Making sure your Google local listing performs well is now vital for local business search terms.
As we have talked about before the new Google results combine Local listings, reviews, images and existing web sites to produce a new directory style of results. When users search for business with a geographical tag, e.g ‘hotels in norwich’
The key ranking factors for your Places listing are Location, relevance and prominence
Jeremy Sussman of Google maps explains…
“How do we decide the order of which museum to show you? Some of it’s the distance; some of it’s the relevance of the query; and some of it is the prominence of the actual business.”
Quick reference list
- Complete business details in full
- Add relevant Key words
- Gain Citations
- Manage your online reputation
So when you complete your Google Places listing ensure the address is correct and
completed in full, choose the correct business category. See if you can include a
relevant keyword in your business name.
Very important is what’s called a citation; this is when you have a mention of your business on another website. This mention is as simple as listing your name, telephone number or address.
Google looks for these mentions and ads up how many there are to help decide if your local listing is most relevant to a search term.
Critical factor – The sites where your citation is found. Is it relevant to your business location? Does the site contain quality content about your business type?
E.G links from our Norfolk Broads.com site are great for Norfolk based business. The business contact information is located on our clients more info page categorized by location / business type / sub category.
If you are not on the directory already then you should sign up soon. Google is indexing many of our clients ‘More info’ pages as reviews and as citations.
e.g out accommodation clients get a citation which shows Google the business location
on its own map, the service of the business and the exact business type.
You can get citations in many ways but before you put your details on 100’s of sites across the internet ask your self how relevant each site is this to your business.
Finally do not forget the importance of customer feed back. Google will now present searchers with reviews for your business wherever it finds them and an overall rating
of your business based on these reviews. Try to encourage reviews of your business from customers there are plenty of review sites. Request customer feed back via your Facebook and Twitter pages.
Google has put your online reputation right in the mix and upfront for all searchers to see…
So managing your reputation online and engaging with any reviews you find online is very important to your rankings now. For advice and help please get in touch.
Posted in Google Places by .
Nov 10
8
Google Local Search Results
Following up on the post by Ross, here are some more thoughts on the Changes to Google Places and the new blended search results…
Google has this last week activated a massive change to the way it’s search results
are displayed. This directly affects you and your business and how it is found online.
So what happened?
Google business map results are now blended with organic search results to provide a hybrid of results displayed in a traditional listing with links to Google places pages and a display on a Google map in the right hand column where the sponsored ads used to be (which have now been pushed down the page.)
These results are returned when a searcher looks for a service or business type in a given geographical area.
You can see the changes where items have moved around now not only do you see a web sites description as before, now you have reviews of the business from other sites. You also have a direct link to the business Google Places page.
If you click the link “Places” to the left you have a full listing of all local business that Google has on index.
How does this affect you online? Well . Some businesses who have claimed their Google places page and have a well optimized site will find they receive massive rankings boosts.
Google has given a massive opportunity to local business but you must know how to make it work for you.
As of Monday last week in the U.K Google works differently forever. The original process of deciding which websites were most relevant to a search term and returning a list of result is now blended with the search algorithm for the Google local results.
From what we know of web users behavior patterns this really results in First page or no page. If you are not in the first ten results for a search term from now on it not just your web site which needs to be optimised but also you Google Local listing.
The change to search is based on Google’s projection of how internet users are
growing especially via mobile internet devices as people can now find information
Instantly in the ‘street’ for business close to them.
This change is not going away it is part of Googles commitment to become the number
One directory for local business.
So how can you optimise your business online?
Make sure your home website is performing to its top potential, claim your Google places page.
We will post more information on what you can actually do to help you places listing soon.
Posted in Google Search Engine Optimisation by .
Had a good day with Duncan and the Yodelay team at the Forum in Norwich yesterday.
Though Duncan provides an extensive one day course aimed at educating beginners it is always good to get together with other SEO’s and compare notes. The other attendees really enjoyed the day and I am sure Yodelay will be a great success.
There are may be some limited places left on the courses contact Yodelay to book
Over the weekend, Google made a significant change to its search results when looking for businesses. If you make a search for ‘Hotels in Norwich’ you now get a combination of Organic result and Places result. This is mind blowing from an SEO point of view.
Google Search Result for 'Hotels in Norwich'
Posted in Google Places by .
Google has announced new changes to the local search facility. The user access to change local search information will not be on the front screen. Allowing for location setting in a faster easier to use interface.
This sees a continuation of Google’s quest for personalised web search experiences. It will bring over time new challenges for SEO.
Posted in SEO Tips & Advice by .
Oct 10
19
Norwich SEO In town tomorrow
The SEO Norwich Team will be at Carrow Road Norwich tomorrow, providing advice on SEO and search engine marketing.
We are showing the latest evolution of www.norfolkBroads.com. But we have a great offer for any one wanting to have an SEO audit for their website. You can receive a 15% discount on the price of an audit if you book tomorrow.
We look forward to seeing you there!
Posted in Norwich SEO Clients by .
Oct 10
13
NorfolkBroads.com
Optimising a large directory site like NorfolkBroads.com is a big job. Especially as we changed the emphasis of the site to provide the most dynamic an intuitive web site for users that we could.
This included adding Google map technology to the website so instead of using standard text searches or long lists of categories we put together a search format which can be driven on touch screen technology.
Users now drive the search experience simply by moving the map.Where ever they are looking on the map new search items are reveled relevant to the selected search category e.g accommodation.
Because of the map function and providing changing information on the site .The bulk of the site pages are dynamic. Which means that there is very little for a search engine to see and index.
So we have had to create re directed URL structures which mean that Google and the other engines serve up relevant pages. The process involves not only adapting the live URl’s but also backing this up with relevant static content and 301 redirects where appropriate to avoid canonical issues.
Posted in Google Search Engine Optimisation by .
Oct 10
7
SEO Norwich new plans
It has been a long haul for the SEO Norwich team here @ Innershed.
We have come a long way this year much of which has been spent developing the new Norfolk Broads.com site. Which is now live. So once we have the site running smoothly we can concentrate some more effort and time on providing SEO.
In the coming days we will revamp and analyse our SEO offering to ensure we offer the best service we can details will be released shortly.
Oct 10
1
Re Launch of NorfolkBroads.com
The new version of www.NorfolkBroads.com launches on Monday 4th October. The new evolution is a dynamic site.
Built around the concept of being ready for the explosion of touch screen technology. We have re modeled the way a visitor to the site searches and finds information on the web site.
Primarily a Tourism and business directory for the east of England. NofolkBroads.com now allows users to search without typing and to drive their searches via a Google map. Information can be quickly bookmarked and shared on social media.
Creating an SEO friendly site for a directory is difficult but the job is made harder when the site is designed for users and not search engines.
As a dynamic site creates pages which essentially have no content for a search engine to crawl.
In order to make sure the site is indexed and crawled we have created a URL structure which uses the AJAX tokens to redirect the search engine bots and spiders to static version of the site which can be crawled and indexed easily by search engines. While the visitor enjoys the full dynamic usability of the web site.
This solution does not create the pretty URL’s which search engine and visitors like so much however it does eliminate many of the problems with URL structure which a large directory site has.
Sep 10
27
SEO & URL’s
Paying attention to URL structure will help with your SEO. We have directory sites which generate URL’s from dynamic content so what you end up with is a URL wich contains a lot of numbers and tags. Not much use for telling the search engines what the page is about and even less useful for people looking through search results.
Jan our German genius tells me he has a means of making our directory URL’s more effective. I think if he pulls it off and creates a clean URL structure from dynamically created content. I will support his native German in the Next World cup.
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