of internal SERP because UX doesn't look like the website? I know you can customize, but most examples I've seen still look pretty different from the stie's native style. Any other cons? Data issues, etc?
SERP Trends | | Aggie0 -
Can I submit multiple data feed to Google Merchant Center?
I have submitted my product feed to Google Merchant Center. There are 7K+ products in one product feed. (data_feed.txt) I am not satisfy with my products' performance on Google shopping. Because, I am not able to maintain data quality for all products as well as not able to focus on high selling categories. Can I submit multiple product feed with separation of categories as follow. category001_data_feed.txt (With 200 High selling products) category002_data_feed.txt (With 100 offers products)
SERP Trends | | CommercePundit0 -
Google Shopping
Hi There, We're promoting an ecommerce site that has a very high authority and very good rankings for many different products but the thing is that the site doesn't appear on google shopping. What do we need to do to make it appear there and have good rankings in the google shopping engine?
SERP Trends | | liors0