Unsolved GMB Local SEO question
-
I am trying to diagnose how one particular competitor is smoking us in local rankings. I came across a text field “Service Details' within Google My Business Services.
This allows me to put in a brief description of each service we offer. My thought is that this could be a good place for keywords. That said, the descriptions are not public facing (or to the best of my knowledge) so I am reluctant to do all the work for nothing.
I am wondering if anyone has filled these out and if there were any noticeable results.
Any insight is appreciated
-
You should fill out the service description with information that would provide value to your customers (not just local SEO keywords stuffed in there).
However, as someone has already pointed out this may not give you a big leg up.
Could you share your business name & website and your competitor's business name & website?
If you'd like to triage it yourself, you can break down what your competitor is doing for various local SEO categories (GMB Optimization, Reviews, Posting of Updates, Photos, and Social Media).
-
-
Hi, so, yes, to improve your company's local SEO, you will need to fully fill out the Google My Business page.
-
Good morning! And very good question. Definitely do add a list of your relevant services (not just a list of keywords) to the services section of your Google Business Profile. However, doing so is unlikely to impact your rank much, or that of your competitor. To find out why your competitor is smoking you, I would recommend you do a full competitive audit. Let me give you a link here with instructions of how you can do so:
https://moz.com/local-seo-guide/assessing-demand-analyzing-marketsGo to the section of this page near the bottom, entitled: Finally, assess the strengths of the top competitors in each market
Follow the instructions in that section, using the free spreadsheet it contains, for comparing your business to a competitor. This should help you identify factors which are likely to be giving them higher visibility. Hope this helps!
-
Moving this over to our Local SEO category!
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
-
What steps should I take to address damage to my website, including malware insertion and content theft?
The question revolves around the steps required to mitigate damage inflicted upon a website, encompassing issues such as malware insertion and content theft. It prompts a comprehensive exploration of the necessary actions to take in response to these challenges. The inquirer seeks guidance on how to effectively address the damage, indicating a desire for practical solutions and strategies to restore and safeguard their website's integrity. By posing this question, the individual demonstrates an awareness of the severity of the situation and a readiness to undertake corrective measures.
Technical SEO | | ralphbaer0 -
SEO Drop
Over the last few months my rank has dropped by around half and for the life of me I can’t see why. There are no warnings on Google Console. Am I missing something? Website: thespacecollective.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
How .ae and .com domain in SEO performance for UAE region?
I have a domain for my UAE based project called https://mydubaiseo.com/ and however, one of my colleagues suggested going with .ae option.
Technical SEO | | 0eup.ombitao
Whether if we change the domain like as suggested get earlier results than .com domain or what?\Which domain .com or .ae ranks faster in UAE location if the SEO strategies followed in the same way?0 -
How do you report SEO audit findings?
Hello, Mozzers! I'm curious to know how you report SEO audit findings. Do you use a spreadsheet? A presentation? A formal report? Or maybe something else. If you have a favourite audit template, I'd love to see it. A second question: what things do you report in an audit? I currently report crawl findings, authority and trust, link profiles, and competitive analysis. I also investigate a site's security—that's not usually part of an audit, but site owners need to know about it. What do you report to your audit customers? Thanks for sharing your auditing wisdom!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyKubrin0 -
Happy Local New Year from Miriam
First, I want to thank all of our awesome community members here who continuously post interesting, tough and good Local SEO question in the Moz Q&A forum. I love chatting with you all, and I hope you'll keep asking away, giving us all the opportunity to muse and learn together. I think 2018 is going to be challenging and fun, and have a few thoughts on that I'd like to share, hoping you'll reply with your own tips and predictions. In the new year, I believe: Quality is going to further solidify as the most apparent differentiator of local businesses, giving those companies with the most considerate and excellent service and policies the upper hand. Memorably good customer service will drive the high-star reputation and word-of-mouth marketing that leads to success. Small local businesses have an advantage here, in their agility to implement the most genuine home-town excellence, but bigger brands can strive for this, too. From skilled phone service, to adequate in-store staffing, to employee training, to dedicated management of all online local assets, to initiatives that make a lasting, positive impression on consumers, quality is the key ingredient to loyalty, which is what every local business should most pursue in 2018. Speaking of loyalty, I would especially advise SABs to leave no stone unturned in earning it. Google's LSA program will be a serious disruptor of business-as-usual in this sector, changing the makeup of local SERPs and striving to become the middleman in the service industries. SAB owners won't love having to rent back their customers for a fee to Google, so developing Google-independent streams of leads and repeat customers will be vital in any city where LSA rolls out in the coming year. Serving in a smaller town? Begin working on Google-independence anyway, particularly via word-of-mouth marketing so that you have these streams running in advance, should LSA move beyond the more densely-populated areas. While developing Google-independence, don't overlook Google opportunities that are still free. I think Google Posts was the most interesting development of 2017, and there has been some anecdotal evidence that weekly use of this form of knowledge panel microblogging may give a small ranking boost. Be an early adopter and take advantage of that. 2018 may be the year in which Google finally cracks down on two things: keyword stuffing of the business title and review spam. I'm sure they're tired of the complaints surrounding the former and if Google's commitment to identifying quality remains in place, sooner or later, they have got to deal with this false signal of relevance the same way that have with EMDs. As to the latter, Google's increased focus on reviews over the past year is apparent in the sheer number of emails they are now sending out regarding them. Also fascinating to see that we're closing out 2017 with third-party reviews finally reappearing in Google's local products, after years of absence and trouble with the FTC. Overall, Google knows that their review corpus is dependent on consumers trusting it, and better spam detection methodologies and better/faster response to review spam reporting has got to be on their to-do list. This could be the year! For local businesses, protection lies in abandoning any type of spammy practice (from keyword stuffing to self-reviewing). And, being proactive if you are the victim of review spam. Report it. Raise a polite but firm hullabaloo. Let Google know you hold them to reasonable standards of accountability in their role as public arbiter of brand reputation. The best Local SEO agencies and local business will dig deeper into the history and tactics of organic SEO than ever before. We need to understand Hummingbird, RankBrain, and matching content to the buyer journey with the best of them. We need to master not just linkbuilding, but the relationship building that makes it most authentic and of most lasting value - and this is an area in which local businesses have a massive advantage over virtual ones, in that we can actually meet our neighbors face-to-face to build beneficial bonds. And we need to get a real handle on the technical side of SEO, understanding how site structure, handling of the robots.txt file, and the management of indexation and accessibility issues impact us. When we put high-level knowledge of all these considerations together with our Local SEO know-how, we can be successful in new, exciting ways we may have overlooked in the past. Oh, there's so much more I could say about the interesting things I see coming in 2018, but I'd love it if you'd talk now. What do you see in our industry's near future? I'd love to know. And let me take this opportunity to wish you all a fun, exciting and prosperous new year!
Local SEO | | MiriamEllis11 -
Most useful things to do without developer resources on SEO
Hi fellow Moz users! I am managing SEO at our company. Perhaps some of you out there also have the problem of wanting to make SEO changes on your website but lack the developer resources to make significant changes? What are some of the things I can do in my power (can't do any backend work) to make SEO better? Currently, I have: Social media (including Moz local tips of business listings) Blog site Refining pictures Google analytics to see where we can improve Internal and external links Please feel free to expand on the above but ideally it will be new things that I could get on with! Many thanks,
Local SEO | | Eric_S
Eric3 -
SEO planning: Franchise/multiple local sites
I am in the planning stages of franchising a cleaning business and was wondering if anyone had some ideas on SEO strategy. If money were no object and I had a team of hundreds of copywriters at my disposal, would the ultimate solution be to have the following sort of URL structure www.cleanbiz.co.uk/city within which there are numerous www.cleanbiz.co.uk/city/local-town pages? If this is the best strategy then is it worthwhile to begin work towards ranking for cities and local towns within them prior to actually operating there? I understand that lack of physical presence will penalize me in terms of local search but would a lack of physical address and phone number render any foundation work pointless (for example, prior to having any franchises in say London, would it be worth while building quality content and links on a www.cleaningbiz.co.uk/london page, and then www.cleaningbiz.co.uk/london/notting-hill, alongside a blog and so on?) Interested to understand the best way to go about this given the enormity of the campaign! Thanks
Local SEO | | EdwardoUK0 -
SEO / PPC Middle East Recommendations
Hello - We are an online store and do a lot of business in the middle east, but are looking to expand there further and looking for a reputable company that specializes in SEO, PPC and social marketing in the region. Specifically a company that can help in region specific content (works in Arabic) and can target properly. Does anybody have any recommendations or company's they have worked with in the past? Thanks for any info!
Local SEO | | BabyBeauBelle0