How do I Improve Google Local search position
-
Hi,
I think its called local search position, what I'm referring to is when you do a search on a keyword and google lists not only the best matches but also usually the second match is a group of 3 businesses with telephone numbers, google reviews and at the bottom of the group it will say something like: "See results for <your keyword="">on a map. This is what I'm referring to. in anycase my question is if I click on the link to see more results on a map I'm listed as number 3, however on the search page before where the link is displayed which I just clicked on I'm not being listed and instead one business name is being listed three times, each of the listings uses the same address but a different telephone number, In addtion the business that is being listed three times is also listed in the results being returned above in this case position #1 for the keyword I have searched. I assume this has something to do with them also being listed in the group of local businesses below three time.. The business I'm interested in getting listed in this group of results is currently being listed page 2 position 5 for the keyword..</your>
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated..
Thanks in advance..
-
Yes, a citation is mention of your business on the web. It's usually accompanied by all of your NAP data. The more citations you have (with consistant information) the more Google can trust you with a good ranking. (Because it is an indication that the company which is listed is indeed doing what they say they do and they are located at the place where they say they do.)
-
Hi,
thanks for the info could you please expand on what you mean by more local citations? are citations sites such as : Google Places/Local, Yahoo local, Foursquare, Hotfrog, Yelp and much more. as was described above by @westleysmits ?
-
Rob,
There are generally two separate factors that I would focus on: number of local citations, and number of reviews (actually the velocity of reviews). Consider working heavily on getting more local citations. Make sure the NAP (name, address, phone number) data is consistent everywhere. I would also focus on reviews and getting more reviews of your business posted, as well.
-
Don't try to do it through Google Map Maker. Instead go to Google+ under your personal profile.
- On the left hand side in the sidebar you will find a link 'Pages'
- Click 'Pages' and then click 'Local business
- Type in your company name. It will show existing companies with that name. Choose your company.
- Follow the rest of the steps.
After some time a postcard will be send to your companies address with a pin-code. This pin-code can be used to verify you as the owner of this page. Then you will have full access to edit the content of the page.
-
Thank you very much for the both thorough and terrific answer. I have another question. I have tried to contact google maps ( Google Map Maker ) on several occasions asking them to change the website url that the business listing is pointing to each time they deny it for some reason, I'm not exactly sure why, so I was thinking perhaps I'm better off creating another business entry same address, different website, and using our toll free number, ideally I would prefer to just update the original listing but can't seem to get the reviewers to do it.. I will try once again. maybe that explains why our competitors have several listings.. I think changing the business listing to point to our new website url is very important so that I can then follow your instructions and have everything to point to the same correct new website..
-
Hello Rob,
In order to improve your local SEO you would need to claim (or create) your company's 'local listing' pages across platforms. A lot of websites out there list local businesses such as Google Places/Local, Yahoo local, Foursquare, Hotfrog, Yelp and much more.
Many of these platforms allow you to claim the page where they give out your company details so you can fill in the information about your company yourself. Once you've done this you need to make sure the information there is correct.
Enter your company name, address and contact details everywhere in the same way. For a computer it's very difficult to understand that avenue is the same as 'ave' in an address.
Fill in a good description, add photo's/video's if you have any and make sure the listing describes clearly what your company does and what it is all about.
The most important one of these is your listing on Google Places/Local. This page will actually rank in the search results as you described. Make sure you fill this in as good as you can. Google will use this information and compare it to other listings of your company. If they see that the information is consistant this would indicate to Google that the information is correct and they will trust you more and more. This would help you rank better in local SEO for related search queries.
Another good thing to remember is that reviews help you rank too. If you've got loyal and satisfied customers, ask them to write a review for you on your Google Places/Local page.
Note: Don't pay people for reviews or anything. It's against google's guidelines to buy or sell reviews just like links.
Some resources to get you started:
Hope i answered your question. If anything was unclear or if you have any more questions please let me know and i will do my best to answer or explain more.
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 Update
My rank has dropped quite a lot this past week and I can see from the Moz tools that there is an unconfirmed Google update responsible. Is there any information from Moz on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Google Mobile Friendly designation in Search results
We have recently deployed a mobile (http://m.pssl.com) version of our desktop website (http://www.pssl.com). We've followed the guidelines in their documentation (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6101188) & (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/04/rolling-out-mobile-friendly-update.html), added the appropriate rel=alternate/rel=canonical tags updated site maps and robots.txt files, etc. A mobile search for our company shows the "mobile-friendly" flag in the search results for our home page, but for some reason other pages such as category and brand are not showing showing as "mobile-friendly". I can submit the pages using the mobile-friendly tester (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/) and all of the pages I test come back as mobile friendly. Does anyone have any experience or advice they'd be willing to share that might help us resolve this issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ovenbird0 -
How to improve my rankings?
Hi guys, I'm targeting a specific country NZ to start off with as my site is only new 3months old - whilst I'm trying to rank for various keywords such as - psychic readings, online psychic readings, love psychics, clairvoyant, astrology, tarot card readings etc I can see I'm slowly ranking around 18, 20,30,40 through my blog page, but nothing from the site. I know the site is content thin and were currently working on improving this, is there anything else you can suggest that perhaps I might need to be aware of? Or any tools I could use to go about getting information that could help put me ahead lol Thanks all!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edward-may0 -
Does DMCA protection actually improve search rankings (assuming no one's stolen my content)
Hello Moz Community, I had a conversation with someone who claimed that implementing a DMCA protection badge, such as those offered at http://www.dmca.com/ for $10/mo, will improve a site's Google rankings. Is this true? I know that if my content is stolen it can hurt my rankings (or the stolen content can replace mine), but I'm asking if merely implementing the badge will help my rankings. Thanks! Bill
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bill_at_Common_Form0 -
Competitors Showing in Branded Search w/in Google FR
Hi All, When searching for our brand in Google France, I noticed that some of our major competitors show up beneath our Knowledge Graph listing. My managers and I are wondering if this is something Google just does as associated search or if there's a way that we can work around it. Thanks and please see attached image 🙂 2KYBeiT
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CSawatzky0 -
Problem with description on Google search results.
A few months ago I changed the description of one of the pages on my site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tiedemann_Anselm
And I noticed that Google does not display the entire description of his search results. Description page is: "Get yourself a personalized name necklace, we offer a huge range of silver, gold and gold plated name necklaces." And Google only shows this line: "Get yourself a personalized name necklace, we offer a huge ... " Did someone have an idea why is that? 2EPSLGX.png0 -
Google disavow tool
I have an algorithmic penalty on one of my websites. I never received a notification of a manual penalty in GWMT and even sent in a reconsideration request 6 months ago ad they told me their were no manual penalties on the website. I have cleaned up my link profile and what I could not clean up I sent in using the Google disavow tool a few days ago. I've heard to just wait if it's algorithmic or should I send in another reconsideration request for disavow links tool?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarkHIggins0 -
Getting rid of a site in Google
Hi, I have two sites, lets call them site A and site B, both are sub domains of the same root domain. Because of a server config error, both got indexed by Google. Google reports millions of inbound links from Site B to Site A I want to get rid of Site B, because its duplicate content. First I tried to remove the site from webmaster tools, and blocking all content in the robots.txt for site B, this removed all content from the search results, but the links from site B to site A still stayed in place, and increased (even after 2 months) I also tried to change all the pages on Site B to 404 pages, but this did not work either I then removed the blocks, cleaned up the robots.txt and changed the server config on Site B so that everything redirects (301) to a landing page for Site B. But still the links in Webmaster Tools to site A from Site B is on the increase. What do you think is the best way to delete a site from google and to delete all the links it had to other sites so that there is NO history of this site? It seems that when you block it with robots.txt, the links and juice does not disappear, but only the blocked by robots.txt report on WMT increases Any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JacoRoux0