Keywords in GMB title...
-
Hello,
I have a client who is trying to rank in Maps for "city name house call vet." Their GMB name is NOT their business name... it is: "Business Name the House Call Vets, Dr. Jack Millen"
I know that it is a best practice to have the GMB title be ONLY their exact business name.
However, I worry if we take out the keyword "House Call Vets" from the GMB business name, they will tank for Google Maps "house call vet" searches.
All the top ranking GMB pages have "house call vet" in the GMB business name (even though it is not in the actual business name of all those businesses).
Should I worry about deleting "house call vet" from their GMB page even though it is not a part of their actual business name?
Will Google still rank them for "House Call Vet" searches in Maps?
Right now they are ranking like 6 which is not great but not horrible in a very large market but also not as high as I think they could be.
Thanks in advance for the help!
-
I would like to add, that I completely KW stuffing is not a good idea at all.
Adding a city name will not really help you, adding a service type might. BUT, this is all very risky.
Additionally, if you consistently are getting your name edited to what it reflects in the real world (As a TC I check the Secretary of State and the Street View) , there is a limit to the number of times a listing can be corrected before a suspension happens.
In some cases, you may also end up with a hard suspension. (Especially if a TC gets involved.)
Play by the rules, and make edits to competitors as Miriam suggested. Also, if you do the legwork report competitors that are using Virtual Offices/PO Boxes in the advertiser forums.
-
Hey Mike,
I hope you'll take a peek at my Monday blog post which Paul has linked to in his reply to you. It deals with precisely this topic. Your dilemma is a really common one, and so frustrating, I know! Basically:
-
Yes, you should remove the keyword stuffing. It's a guideline violation, and therefore, a risk.
-
Yes, this may cause rankings to drop - you will have to build authority in a Google-approved way to get it back.
-
Yes, Google can "soft supsend" the listing if you don't remove the kw stuffing, which will likely cause your listing to become unverified and your reviews may get lost because they aren't associated with a GMB account anymore. You'll have to re-claim the listing if you get caught, but I can't guarantee the reviews will come back (this is scary).
-
Yes, Google is doing an awful job catching this type of spam, so help them out. Once you've cleaned up your own listing, start reporting every single competitor for spam. It would help if you could achieve Local Guide status in Google, as it will give your spam reports a bit more oomph...better still if you can get to know a few other Local Guides and team up to repeatedly flag a business for spam. You have to be on the lookout after you report a business for business title spam - very often, they reappear with the spammy name intact! Arggh - so annoying. But be persistent.
Again, hope you'll read the article, and thanks for asking an important question.
-
-
Putting keywords in the GMB business name has a very high risk associated with it. It's against Google Terms of Service and they say they will suspend any account they catch doing it.
But as you note, many businesses are doing it and getting away with, at least for some period of time.
So the question becomes "how much risk is the client willing to accept"? Because if they get caught, their account gets wiped out and they lose all the work they've done to build up ranking, reviews, images etc for their GMB page.
I tend to agree with Miriam Ellis who just wrote about exactly this on Monday in her post. Build a good-quality GMB page within Google's guidelines to ensure long-term survival, including optimising for the "housecall" terms in description, reviews, etc. Then spend a bit of time reporting the offending pages as spam
Hope that helps?
Paul
-
If I could, I would give you the answer to your question but unfortunately, I can't and as I see nobody is helping you, maybe the right place to look help is on Google Advertiser Community.
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
-
Creating multiple GMB listings same address?
Hi Guys, We have a medical centre which has different services like medical, dental, pathology, mental health and 3-4 other services. They are all at the same address within the medical centre. Currently, we have a GMB listing just for the medical centre. But we're looking to create separate GMB listings for each service. I was wondering if anyone has done this before and can speak from experience of the pros and cons of doing this? It seems we will have a lot more GMB listings to manage, but we should benefit more from relevant GMB searchers and this will improve our visibility. Cheers, Mark
Local Listings | | brandonegroup1 -
GMB Listing Radius for Areas Served
I know with the google my business listing that if you have someone provides services at a customer home you can include the radius or specific cities. I just came across a listing that seems to have a different way of showing this on the map - https://goo.gl/maps/f1xgEvYnPqF2. Does anyone know how this is possible?
Local Listings | | adlev0 -
GMB listing not showing for local searches
Hi all, I've optimised an existing GMB listing that has been in place for over a year. The client is a yacht/boat broker and marine repair outfit based in Mallorca. When I search for terms that they 'should' be ranking for on Google and on a Maps search, they are nowhere to be found, yet their listing does show when you type in their company name. I've read lots of Local SEO guides and followed their advice but I'm not sure what I'm meant to do next?
Local Listings | | Bee1590 -
URL Structure and Keyword Focus for location page
Our company has around 1,700 locations across the country. These are contract shops mind you but still locations in which we will be placing pages for on our website. I have been browsing through all of the Local SEO blogs and trying to define the strategy for these. Here are a couple of outstanding questions I still have: 1. What should the URL structure of the page be for these locations? Keep in mind that there are some cities that have multiple locations in them so I can just do "/city/brand-keyword." I am thinking it should be "www.url.com/state/city/location-name"where the location name would for example "TXBrandName." 2. How should I structure the keyword focus for these pages? I am thinking that these pages will probably rank for some variations and should definitely include the city name although the search volume is very low. Currently I am thinking that they would be "keyword city – brand name." 3. How do we handle the shops that are contract and have a primary business already listed? We plan on listing them on GMB using "located inside of {business name}" on those that are contract shops. We originally considered using a suite# but one of the articles in Moz recommended not doing that. I just know that places like "Starbucks" and "Banfield" seem to use the "located inside of" without any issues. Any input would be greatly appreciated as we about to set all these up and I want to make sure we are setup for success as much as possible.
Local Listings | | Smart_Start0 -
Does Google Analytics automatically desseminate Maps/Places traffic from Organic traffic? Do webmasters still have to apply UTM parameter tracking to URLS in their GMB profile listings?
It was recommended a few years to apply UTM parameters to local URLs to get more accurate referral/source tracking in Google Analytics. Here is an old Moz post about this process https://moz.com/blog/tracking-traffic-from-google-places-in-google-analytics However does GA automatically separate this traffic out nowadays? Is there a method to identify the traffic coming from Maps/Places without UTM parameters? Is UTM tagging still necessary if we want to see these traffic reports?
Local Listings | | RosemaryB0 -
Is it best to avoid the meta keywords tag?
We were earlier using the meta keywords tag on our pages and on reading a recommendation on Moz for the same being redundant, we went ahead and removed the same! Can anyone provide inputs on whether the meta keywords tag is really irrelevant or actually detrimental to a page? Thanks
Local Listings | | prsntsnh0 -
Need help with Title tags
Hello, My site is www.BrooklynSigns.com. This site just went up about 2 weeks ago. The site had about 130 old urls which we redirected by using 301 REDIRECT plugin. Google had indexed the site at least 4 times but still bot reading the correct title tag. I need to know what is wrong and what I can do to fix this. http://awesomescreenshot.com/0692f5qe26 Thanks Abie
Local Listings | | signsny0 -
Why there is sometimes A-1 in Local result title?
Here is an exemple: https://plus.google.com/local/Montréal, QC/s/a-1?hl=fr Is this a legacy from Yellow Pages? A way to be first in the paper edition or it's something else?
Local Listings | | TVFreak0