Is creating backlinks to Google places pages worth the time and money involved?
-
I have worked on a website and organically it is starting to do fine. The website itself is on the right track. Now, the places page, could use a little improvement.
I did make sure it has the right categories, has all unique pictures and videos, it does have a good amount of reviews and even citations from other local directories, and even the website links to it. It does show up for some local searches but I would like it to dominate more.
I've heard that if I've built links to that Google Places local page from other sources, it would rank higher and perform better. Is that true? Any other tips and tricks to make it perform better?
Thank you
-
Hello Ryan,
Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. I want you to know that your query inspired me to ask two of the best Local SEOs in the country for their opinion on this, and they both agreed that this oft-repeated advice about building links to Place Pages is bogus. I wanted to check with some of my chums before answering your questions, because I see this advice being given all the time on websites, and it's one of those strange myths of SEO that are self-perpetuating.The reasoning that it is not worth it to build links to Place Pages is that they are not indexed, therefore, building links to them is like throwing stuff into a black hole.
If you feel linkbuilding will be necessary to enabling your client to rank better, build links to his website. Not his Place Page.
Hope this helps!
Miriam -
Human behaviour:
Users do not usually link and talk about google places results. They talk and link about brands and their websites, their social network pages, etc.
(I have read about Google Places improvement with so many techniques too. My website had very good Google Places position here in local search but I never did something special about it, just following the Google requirements.)
Search Engines behaviour:
Lookiing the Human behaviour in maximum real view. Imagine you are a normal user. Supply the users.
I know local company in my country that has more than 200 posions in the maps, SER, everywhere. They even do know about existing of Google Places They had just provided very detailed information about their offices, working time, working details, phone numbers, addresses and so on and so on in every town they have office and every separate contact information.
My advice:
Make it look real, in e real way. Quote your contacts, addresses, e-mails, names of employers as much as as you think it's good enough.
Search in the net very popular company and try to calculate how much contact information they have in the world wide web and define percentage. Look how is this information spread, where and in what format, type, syntax...
Do the same. You will make users happy and Search Engines happy. And you will be happy at the end
Greetings and good luck
Anton
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
-
How to know how much pages are indexed on Google?
I have a big site, there are a way to know what page are not indexed? I know that you can use site: but with a big site is a mess to check page by page. This is a tool or a system to check a entire site and automatically find non-indexed pages?
Technical SEO | | markovald0 -
Why is Google Webmaster Tools showing 404 Page Not Found Errors for web pages that don't have anything to do with my site?
I am currently working on a small site with approx 50 web pages. In the crawl error section in WMT Google has highlighted over 10,000 page not found errors for pages that have nothing to do with my site. Anyone come across this before?
Technical SEO | | Pete40 -
How do I get my pages to go from "Submitted" to "Indexed" in Google Webmaster Tools?
Background: I recently launched a new site and it's performing much better than the old site in terms of bounce rate, page view, pages per session, session duration, and conversions. As suspected, sessions, users, and % new sessions are all down. Which I'm okay with because the the old site had a lot of low quality traffic going to it. The traffic we have now is much more engaged and targeted. Lastly, the site was built using Squarespace and was launched the middle of August. **Question: **When reviewing Google Webmaster Tools' Sitemaps section, I noticed it says 57 web pages Submitted, but only 5 Indexed! The sitemap that's submitted seems to be all there. I'm not sure if this is a Squarespace thing or what. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks!!
Technical SEO | | Nate_D0 -
No existing pages in Google index
I have a real estate portal. I have a few categories - for example: flats, houses etc. Url of category looks like that: mydomain.com/flats/?page=1 Each category has about 30-40 pages - BUT in Google index I found url like: mydomain.com/flats/?page=1350 Can you explain it? This url contains just headline etc - but no content! (it´s just generated page by PHP) How is it possible, that Google can find and index these pages? (on the web, there are no backlinks on these pages) thanks
Technical SEO | | visibilitysk0 -
Having to type Google CAPTCHA all the time
Hi guys, Our office has about 15 computers all on the same IP address and about 10 actively search on Google. Recently we have been asked to type in CAPTCHA almost every single time searching on Google and would like to know if you have any suggestions of resolving this. We do use Firefox Rank Checker to check ranking once per week (around 400 keywords) but we use Hide My Ass to hide the IP. No malware or virus detected on computers in the network. Many thanks for your help in advance David
Technical SEO | | sssrpm0 -
Google search result going to a page that I did not put on my site
Hi, I am seeing a very strange result in google for my site. When doing a search for the term "london reflexology" my site comes up 18th in the results. But when I click the link or check the URL it shows up as: http://www.reflexologyonline.co.uk/reflexologyonline.php?Action=Webring This is not right at all. It looks like some sort of cloaking but I am not sure. I am new to SEO and I do not know why goole is showing this URL that does not exist on my site and of witch the content is totally wrong. Can anyone please help with this? See the 2 linked images for more details. It seems to me the site might be hacked or something to that effect. Please help.... jyJdP.png 71Mf4.png
Technical SEO | | RupDog0 -
Multiple Google Places listings under review
I have a client with a waste removal business who had multiple listings on his Google Places account for different service locations. Over the last four months I have been creating separate listings for each separate service location, each under a different Google account and with a unique business name, address, phone number and website URL. They have all been verified by postcard and listed separately in local directories so that they have citations. As I have been creating the new listings I have also been deleted the old ones to make sure they are not flagged as duplicates. 2 months ago all the listings in the client's Google Places account were placed under review. I made some changes and submitted it for re-review but no go with Google. Now all the new listings I set up have also suddenly been placed under review. About a week ago I noticed that information in two separate Google Places listings was being mixed up - for example, the website URL for one listing was being shown in another listing. There is no connection between these two listings other than that they were both set up from the same IP address so this seems very strange. I reported this to Google and asked them to sort it out, then all of a sudden I found that ALL of the new listings had been placed under review. So now my client has no active listings at all. He can't afford to wait another 2 months for Google to review all the listings again so I am wondering whether the best course of action would just be to delete everything and start over. Any advice would be most welcome!
Technical SEO | | EssexGirl0 -
2000 pages indexed in Yahoo, 0 in Google. NO PR, What is wrong?
Hello Everyone, I have a friend with a blog site that has over 2000 pages indexed in Yahoo but none in Google and no page rank. The web site is http://www.livingorganicnews.com/ I know it is not the best site but I am guessing something is wrong and I don't see it. Can you spot it? Does he have some settings wrong? What should he do? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | QuietProgress0