Link building to Google+ profile: any local SEO value?
-
Has anyone found value in building links to Google+ profile for local seo rankings? My gut tells me that it will, but I am not 100% sure.
If it does, then does that mean that all the traditional SEO factors that would go into ranking a site organically also work for ranking locally for certain keywords?
So far, I have found that the best thing for moving up rankings is reviews on Google+, but then does that make local SEO (from a high view point) just a race for high reviews and building the most citation?
I am feeling like the differentiator for local SEO is UN-structured citations and links to Google+ profiles. Any thoughts?
See you at MozCon!
-
Totally! What a great article. So glad to be able to share it here, Anthony.
-
He may have literally covered every question that could have been asked
Thanks for reaching back out and sharing the article!
-
Good news! Mike Blumenthal decided to write his follow-up piece on this. Check it out:
http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/07/02/should-you-do-linkbuilding-to-your-g-page-for-local/
I hope everyone who participated in this thread and all of our members who are into Local will take a few minutes to read this post. Well worth the time!
-
Hi Anthony,
Fantastic you are attending MozCon! Thanks for your follow-up comments, and do keep checking Mike Blumenthal's blog for more on this. I believe he may soon publish a piece on this topic that should be really good!
-
Mike over at Nifty makes a remark similar to the remarks made in the links you provided me above (reference question #21). Not only does he say that it will probably only help your map listing rank higher for your brand name, but he also flat out says: "The type of links that help your map listing rank higher are ones that point at your website."
http://moz.com/blog/40-important-local-search-questions-answered
Thank you for the resources above
I think in a weird way they validated what I am seeing with my small, single client lol. At a certain point, there are only so many "quality, niche, location-based" (all or either) directories that you can submit to, and if links to the G+ page are superfluous, then it becomes a matter local links/local unstructured citations for your website, and reviews for your G+ (along with any centroid bias you may be benefiting from, or having to overcome).
This is what I have observed, granted that this is one client in one region, and not nearly enough data to make a strong statement regarding the validity of this claim: I did all the NAP stuff, I submitted to all the directories, I optimized the website, I did all the stuff that we are supposed to do. Once all that was done, I told the client to adjust their business in order to easily facilitate reviews. They already had reviews, but they were kind of just stagnate in the local results. Each review they received after I was done doing my stuff gave them at LEAST 4 slot bumps, each time. They are now in the middle of page two of maps, and they have shown no slowing down in movement upward with each review (I assumed the shifts upward would slow down the closer to the top we got).
Now, we are competing against people that have one or two GOOD local links/ local unstructured citations, which appear to have been earned from good old fashion marketing.
I think this may be where things slow down a bit, but I have my local NAP targets and I will keep this thread up to date with what happens moving forward.
Thank you both for providing me great resources
I hope to see you guys at MozCon! (I already mentioned that above but I'm just really excited. If my summer school financial issue didn't occur I would not have been able to go!)
-
Hi Anthony,
I want to link to some resources for you to investigate here.
Back in early 2012, I had a conversation with Mike Blumenthal which prompted him to write a brief piece on the then-common advice of building links to the old Google Place Pages. He accurately summarizes why this practice was a poor idea:
http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/24/google-places-myth-linking-to-your-places-page/
However, a lot has changed in the past year. A lot! Here is a more recent conversation on this topic at Linda Buquet's Local Search Forum, presenting differing opinions on linkbuilding in the new +Local environment:
Your question has inspired me to ask Mike B for an update on his 2012 piece. I don't handle linkbuilding in-house at my company, and I think what you've asked about is really important. I'm going to suggest to Mike that he do a follow up (if he's not too busy) and let's both stay tuned to see what he says. Also, stay tuned for the new iteration of David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors 2013, which is coming soon (and eagerly awaited!) Hope what I've linked to helps, and I do plan to shoot Mike an email to see if he might have time sometime soon to do an update on his earlier much-cited piece.
-
Robert,
Thank you very much for the response. Yes, I agree that it is indeed its own animal. I also feel as though the ranking factors are very inconsistant, as you mentioned. I am going to follow those people, definitely. Thanks again!
One last thought, as I am just a little unclear. Do you think that Google authorship plays a role in the local SEO game (or "publishership")?
-
Anthony,
I am not sure I am even understanding your question, but I will try to help. First, Your Google + profile is not statically local. Are you talking a human Google + or a business Google + profile? Either way, think about authorship and being a contributor to various sites; that is linking and that does increase the value of your Google + site. When you have a G+ that is gaining authority and you link to a site, you provide link juice the site. But...
You follow that with:
_If it does, then does that mean that all the traditional SEO factors that would go into ranking a site organically also work for ranking locally for certain keywords? _The answer to this is No. Local and organic ranking are two very specific animals and they have many specific requirements. Yes, you want the same types of things as organic for local but then there are many more issues and requirements. Also, it changes about every ten minutes with Google. If you are not familiar with the Carousel "beta test" wink wink that Google is doing, do a search on your city and hotels or restaurants or service stations. That in itself will show you what people who handle local are up against.
As to this question: _I am feeling like the differentiator for local SEO is UN-structured citations and links to Google+ profiles. Any thoughts?_My thoughts are these: Start reading things from people like Miriam here on moz, Linda Buquet, Mike Blumenthal, etc. Don't "feel" as that is more akin to guessing. Follow the guidelines they put out and read all you can on local. If you do that, and if you work on about 50 to 75 local listings, make mistakes, learn, etc. you will begin to know a bit about local. Trust me when I say it is its own animal. Telling you how to rank for local in a Q&A setting is nearly impossible. I hope you understand.
Good luck,
Robert
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
-
An SEO Strategy (need review)
I work in the real estate vertical. My clients possess significant content. Though it's not written. They have tons of images and plenty of videos. They have content in the form of descriptions of homes etc... They don't have written content that would be valuable in an attempt to rank. Most traffic in real estate vertical is [city] real estate and [city] homes for sale. Agents rarely ever use those phrases. Certainly not when doing what they do, promoting their listings. I am thinking I need to build a link building strategy around their videos and photos. There are tons of high domain sources to get links from. With video I could do youtube, vimeo, veoh, daily motion, hulu, etc... All of these sites are DA 90+. None of the links are follow. They would all be no follow. I could have a profile back link, and a back link on each video. So one video distributed to 10 sites would be worth 10 back links. So a client would build hundreds of backlinks a year. All of value. I could deep link all the back links to appropriate subdivision landing pages (long tail). The same strategy is applicable with photos. There are dozens of high DA sites that syndicate images. All would result in a lot of links that are high DA with no-follow. Please discuss this strategy. Also, if you can think of another strategy to build back links for real estate then please share it. I want to discuss real ground level back link building. Not "just build content and they will come." I need the sites to rank. I don't know if no-follows will even help them rank for long tail keywords.
Image & Video Optimization | | AFW11790 -
Best Way to Replace Lost Links
We found a particular client that was using a 3rd party backlinker to build links (they were outsourced). The backlinks appeared to be low quality, just basic text and no substantial content surrounding it, usually like a forum profile. The backlinker was swapped out. However, we've been suffering from a big loss of links. We anticipated that quite a few of the links the previous crew were managing would be lost, however, we've lost over 1500. Some of that is due to the former SEO company using sitesays.com as part of their strategy. That site has since removed all listings/links because they were hit by recent algorithm changes. Every week GWT has fewer and fewer links coming from that site. We expect this to continue until GWT has removed all links from that site. We are also losing ground (quickly) on local rankings too. We believe this is due to the high number of links lost. What is best practice when building links to counter this issue? Is there anything that can be done to stem the link purge and, if possible, gain ground on rankings again?
Image & Video Optimization | | AaronHenry0 -
Local Listings
I use getlisted.org as my local listing guideline. For some of the local listings you can "upgrade" the listing for a price instead of doing just the basic free listing. I was wondering do people pay for the listing and is it worth it? Are some of them better than others to get an upgraded listing? Thanks for the help!
Image & Video Optimization | | ClickIt0 -
Any tips for optimising for Local Search/Google Places
I have a client that used to come up on Google Places consistently for some very competitive keywords - when they ranked quite low for them through their normal website - places would see them above all the organic results in normally number 2 position - whereas they would rank between 16 - 26 normally We have optimised the site and have 'A' grade keywords for the ones we are interested in google placing for and just recently we are out of it all together, even though we have improved their optimisation for that word with SEO Someone said that their phone number on the website had to match perfectly with google places and so does their address. Is this true? Is there anything else that will help them keep their position in places ? ie. setting up a Google + page etc., Any advise would be appreciated thanks
Image & Video Optimization | | intermingle0 -
Local SEO - Confirming an Address that Does Not Receive Mail
Hi guys, I have a question that might have been asked previously but warrants asking again. What is the best workaround for Google Local verification for a business that is located at a physical address that does not receive mail. I have a friend who lives in an area that does not receive mail. This particular person tried using a local PO box to verify, but as it turns out that is a poor option a) because it is not allowed within the guidelines of Google Local, and b) because the listing was not accepted as a unique address and is listed without an address in Local because of this. Is there anyone with recent experience in terms of getting around this and verifying perfectly legitimate businesses in no-mail areas? I would have thought Google would have provided a workaround for those types of businesses. Any thoughts / experience would be appreciated!
Image & Video Optimization | | toddmumford0 -
Google Places 3rd Party Reviews...
I have a client in the wedding industry who has quite a few awesome reviews on WeddingWire and a few other wedding resources. I've looked at the competition on Google Places, and Google counts their WeddingWire reviews. However, Google is not showing or counting my client's WeddingWire reviews, when in fact my client has better ratings and more reviews. Any ideas on why this might be or how I can get Google to include these reviews for my client? Thanks so much!!
Image & Video Optimization | | Linwright0 -
Google Places Local Submission
Hello We're going to upload a bulklisting to Google Places for multiple locations. However, there are existing Google places listings for these locations. The bulklisting is being used to undertake a refresh of all the existing data. How do we go about updating the existing data i.e. do we have to delete the existing information prior to submitting the bulkload, or does a new submission over write the existing data. In addition, how does Google Places verify a bulkload submission i.e. do they make contact with the designated business owner. How long does such a process actually take (roughly!). I know some of this is touched on in the Goolge Places help section, but it is not clear and I don't want to get this wrong for obvious reasons. Thanks in advance for your assistance. Rgds Neil
Image & Video Optimization | | mccormackmorrison0 -
Why is here no extra section for Google Shopping
does really nobody care for the most important search result for shops beside organic result? google shoping results mostly pop up in organic results on 3rd place. Vertical SEO Video, Image, Local etc. etc. is not really Shopping Results!
Image & Video Optimization | | kynop0