1. Working on the factors that help you;

2.  Avoiding getting hurt by the factors that can hurt you, and

3.  Not wasting time and effort on the stuff that doesn’t count.

I talk about the first point all the time.  It gets a lot of attention in general.

The second one involves following the rules and not making blunders.

The third doesn’t get much airtime, even though people constantly ask me, “Phil, will I be shooting myself in the foot if I do such-and-such?”

That’s why I’m going to talk about the harmless stuff – the factors that, in my experience, don’t affect how your business ranks in local search (particularly in the Google+Local results).

Here are 23 items that won’t hurt your local rankings:

Google+Local listing

 1.  Using your home address, if you run your business out of your home rather than in a bricks-and-mortar building.

 2.  “Hiding” your address from appearing publicly on your Google+Local listing.

 3.  Having the same street address as other businesses.  This might be the case if you’re in a strip mall.

 4.  Not being located in or near the center of town (AKA the “centroid”).

5.  Seeing discrepancies between the way your address is formatted when you’re on your Google listing and when you’re looking at it through the Google Places “dashboard” or Google Plus page-builder.  For instance, sometimes you’ll enter your address as “Ave.” but it shows up as “Avenue.”  That’s OK.

 6.  Using a cellphone number as the “primary” phone number for your listing.

 7.  Specifying a secondary phone number (in the “alternate phone number” field).

8.  Specifying a “contact” email address that isn’t associated with your website.  It can be a Gmail address, a Yahoo address…whatever.

9.  Having near-duplicate Google listings for individual people.  (You probably don’t even have to worry about this situation in the first place unless you run a law practice, medical practice, real-estate agency, or insurance agency.)

10.  Having some parts of your listing that aren’t 100% Google-compliant but that get “grandfathered” in because they’re not grievous offenses.  For instance, if for the past 2 years your listing has had your suite number in the 1^st address field (rather than in the 2^nd) you probably don’t need to change it.

11.  Using the same page on your website as the landing page for multiple Google listings, if you have multiple locations.  Ideally you have a landing page specific to each location, but in my experience it’s totally fine to use the homepage as the landing page for multiple Google listings / locations.

12.  Not “merging” your Google Places and Google Plus for Business pages.

Website

13.  Using CSS to format a rich snippet that contains your business name, address, and phone number (“NAP”).

14.  Running your website off an un-fancy platform (like GoDaddy’s “Website Tonight”).  I love WordPress, but you can optimize your site just fine on a more-primitive CMS.

15.  Using non-crawlable phone numbers on your website – like in the form of images.  Doesn’t matter if they’re call-tracking or toll-free numbers; Google can only read text.

16. Having domains that forward to the landing page that you use for your Google listing.

Third-party listings (AKA citations)

17. Not claiming your business listings on third-party sites like SuperPages, YP, Manta, etc.  The only reason you’d need to claim them is if they’ve got incorrect info on your business.  Beyond that, you might want to claim your listings in order to add as many photos, descriptions, etc. as possible.  So it’s worth taking a couple minutes to claim them, but your rankings won’t suffer if you don’t.

18.  Seeing minor formatting discrepancies between your listings on various sites.  Various citation sources have their little rules about formatting: MapQuest might use “123 Main St” for your listing, whereas SuperPages might use “123 Main Street.”  One site might want parentheses around your area code, whereas another might not.  There’s nothing you can do about these little variations, but they don’t hurt your Google rankings.

19. Concealing your street address on your listings.

20. Building citations quickly.  It’s not like with links, where Google might penalize you if you get too many links in too short a period of time.

21. Using the same “additional info” from listing to listing.  For instance, it’s OK to use the same 300-character description on every site that allows you to include a description of your business.

Reviews

22. Having negative reviews.  I’m sure if you’ve got hundreds of one-star reviews on a variety of sites (not just Google), your wings might be clipped in terms of how well you can rank locally.  But short of that, a few negative reviews won’t hurt you (at least from a rankings perspective; customer-acquisition is another matter entirely).

23. Losing reviews to the “anti-spam” filters used by Google and Yelp.

—

Can you think of anything else that simply doesn’t affect your local rankings?  Any first-hand experience with the above?  Leave a comment!

Google’s rules for local business listings are notoriously and unnecessarily confusing.  Always have been.  All the more so now, given that some business owners have to know and follow both the guidelines for Google Places and for Google Plus.

You can learn the rules by reading them, or in the School of Hard Knocks.  But even the former isn’t as simple as it sounds: Google’s guidelines change frequently, they’re not all on one page, and different types of businesses have to follow different sets of rules.

So I’ve rounded up every single violation – or “crime” – that can get your Google listing dinged or whisked off the map.  Some of them are clearly stated in Google’s sundry rules, but others aren’t.  Some of these are harder to atone for than others.

You still should read Google’s “quality guidelines.“  This is just meant to be a quick but comprehensive list of all the no-nos.   Think of it as an anti-checklist.

Violations common to Google Places and Google Plus business pages

(You need to follow these no matter what, regardless of whether you have an “upgraded” Google+Local page.  Here’s more info on the difference between the two types of pages.  Thanks to the ever-astute Nyagoslav Zhekov for helping me make these rules as clear as possible.)

“Business name” field

• Including “keywords” that aren’t part of your official business name
• Including city names that aren’t part of your official business name
• Including slogans
• Including a URL (unless the official business name is “example.com”)
• Including a phone number
• Including banned words - unless they are officially part of the business name

1^st “Address” field

• Entering an address other than the one in which your business is located
• Entering a PO Box, UPS box, or other fake address
• Mentioning landmarks
• Mentioning buildings in which your business is located (e.g. a mall); do this in the 2^nd “Address” field

2^nd “Address” field

• Inserting city names

“City” field

• Including anything but the city in which your business is physically located
• Including more than one city (even if you’re on a city line)

“Phone” field

• Using a toll-free number, unless it is your main phone number
• Entering additional phone numbers; click the “Add more phone numbers” link if you’d like to enter alternate numbers

“Website” field

• Entering a domain that forwards to another domain
• Entering a shortened URL

“Description” field

• Including any of what Google considers naughty words
• Keyword-stuffing the description with the categories you specified in the “Category” fields (below)

“Fix incorrect marker location” option

• Moving the marker to a place on the map other than where you’re physically located
• Moving the marker (even a little) closer to the center of your city

Other

• Creating more than one listing for the same business (don’t try to “fool” Google with different DBAs, slightly different addresses, etc.)

Violations specific to the Google Places “Dashboard”

(You also need to follow these rules regardless of whether you have an “upgraded” page, but because Google is transitioning away from the Google Places “dashboard” and toward Google+, these rules may become obsolete pretty soon.)

“Category” fields

• Specifying custom categories that describe your services rather than your business itself (e.g. “Cosmetic Dentistry = bad, “Cosmetic Dentist” = good)
• Including more than one search-phrase in custom categories (e.g. “Cosmetic and Sedation and Implant Dentistry” = bad)
• Including city names in custom categories

Service area & location settings

• Not “hiding” your address IF you travel to where your customers are located, rather than the other way around.  (More detail here)

“Photos” and “Videos” areas

• Uploading anything that doesn’t comply with the Google Places guidelines on photos and videos

Violations specific to Google Plus “Local Business” pages

(You only need to follow these if you have an “upgraded” Google+Local page.)

“Description” field

• Including too many keywords
• Including too many links, or too much keyword-rich / exact-match anchor text

“Photos” and “Videos” areas

• Uploading anything that doesn’t comply with the Google Plus guidelines on photos and videos

—

By the way, those aren’t even all the things that can hurt your rankings; just infractions that won’t even give you a chance at those rankings.

I was thinking of calling this post “The Wrath of Google.”

Google’s rules are a hard reality – even more so than Khan’s genetically-engineered pecs.  If you don’t know and follow the rules, you may not be a happy camper later.

Are there any rules I missed?  Any stories you’d like to relate about the Wrath of Google?  Leave a comment!

They’ve always sent me great questions, and I always take a crack at them.

But local search – and Google+Local in particular – is as messy and complex as ever.  Sometimes it helps to see a bunch of questions other people have, and the answers to those questions, all at once.

I like the Ask Me Anything rounds that some SEOs do.  Same idea here.

So, I received a ton of great questions from business owners and marketers/SEOs alike.  Some of the questions almost call for a whole blog post to answer, but I’ve tried to give quick answers – hence the “lightning round” part.  But there are so many questions that this has turned into the most epic post I’ve done yet.

I’ve organized the Q&A into a few sections:

General local search

Google+Local

Reviews

Misfits

Enjoy!

—

General local search questions

“What’s the #1 thing that improves rankings for local business pages?”

I’m going to focus on the “improves” part of your question: I’d say businesses see the most improvement when they clean up all their citations.

“Do social mentions affect my rankings if they don’t include my NAP?”

Indirectly, maybe – but only to the extent that they’re a catalyst for things that can directly help your rankings, like unstructured citations or maybe links.  Facebook activity seems to be a major factor for Bing, though.  I’m sure things like Google +1s and Circles will start counting for more in the near future, but they don’t seem to at the moment.

“Have you noticed it being easier to rank a new local business in Bing than in Google? Any ideas why?  I am top ranked in Bing but am on page 2 in Google after 4 months.”

I’ve had clients who rank tip-top in Google but not so well in Bing.  The fundamentals are the same (e.g. consistent citations, on-page factors).  But things like Facebook activity and Yelp reviews seem to matter more in Bing.  Overall, I’d say Bing is a little easier, but if you’re ranking well in Bing, you’re probably on the right track with Google.

“What is the best way to identify all citations that need to be cleaned up for a given business?”

My favorite cocktail: a combination of the Local Citation Finder, GetListed.org, and my definitive list of local citations.

“Beyond a) creating citations, and b) having an optimized webpage and c) getting reviews, what else can be done to improve ranking?”

(1) Get more reviews, on as many sites as you can.  Never stop.

(2) Get citations from sites specific to your industry.

(3) Add as much additional info (e.g. descriptions, photos, etc.) as you can to your listings on those citation sources.

(4) Blog – the right way.

(5) Think of a small (or larger) “local event” you can host.

“I’ve found some towns do not return map results for local queries. I believe it’s because of their small size. What do you do in this scenario?”

Don’t neglect your Google+Local page, citations, reviews, etc., but start going more after organic rankings for those search terms that aren’t returning the Google+Local (AKA “maps”) results.

“What’s the best way to start cleaning up your citations after you move to a new address?”

Start by fixing your listings on ExpressUpdateUSA.com, LocalEze.com, MyBusinessListingManager.com.  Those take the longest to digest updates, so you’ll want to fix them ASAP.  Then do CitySearch, YP.com, and Yelp (if possible; it’s not always).  Then move on to your other citations, referring to my list, and/or with the aid of Nyagoslav’s excellent guide to citations.

“Most of my patients live in an adjacent city to where my office is.  I bought a couple domains that include the name of the nearby city that my patients live in, and then I forwarded those domain to my main site.  Can I expect those forwarded domains to rank well in the organic search results in the nearby town?”

No.  This isn’t an approach I’d suggest.  I haven’t seen forwarded domains in the search results recently, so I’m not even sure Google will rank the forwarded domains at all.  (If someone has a definitive answer to this, please chime in!)  But it’s almost certain not to work in a market that’s even a little competitive.  Having a search-term-relevant domain alone just isn’t enough.  Probably your best bet (1) to start doing AdWords, (2) or to create some pages (on any of your domains) that are geared specifically toward patients in that nearby city.

“If I’m targeting nearby cities to try to get organic results for my local business, do I need a separate website for each city I want to be visible in?”

No.  You can have separate websites for each city, but in most cases I wouldn’t recommend building them, because it’s hard to do so without being spammy.  You’re probably better off creating unique pages on your current site for each city (see previous question).

“What specific steps do you use to determine what is causing your competitor’s website to rank above yours (if it is) in the Google organic results?”

That’s a very involved question, and this is a “lightning round”   But if I had to distill it, I’d say that there are 5 main diagnostic questions you’ll need to answer:

1. Which specific pages are outranking yours, and for which search terms?

2.  How do their pages differ from yours?  Do they have a lot of meaty, useful, on-topic information on the pages that are ranking well – whereas maybe you only have a paragraph?  Try to compare apples to apples.

3.  Do your pages seem significantly more “SEO’d” than your competitors’?  If you’ve got spun content, exact-match anchor text out the wazoo, keywords stuffed into every nook and cranny of your site, etc., then your competitor may be outranking you simply by not making rookie mistakes.

4.  What do you see when you do an OpenSiteExplorer checkup on them?

5.  How unique and helpful are your competitors’ pages?

“I wrestle with understanding organic listings.  Searching for a dentist in Belfast, Northern Ireland, there are 7 organic listings . Do how does Google determine who is on this list? There are some dentists with no Google Plus local reviews above others who have 7 reviews.  I just don’t understand this.”

That doesn’t sound quite right: It’s usually 7 Google+Local listings:

But I can say that reviews are one factor among others – the main others being  (1) your Google+Local page, (2) your website, and (3) your citations.  Need more detail?  Take a gander at the Local Search Ranking Factors

“What’s the best way to handle multiple categories (e.g. kitchen renovations, bathroom renovations, basement renovations)?”

There’s not much of a “trick.”  Just specify them on your Google+Local page, onyour Bing Places listing, and on your third-party listings.  Follow Google’s guidelines and my best-practices for categories.

“There are several services for citation submission. Yext comes to mind. It would seem that a service that does the bulk of the submission work would be useful, but that each listing would need manual tweaking. Is that your experience too? Do you have a preferred bulk submission tool?”

Yext is good in certain situations.  But you’re right that you also need to do at least some manual tuning-up of your listings.  No tool eliminates that necessity.

“We have several new clients and although a listing appears when you Google their name, nothing appears in any other searches.  When should a new listing appear in keyword searches?”

Totally depends on how competitive the local competition is for those search phrases.  It can take months and months.

“What are you seeing in terms of search volume for searches of keyword-only vs. keyword + city?  I know Linda Buquet has talked about seeing more search volume for keyword-only and I’ve also seen this now for a few AdWords clients I have, where it’s about a 2-to-1 for keyword only vs. keyword + city.  So aside from AdWords is there a way to rank for those searches, since keyword-only is mainly going to show businesses close to searchers’ IP location?”

It’s pretty much always the case that “keyword” has more search volume than “keyword + city.”  But you shouldn’t be using different strategies to get visible for each type of search term.  If you rank well for “keyword + city,” you’ll usually also rank well when people in that city just type in “keyword.”  Google will show those people local-biz results that it deems to be local.  So the name of the game is to make it abundantly clear to Google what city you’re located in.

“What do I do when a company I am working with on advertising wants to use a telephone number other than the one we use on citations?”

Easy:

“How do I break out of my immediate area to target a “region” or state? CAN it be done with Local?”

Sometimes it’s possible to appear for statewide search terms (e.g. “dentists MA”) in the Google+Local results.  This great old post from Mike Ramsey explains it nicely.  But you’ll probably have better chances of ranking for statewide searches organically.

Google+Local questions

“Is Google+ Local ready to go yet?”

Are we ready to terraform Mars?  Have we built a Commander Data?  No…Google still hasn’t finished the transition from Google Places to Google Plus.

“Does it improve rankings to create a Google+ Local page for your company and then ‘merge’ it with Google Places?”

Not to my knowledge.  I’ve noticed that businesses with “merged” pages tend to rank more highly, but I think that’s only because their owners tend to be proactive about their local visibility in general.  So I’d say there’s correlation but not causation.

“I’ve got a client that has a spa.  She’s got like 8 rooms for tanning, sauna, etc.  She’s renting one room to another business that does a related service.  I’ve instructed my client to NOT share the phone line and instead to have the new person get a new line.  I’ve spoken with the other business’s web guy and we seem to think that two businesses in the same suite – for example, suite #200 –should be fine if the business is different and the phone is different.  What’s the best way to have two or more businesses listed at the same address?”

If they are legally separate businesses, then you’re taking the right approach.  They’ll need separate phone lines, DBAs, and websites – but this is a matter of course if in fact they’re legally separate businesses.

“How should you handle a relocation?  Do you shut down the current Google+ Local page and create a new one?  Or do you edit the address to the new location?”

I believe the protocol du jour is for you to edit your address to the new location.  Mike Blumenthal has a fairly recent post with more detail.

“The ‘city centroid’: Does this still carry a lot of weight in rankings?

It depends on a lot of factors, but in general, not really.  The main thing that matters is whether your business is located in (or extremely near to) the city you want to rank well in.

“How can I get my location to rank if I’m on the outskirts of town but still in the town?”

Depends on what you mean by “outskirts.”  If you’re in the ‘burbs, your best bet is to go after organic rankings.  But if you’re truly located in the city proper, it’s still the same ballgame to rank well in the Google+Local results, and you probably won’t be at any disadvantage.

“My client has 17 locations and can’t use the main corporate site as a hub.   They’ve been building citations where the “website” field contains a URL that forwards to the sister-site of the corp brand.  On this sister site they have the locations broken down into microsites (not pages).  Their Places pages are pulling the corp site info.  Long story short: how do you build a campaign when you have to use a forwarding URL?”

You don’t.  Using a forwarded URL shouldn’t be a problem as far as your citations are concerned, but that URL needs to match the URL of your Google+Local landing page – and Google will probably whack you for using a forwarding URL.

“When I search for “orthodontist” within my zip code, an orthodontist colleague of mine has the first two of three positions in the Google+Local results.  I occupy the third position.  How does a duplicate listing get ranked above my listing?”

If the website for the practice is strong (i.e. lots of relevant content, maybe some good links), probably both Google+Local listings are benefiting.  If both listings have been around for more than a couple of years, there’s also a good chance that they both have consistent info on their citations.  It may also help if both listings have reviews.

“Where is the link under the 7 pack that says “View more local results”?  How do I view page two now?  Is there a page two anymore?  I have a few clients that were happy to be on page two (very competitive markets), so now what do I tell them?”

The “more” link is gone.  No page two unless you click on the “Maps” tab – which also appears to be under the blade.  Tell your client…

“What your business is moving, do you update all other listings first and then Google+ Local, or the other way around?”

Update your listings first, and then (once you’ve moved) update your Google+Local listing.

“If you have two locations, do you link your Google+Local pages to your homepage or to landing pages on your site?  The idea being to optimize chances to get two pages to rank for queries: one next to the map and one in the standard results.”

Generally speaking, it’s best to use a different page of your website as the landing page for each Google+Local listing (that is, each location of your business).

“Google seems to have made changes lately.  What are the main changes in a nutshell, and what should be our response be, in terms possibly doing local SEO differently?”

1.  Better tech support (in that now it exists).

2.  New listing-manager rolling out.

3.  No page two.

No need for you to do SEO differently.  It’s still the same ingredients that go into the rankings burrito.

“I created a Google listing about 5 months ago.  I filled out the description, images, videos, categories, etc.  We have done all the possible citations. A lot of work.  We even paid for a “virtual tour” (which I thought Google would like and see as a “trust factor,” as you need to pay for it).  We already have 9 reviews.  However, we are still not on page one.  Our competition is not SEO-oriented and does not do much in that regard, but they still appear before us.  I know it takes time to get to page one, but still it looks to me that something is wrong here.  What am I missing?”

You somewhat answered your own question: local rankings usually take a while.  If you’ve truly got the citations under control – a big “if” – then I’d really suggest trying to get reviews on a diversity of sites (e.g. not just Google, not just Yelp, etc.).  Beef up your third-party listings (AKA citations) with as much additional info on your services as you can.  If possible, start blogging – but only if you do it according to Matt McGee’s suggestions.

“How do I handle the sale of a business that has been located at one address for 15 years, but that gets bought by new ownership, resulting in a name change?”

Update the business name on as many sites as you can, and as quickly as you can.  Update your Google+Local listing, too.  A good starting point would be to focus on the listings you see when you do a GetListed.org scan.  Once you’ve done that, scour the Web for listings with the old name, and try to get those fixed or removed.  Your rankings may very well take a hit in the short-term, but they should be fine in the long-term if you’re diligent about cleanup.

“My business is listed #1 in the local results for one search term, but number 4 for another, and not even in the top 7 for another popular search term.  How do I push my listing up in the cases where it’s listed lower?”

Ask every customer for a review, make sure your third-party listings have plenty of info (e.g. descriptions, categories, etc.) on the services you’re not ranking for, and crank out some good blog posts or articles that someone looking for those services would find useful.  Above all, take it slow and easy.  You seem to be on the right track.

“I received my PIN in the mail and entered it to verify my Google+ Local page.  The PIN was verified, now a few days later it’s no longer verified.  Should I request another PIN?”

Yes.  Assuming you know for a fact that your listing is 100% kosher according to Google.

“I know a landscaper who services a region that includes 4 cities. However, his office is in a rural location.  Can he use Google+ Local to get listed for any or all of the cities? Technically he sometimes meets clients at his office but normally he would travel to the customers’ homes to meet them.”

If he has one location, then he can have one Google+Local listing (not 4), and he’ll have to “hide” his address.  He may or may not actually rank well in all 4 cities – depends on a lot of factors – but if he’s met the two conditions I mentioned, at least it’s possible he’ll rank well in a good chunk of his service area (especially if it’s a rural area).

“Why would a verified Google listing (confirmed via phone or postcard) show the “We currently do not support this location” error?”

Sounds like the listing has been pulled for a violation or due to a bug.  Not much you can do about the latter.  But if you suspect the former, read Nyagoslav’s great post on troubleshooting.

“Your post on city pages, will that get me listed in Google Plus local?”

No.  It’s focused on “localized organic” rankings.

“I assume the ‘upgraded’ Google+ Local page is one in which the social and the local are combined?  I’m still lost on how this works (maybe everyone is…?).”

Correct.  Pretty soon (I hope) everyone’s Google+Local page will be upgraded to have all the “social” bells and whistles.  But, for the time being, some pages have all the features of Google+, whereas others don’t.  (More info on the differences here.)

“My main question has to do with a business with multiple listings.  How do you approach getting them set up on Google Plus local?  Do they need a separate listing for each location?  How do you handle citations for them?”

Yes, each physical location can have its own Google listing – and each Google listing must correspond to a physical location, or you’ll incur the wrath of the Google Gods (and rightfully so).

You don’t have to do a bulk upload.  All the listings don’t even need to have been created in the same Google account.  For instance, if it’s a franchise and each franchisee wants control of his/her listing, the listings can be created and/or claimed through different people’s Google accounts.

There’s no way to do the citations “in bulk.”  It’s number of locations multiplied by number of sites you want to be listed on.  Ideally you have a separate landing page URL for each location / Google+Local listing; if that’s the case, then put that URL in the “website” field on each citation site.

“If you’re using a home address for your Google listing, can you rank well in a fairly competitive market?”

Sure can.

“I have a client that has a law practice with 2 distinct NAP’s, websites, and categories (ne is for DUI defense, the other is criminal defense).  That is, they have 2 local phone numbers, 2 registered business names, 2 websites, and 2 different suite #s, out of 1 main office location.  Will Google+ Local ding one listing or the other, given that both practices are housed under the same physical address?  (Again, there are 2 different suite #s.)”

If they are two officially, legally separate practices, then you’re fine.  But if it’s one lawyer who runs one practice but wants to have two Google listings for rankings purposes, then one or both listings may very well get penalized.

“When you choose a category from within the Google Places editor, what are your thoughts on choosing a custom category?  I have read many blogs saying you should only choose defined categories, yet, if I decide to go with a specific custom category I get a lot of impressions, whereas no other defined category would cause these impressions for a particular keyword.  I experimented removing the custom category and only having defined categories and this caused a considerable drop in impressions.  So is it OK to go with a custom category, or am I risking longer term damage?”

Google seems to be phasing out custom categories. Still, custom categories can really help your visibility, provided you follow some guidelines.

“I integrated Google Places into Google+ Local as a verified Local Business.  This now offers me to choose categories in Google+ Local within the “Edit Business Information” screen.  Yet I can still choose categories within my original Google Places dashboard.  I am confused by the two different places to edit categories, and I am reluctant to add categories within Google+ Local, since, it appears my Google Places Dashboard categories are working really well.  Do I risk damaging my rankings by fiddling within the Google+ Local categories?  Or, should I duplicate the categories from Google Places Dashboard here?”

Your current setup sounds fine.  I’d leave it as-is.  You’re not going to hurt your rankings by adding relevant categories on the Google+Local side, but I wouldn’t say you need to.  Google’s categories will be a mess – rather, a two-headed monster – for at least a little while longer.

Review questions

“I have had 9/10 reviews filtered on my Yelp site.  How do you make them stick?  I have heard that if your customers aren’t active on Yelp their reviews get filtered.”

There’s nothing you can do to make more reviews stick.  What you heard is correct.  The best thing to do is to ask your customers up-front whether they’re already active on Yelp.  Yelp doesn’t want you even asking – let alone encouraging – customers for reviews.  So to the people you know to be active Yelpers, maybe you can suggest or intimate that you would not be entirely averse to their possibly considering posting a review   For everyone else, I suggest you follow my “zigzag” approach.

“Is there ANY way to change the review filter on Yelp?  (They have an odd way of only showing the majority of the bad reviews up front, even if someone has a majority of good reviews).”

No, sad to say.  See previous answer.

“Aside from Google+ and Yelp, what other website should clients write reviews on?”

CitySearch, InsiderPages, and Yahoo are my picks.  If there are any sites specific to your industry, try to scare up reviews on those as well.

“I want to appear on Google as one of the sites on the search map.  I have my site tuned up, filled out, but still don’t appear there.  Does it really just come down to the number or reviews a site has?”

Reviews are crucial, but other factors matter quite a bit.  It’s not enough to have a “filled out” site.  You also need to put a lot of elbow grease into citations, for one thing.  Although sometimes local rankings are a game of inches, more often they depend on how well you apply the fundamentals.

“Is Google going to integrate reviews from Google+Local with AdWords in the next 12 to 18 months?”

No idea.  I’m not sure anyone knows.  I do know that if you’re on AdWords Express and if you have Google+Local reviews from customers, the reviews will show in your ad.  But AdWords Express isn’t as effective as classic AdWords, so it would be nice to see some integration there.

Misfit questions

“How does having a mobile website affect Google rankings?”

I don’t believe that it does affect rankings – at least not directly.  But having a mobile-friendly site may help indirectly, because visitors are less likely to bounce and are more likely to “engage” with your site and maybe share it socially.  Those things can help your rankings.

“What do you think about paying for Yelp ads?  The lowest the rep quoted was $200 a month.  We have a small business and an even smaller advertising budget!”

I think it’s worth testing, with two caveats:

(1) See how many of your competitors are using it, and how many businesses like yours in other cities are paying for Yelp ads.  That will give you a sense of whether anyone in your line of work might be making money from Yelp ads.

(2) You’ll need to lay some groundwork first, by beefing up your Yelp listing as much as possible, applying at least a little conversion-rate optimization to your site (no point paying for ads that lead to a dog of a site), and doing what you can to encourage Yelp reviews.

“I know a high-end hairdresser who is already ranking high – and three times – on most targeted keywords: Once with AdWords, once in organic, and once in the local results.  How do you get more new customers into the door when you seem to already catch all the search traffic you can possibly get?”

Never ease up in your efforts to get reviews from as many customers as possible, and from as many different sites as possible.  Make your site as “sticky” as humanly possible.  Fill it with your knowledge.  Also, I’m a huge fan of CrazyEgg and Qualaroo.

“Is it possible to correct bad SEO – e.g. mass linking with poor anchor text on low quality blogs?”

Absolutely – assuming you completely stop the bad SEO practices that got you into hot water to begin with, and assuming you then make an effort to stand out in some way, be it through tons of reviews, tons of helpful and relevant info on your site, etc.

“Some service businesses & contractors work out of their homes but don’t want their homes listed publicly on the internet.  What’s the best way to handle this?”

Read my two posts on the topic:

Can You Rank Well in Local Google without Revealing Your Street Address Anywhere?

Private Local Citations: Where Can You List Your Business But “Hide” Your Address?

“How can I know if my web site is effective at making people take action? Lately we are getting very few calls but our analytics are showing about 10-15 views a day.”

It’s hard to know.  Your site shouldn’t try to “make” people take action.  It should answer their questions.  That’s the most important thing.  Aside from that, I can’t get into heavy-duty CRO here, but one piece of low-hanging fruit is to make sure you’ve got your address and phone number (and maybe email address) on every single page, above the fold.  Also, as I mentioned before, CrazyEgg and Qualaroo are tools that can help you learn more about your visitors and tailor your site to their needs.

“Is it important to embed other maps besides a Google Map on the website?  (Like one from Bing?)”

Nah.  Embedding even a Google Map on your site isn’t necessarily “important”: it’s mostly a convenience for visitors, and it’s just another little way to convey to Google that you’re local.  But no need to add a Bing or MapQuest map or whatever.

“There are a lot of differing fields that you can / have to fill out on the various citation directories. Is there a universal form to fill out?”

No, although I do have a questionnaire (the second of two – here’s the first) that I ask my clients to fill out.  I’m sure I could improve it, but it covers the bases pretty well.

“What is a “reputation management” account – as it relates to Dex or other yellow pages companies?”

A rip-off.  Just set up some Google Alerts and If This Then That alerts, and check on the main review sites from time to time.

“I do my own local SEO. Often in verification calls I get a lot of sales pitches.  One last week asked whether I wanted to “renew my subscriptions” and then when I said no told me they were going to send the bill “for the previous year.”  What’s up with that?”

Sounds like a typical shenanigan.  If you’ve never paid that site for advertising, there’s no way you’re on the hook for anything now.

You’ll get a decent number of sales pitches when you list your business on a lot of these third-party sites.  It may seem like a Faustian pact, but it’s a small price to pay for being listed on sites that, ultimately, help your local visibility.

—

Huge thanks to everyone who sent in questions.  You rock.

Let’s keep it going: Do you have any quick questions for which you just need quick answers?  Throw me a comment!

How it works

You create a page (hosted on Grade.us) that contains two things: (1) a message to your customers, and (2) some buttons that they can click on to write you a review on any of a variety of sites.

Then you just send your customers to that page, from which they can choose where they’d like to review your services.

Here’s an example of a page I whipped together for a client:

As you can tell, each button links to your business listing on a given site.  Obviously, that means your business needs to have a live listing on a site, so that you can visit your listing and grab the link and paste it into Grade.us.

You can create buttons for 37 different sites:

Google+, Yahoo, Yelp, Angie’s List, CitySearch, InsiderPages, MerchantCircle, YP, SuperPages, YellowBook, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Patch, YellowBot, Tupalo, DealerRater, Cars.com, OpenTable, UrbanSpoon, Zagat, MenuPages, Vitals, HealthGrades, RateMDs, UCompare HealthCare, DROogle, Wellness, ThirdAge, SpaFinder, Zillow, Trulia, TripAdvisor, Fodor’s, Orbitz, and Travelocity.

You can also add a “custom link” – that is, create a review button for a site that’s not on the long list.

What I like

• It has a clean, simple layout for customers.  Also, the buttons are nice and big.

• When customers click on the buttons, they’re given a few quick site-specific instructions for how to write a review on a given site (if they don’t know how already).

• The variety – the fact that it has review buttons for 37 different sites, and lets you create a custom link (in case there’s a different site you want reviews on).  As I explained during my talk at SMX West, giving customers choices and not shoehorning them into one review site or another is the best way to avoid having your reviews get filtered.

• The buttons show customers which sites allow them to log in with their Facebook (or Google) usernames.

• It doesn’t attempt to censor people who might write you a less-than glowing review.  Some review-request tools will first ask customers to indicate how many stars they’d like to leave you, and if it’s fewer than a certain number of stars, they’ll be shuttled off to a “Contact Us” form.  This is bad in several ways, but the worst part is it makes the process unnecessarily complicated for the customers who will write you a very positive review.

• The user-interface for you is nice and simple.  You don’t even need to know any HTML.

• It’s quick to create your page.  I created one in 10 minutes.

• It’s affordable, at $29/month for a single location or $59/month for multiple locations.

• It’s mobile-friendly.

• There’s a free trial available.  (I didn’t go through the signup process for that, though; the creator of the tool, Jon Hall, was nice enough to give me a license key to try it out.)

• It’s nicely white-labeled – as much as can be, short of having your page hosted on your site.  The Grade.us logo isn’t plastered on your page, and you can choose not to include the already-unobtrusive footer link on your page.

• You can integrate your page with Google Analytics.

Possible improvements (AKA my gripes)

• There are some elements that you should be able to customize, but can’t at the moment.  For instance, some might say the review buttons are too big, and that for a certain customer base (e.g. younger customers) smaller buttons would be better.

• They need an FAQ page, and maybe a “Dos and Don’ts” resource.

• It’s still a new tool – which means there are still a few bugs.  For instance, the “Forgot password?” option doesn’t work, if you happen to forget your password.

In a nutshell

Grade.us is nicely put together.  It’s quick and simple to set up your page, and it makes it simple for customers to post reviews.  From what I can see, it’s also ethical: You’re not dissuading less-than-beaming customers from posting a review.

It’s so new I haven’t had much of a chance to field-test it for my clients, but it’s already a very good tool, and I’m looking forward to seeing it progress further.

—

Any feedback on the tool?  Questions for me or for the Grade.us crew?  Leave a comment!

But even more of (what I consider) my finest posts were influenced by what other local SEOs have written.  Their insights spurred my lethargic brain cells – and my typing fingers – to start hustling.

Therefore, I’m writing this because:

(1) I’d like to say thanks to the people who wrote these posts, and because

(2) I’d like to round up and highlight their posts – which I really suggest you read and use in your quest to get more visible in the local search results.

(I wasn’t sure of the best order to present the posts in, so I’m just listing them in the order of my newest to oldest.)

Matt McGee’s
How to Create Local Content for Multiple Cities

16 Ways to Create Unique “Local” Content for Cities Where You Want to Rank

Mike Zaremba’s
Ultimate Local SEO Guide &

Jon Cooper’s
Complete Guide to Link-Building Strategies

Complete Guide to Google+Local Reviews

Miriam Ellis’s
The Zen of Local SEO

Why Slow Local SEO Rules

Nyagoslav Zhekov’s
Interview with Dan Austin, Google Maps Spam Fighter

Google MapMaker 101 for Local Business Owners

Chris Silver Smith’s
9 Common Ways to Bork Your Local Rankings in Google

7 Ways to Kill Your Local Search Rankings without Touching a Computer

David Mihm’s
Local Search Ranking Factors

How Long Does Local-Search Visibility Take?

A conversation with my dad, Jon (ace copywriter and conversion-rate wizard)

50 Local SEO Lessons from 50 Clients

David Mihm’s
Local Search Ecosystem

Local Business Reviews Ecosystem in the US & Canadian Reviews Ecosystem

Mike Blumenthal’s
Listing a New Business – A Timeline for Launch

12-Week Action Plan for Google Places Visibility

(You want to know what else inspired my “12-week action plan” post?  Go here and scroll about halfway down.  I kid you not.)

—

What posts have you found really useful or insightful?  Leave a comment!

After all, all you’re doing is asking your customers in a polite and un-pushy way to leave some honest feedback on your business’s Google+Local listing.

They say “No problem,” they go to write you a review…and nothing happens.  They’re frustrated, you’re frustrated, and your reviews end up swimming with the fishes.

It shouldn’t be this way, but it is.  Getting reviews takes some finesse.

I’ve had a lot of success helping my clients and others get the results of their karma, in the form of Google reviews.

That’s why I’ve put together a quick checklist of what are, in my experience, the best ways to prevent customers’ reviews from getting gobbled by Google’s filters.  It’s a quick reference for business owner and local SEO-er alike.

Here you go:
(click to download PDF)

Obviously, there’s never any guarantee that your customers’ reviews won’t get filtered.  But if you’re following those best-practices, you’re probably not trying to spam or game the system in any way, and you should end up with the reviews you deserve.

(By the way, if you want even more info, check out my monstrous complete guide to Google+ reviews.)

If so, you’d be crazy not to spend a little time making those pages unique – that is, clearly and substantially different from each other.

I’m going to show you a bunch of ways to make your “city pages” unique.  As opposed to having a page for “city1 + keyword,” another page for “city2 + keyword,” etc.

Differentiating your pages will help you avoid (1) possibly being penalized by Google and (2) annoying and repelling your potential customers.

(If you want, you can skip right to my suggestions for how to make your pages unique.  But maybe first you need to get up-to-speed – in which case just read on.)

I’m going to assume three things about your business:

(1) You’re trying to rank for a “boring” service;

(2) You only have one physical location (but also a service area that may encompass many cities/towns), and that

(3) You haven’t been able to think of much to say about the various towns in your service area (other than that you serve customers there).

If any of the above isn’t the case with you, great.  So much the easier for you to make your pages unique.  But I’m working under the assumption that yours is a head-scratcher case, where you just aren’t sure how to make anything but cloned pages.

My suggestions are also applicable if you have multiple physical locations and aren’t sure how you can differentiate your pages (or sites) from each other.

Why you might need city pages

Why might you want to go after organic rankings when you can get visible in the classic local search results?  (AKA Google+Local and Bing Places.)

Because sometimes there are towns in which you just can’t rank in the local search results.

Let’s say you’re a contractor located in a little town that’s 15 miles from three bigger cities.  Maybe you rank well in the Google+Local results within 5 miles of your office, but you haven’t been able to rank in the local results in the bigger cities because you’re just a little too far from where the action is.

What do you do?

You create pages on your site that target each of those cities you want to rank in.  Your aim is to snag some rankings in the organic results – the ones for local businesses.

Why you need unique city pages

It’s pretty easy to get organic rankings in nearby cities, right?  Just whip together a page, clone it for as many cities as you want to rank in, swap out the city names on each page, and watch those rankings roll in – right?

Maybe you’ve seen clone pages work for your local nemesis.  That schmuck has 25 pages on his site that are nearly identical, with only the city names differing from page to page, and he outranks you.

So why shouldn’t you create a bunch of near-identical “city pages”?  Why not build your very own clone army?  For at least four reasons:

1.  There’s a good chance it won’t work.  After all, you only see the cases where Google doesn’t penalize businesses for putting out a bunch of garbage pages.

2.  Even if it works now, it’s not going to work forever.  Google is slowly but surely getting more teeth with which to penalize sites that are long on “optimization” but short on helpful info.

3.  Even if you get the rankings you want, who says your pages will bring you phone calls?  (For that matter, who says your competitors are making money off their clone pages?)  Your customers aren’t stupid.  They can tell when you’re just paying lip service to their city.

4.  It’s lame.

The good news is it can be quick and easy to make your city pages different from each other – in a way that’s Google-friendly in the long-term and customer-friendly always.

16 ways to make your pages unique

Here are all the ways I know of that you can make your city pages unique from each other.  Some of these (probably the first 6) will be obvious to you, whereas you may not have thought of others.

On-page elements

1. Title tags.

2.  Description tags.

3.  Page names.  Don’t have these run too long.  A name with more than 4-5 words may look fishy to Google.

4.  H1s, H2s, etc.

5.  Internal links.  For example, you could link to a blog post you wrote about a job you did in your “target” city.

6.  Outbound links.  You could link to the town’s website, to the site of a charity you support in the town, or to a blog post that someone else wrote that’s relevant to the town and to your services.

Content

7. Write a simple case-study on a job you did in your target city.  (All the credit goes to Matt McGee for this idea.)

8.  Write about what you like about working in your target city, or what you like about its residents.

9.  Write a blurb about any employees of yours from your target city.  Better yet, have them do it.  Just something that shows at least a small (but real) connection to that city.

10.  Write about any local laws or regulations that your potential customers might want to know about.  (Hat tip to Marcus Sheridan of The Sales Lion for this technique.)

11.  Photos.  If you don’t have pictures of jobs you did in your target city, maybe have a picture of a local landmark.  Reflect the “local” subject matter in the names of the photos, and maybe in the alt tags and title attributes.

12.  Videos.  Each city page can have a different video.  Assuming you’re the one who created the videos, you can include in your YouTube descriptions a link to your city page, and you can geotag the video.

13.  Testimonials.  Mention the city of the customers who wrote them.  Depending on what your business is and how close you are with your customers, you might also be able to weave in relevant photos (e.g. “Fred’s front yard” or “Before-and-after of Sara’s smile”).

14.  Rich snippets.  You can mark up customers’ testimonials with Schema or hReview, so as to get those nice review stars to show up in the search results.

15.  Offers or giveaways that are tailored toward the residents of your target city.  Depending on how you approach it, this might also help you to track leads / conversions.

16. Make some Google “My Maps.”  See if you can make a few custom maps that potential customers might find handy.

Examples of good city pages

LandscapeGuys.com/white-bear-lake-landscaping.htm
(see search results here)

AttaboyPlumbing.com
(look under “About” tab)

(Note: I’ve worked with both of the above companies; I’ve done some consulting for Attaboy Plumbing, and Palumbo Landscaping is a long-time client.)

Great resources

(If you don’t read anything else, at least be sure to read the first two posts.)

Understand and Rock the Google Venice Update – Mike Ramsey

How to Create Local Content for Multiple Cities – Matt McGee

The Anatomy of an Optimal Local Landing Page – Mike Ramsey

The #1 Problem with Local Blogging – Matt McGee

The Nitty Gritty of City Landing Pages for Local Businesses – Miriam Ellis

Matt Cutts and Eric Talk about What Makes a Quality Site – Eric Enge

Guidelines on duplicate content – Google

Policies on keyword-stuffing – Google

—

Do you have any tips on how to make pages unique?

Any really good examples of city pages?

Any city-page woes that make you sing the blues?

Leave a comment!

That’s because this is an unofficial “sequel” (for good reason, as you’ll see).

How about taking a few minutes to read that older post.  Then come back here.

Done?

If you just buzzed through the first post because you’re hanging on my every word in this one – or if memory is your weapon of choice today – it’s time for a quick recap of the older post on “private citations”:

1.  Some business owners want to rank well in Google’s local search results and beyond, but don’t want their street addresses to be easily findable online (most likely because they work from home).  Maybe you have these privacy concerns, or know someone who does.

2.  Unless your business is listed on a variety of online directories (AKA citation sources), you probably won’t rank well in the local search results.  But you don’t want your address to be easily findable on those sites.  Now you’re feeling stuck.

3.  Turns out you’ll probably be able to rank well locally after all, because most of the important online directories actually do allow you to “hide” your street address – that is, to keep your address from showing up publicly on your business listing.

On the last point, notice that I said “most” of the important directories let you hide your street address.  In that older post I did on “private citations,” I only looked at the sites that you see when you do a free GetListed.org scan of your business.  At the time, those totaled 12 sites.  A great start, sure.

But an effective citation-building effort – again, which is crucial to your rankings – takes more than listing your business on even those 12 sites.

That’s why I’ve looked at more sites and have learned even more about where privacy fits into local search.

I’ve looked at a total of 31 of the most-important sites for your business to be listed on, and I’ve seen which sites let you keep your address private.

The breakdown: which sites are (and are not) “private”

(You can also get the breakdown on Google Drive, or as a PDF or Excel doc.  Just in case you want to see all the sites at a glance.)

AngiesList.com: yes.  There is not a checkbox for this; the “address” field is optional, so you can simply choose not to specify your street address.

Bing Business Portal: yes.

BizWiki.com: no.

BrownBook.net: yes.  The “address” field is optional; simply choose not to specify your street address.

City-Data.com: no.  The rules specify that the site is “only for brick & mortar businesses.”

CitySearch.com: yes.  (See my instructions for adding or claiming your CitySearch listing.)

CitySquares.com: yes.  The “address” field is optional; simply choose not to specify your street address.

DexKnows.com: maybe.  If you’ve hidden your address on LocalEze and suppressed your ExpressUpdateUSA listing, your address most likely won’t show up on DexKnows.

DirectoryCentral.com: no.

DiscoverOurTown.com: no.

ExpressUpdateUSA.com: no.  AKA InfoGroup, this is one of three main “data-providers” – in other words, a really important site to be listed on.  As I noted in my post from 2012, “you can’t simply ‘turn off’ the display of your address on your ExpressUpdate listing.  But you can search for your listing on the site and request its deletion, OR you can call up Customer Service and ask them to suppress your listing.”

EZLocal.com: yes.  The “address” field is optional; simply choose not to specify your street address.

FourSquare.com: no.  (Hiding your address would defeat the main purpose of being listed on FourSquare in the first place: getting customers to “check in” to your business on their phones.)

HotFrog.com: yes.

iBegin.com: yes.  The “address” field is optional; simply choose not to specify your street address.

JudysBook.com: maybe.  If you pay the monthly fee to claim your listing, you may be able to leave off your street address.  The other way to get your business listed on JudysBook is for a customer to find the hidden “submit” area and then to post a review of your business, although in this option the street address is required.

Kudzu.com: yes.  The “address” field is optional; simply choose not to specify your street address.

Local.BOTW.org: yes.

Local.com: yes.

LocalEze.com: yes.  (This is a major “data-provider” and an extremely important site to be listed on.  See my recent post for more detail.)

Manta.com: yes.  On one screen you’re made to provide a street address, but on the next screen you can check a “hide address” box.

MapQuest.com: yes.

MerchantCircle.com: yes.  The “address” field is optional; simply choose not to specify your street address.

MyBusinessListingManager.com: no.  AKA Acxiom, this is a major “data-provider.  If you’re already listed on the site and your address is out in the open, currently I’m not sure whether you can get your listing deleted or suppressed, although my guess is that you can.

Nokia (here.com/primeplaces): yes.  You have to specify your street, but you don’t have to specify your number.

SuperPages.com: yes.

Yahoo: yes.

YellowBot.com: yes.  But only once you’ve claimed your listing.  (See comment below from YellowBot co-founder Emad Fanous.)

YellowBook.com: maybe.  You can only edit the address by calling 1-800-929-3556; they may allow you to hide the address if you ask.

Yelp.com: yes.

YP.com: yes.

A few takeaways

Takeaway 1. The biggest directories (e.g. Yelp, YP) usually let you hide your address.  If you do nothing else, make sure you’re listed on these.

Takeaway 2.  The smaller directories (e.g. BizWiki, DirectoryCentral) aren’t as likely to let you hide your address.  Whether you want to add or keep a listing on these sites depends on which you’d rather have: a little extra “citations juice” or a little extra privacy.

Takeaway 3.  Your biggest challenge in juggling citation-building and privacy is to determine how you want to handle your listings on two of the three “primary data-providers”: ExpressUpdateUSA.com and MyBusinessListingManager.com.  The other main data-provider (LocalEze.com) lets you hide your address, so that one isn’t an issue.  But the former two sites make you list your address, and they feed your business info to lots of other sites.  You should be able to strike a good balance of local rankings and privacy if you’re listed on these non-private sites but make sure your address is private elsewhere.  But if you’re really concerned about privacy, you’ll need to contact the people at ExpressUpdateUSA (AKA InfoGroup) and MyBusinessListingManager (AKA Acxiom) and ask them to suppress your listing.  (I know the former allows you to do this, but I’m not sure about the latter.)

Some notes

Arguably a good citation-building campaign involves your creating and managing even more than 31 listings.  So does my list only get you only partway down the road?

No, because there are two “buts” that mean now you’ve probably got all the info you need to build citations effectively but privately:

1.  Several of those 31 sites feed business info to other sites, which means that over time the number of citations your business has will grow naturally and without your needing to do anything.  Meanwhile, to the extent you’ve made sure your address isn’t listed on those sites, it won’t get spread all over the web.  Win-win.

2.  If those 31 sites are the only ones you’ve listed your business on, then you’ve got a very good citations profile.  But to take it from “very good” to excellent will probably involve digging deeper (probably with the Local Citation Finder) to find citations that Google places extra “trust” in: either directories that are specific to your industry, or specific to your city/region, or both.  Because there’s an infinity of these industry- and location-specific sites, I’ll never be able to research which ones are “private” – at least before I’m using dentures and a walker.  So I’ll leave it up to you: whether you’d rather be listed on “niche” sites that may or may not require you to list your address.

Still, I want to learn about the privacy levels of even more sites.  That’s why this is an evergreen post: I’m going to update it as I learn about more sites.

What about non-US sites?

One obvious limitation of my current list is that I haven’t researched all that many non-US sites.

True: some of the sites (like Manta.com) are available outside the USA, or have a network of “sister” sites (like YP.com) in other countries.

And yes, if you download the list, you’ll notice that I’ve indicated which sites are “international.”  That should help you if you’re located outside the US.

But…if you have some time to spare and want to go through Nyagoslav Zhekov’s two great posts on important non-US citation sources and want to let me know what you find, I’d more than appreciate it (and will cite you here ).

—

Once again, here are the download options for the list of of “private” citations:

Google Drive
PDF
Excel

Got any questions or suggestions about juggling local rankings and privacy?  Go ahead – leave a comment.

Is your business listed on LocalEze.com?  I hope so: If you run a “local” business in the US, the site can indirectly help or hurt your local search rankings.

On a tight budget and want to list your business for free?  You’re out of luck.

As of just this month, LocalEze no longer allows businesses owners to add their listings to the site for free.

I’ve heard this from a couple of people now – including one of my clients and the guys from FireGang– which prompted me to go in and take a look for myself today.  I’ve come to the same conclusion.

Apparently, you can still claim your listing for free if it’s already listed on LocalEze (more on this in a minute).  It’s just that now you can’t add a listing (for free) that’s not already in the system.

I’m not wild about this change.

As I’ve written on several occasions, LocalEze is a very important site to list your business on if you want to rank well in the local search results – particularly in the Google+Local (AKA Google Places) results.  Being listed there and listed accurately is a huge step in making sure your citations are consistent.

I think the paid package is a good deal, but business owners shouldn’t have to fork over just to have basic control of their own business information.  Especially given how many other websites LocalEze feeds your business information to.

That’s what I know so far.  There are also some things I don’t know at this stage:

• I’m wondering whether LocalEze will remain as important a data-provider, at least as far as Google’s local-search algorithm is concerned.  No doubt it will remain important, but the move toward pay-to-play ultimately may mean fewer businesses and less-fresh info in the database – which is the last thing Google (not to mention Apple Maps) needs at the moment.

• If you’ve already got a claimed listing, can you only update it once annually (for free)?

• Will (and should) LocalEze continue to appear in GetListed.org scans?

• What will we be saying a year from now?

Anyway…

What should you do now?  At least one of four things:

• Join me in pouring a fohty for the free listings.

• If you’re listed on LocalEze and if you haven’t already claimed your listing, claim your listing while you still can do so for free.

• If you’re not listed and you’re not on a particularly tight budget, consider adding your listing by forking over for the paid package ($297 / year).  You can also add and gain control of your listing if you’re on Yext (which I believe is $397 / year for a single-location “small” business).

• If you’re not listed on LocalEze but you are on a restrictive budget, you can still get listed, but it’s going to take some work and patience.  You’ll have to list your business on pretty much all the other important directories (AKA “citation sources”).  LocalEze “trusts” some of these sites, and if your business is listed on the latter, it will probably be listed on the former after some months.  You’d have to list your business on these other third-party sites anyway if you’re serious about your local SEO.  The only difference is that now – if you have more patience than money at the moment – you may want to list your business on those sites first, rather than do LocalEze first and wait for it to feed your info to the other sites

Questions?  First-hand observations?  Not sure which plan of attack might be best in your situation?  Leave a comment!

Google reviews can be tough to get, and tough for customers to leave for you.  Google sure doesn’t make the process as easy as it could be.

But if you really want to attract more customers through the local search results, you need to get Google reviews from current and past customers.

That’s why I’ve written this.   There are business owners who know Google reviews are important, who want to follow Google’s rules, but who just can’t get any or many reviews – for one reason or another.  If you’re one of those people, this post is for you.

I’ve helped a lot of business owners get reviews, and I’ve seen many more review-gathering efforts fail (and yes, I’ve had a hand in a few of those efforts, too).

This post contains everything I know about Google+Local reviews.

Not only does it contain everything I’ve learned (that I can remember), but it will include everything I learn from now on, too; I consider this an evergreen post.  So I’ll update and tweak it over time – and certainly will do so any time Google shakes up its reviews system.

I’ve split it up into 6 sections:

The basics you must know about Google reviews

What most business owners don’t know (but should)

Best-practices for requesting reviews

Hard-learned lessons

Examples of requests/instructions for writing a Google review

Resources

Or you can start right from the top:

The basics you must know about Google reviews

• YOU need to read and understand Google’s guidelines for reviews, as does anyone in your company who helps you ask customers for reviews.  It takes a couple minutes to read them.  They’re reasonably clear.  If you have questions, you can ask me.  But just read and follow the rules.  Taking a couple minutes to do so can save you from serious heartache.

• Reviews as a whole are one ranking factor of many.  A competitor with no reviews or awful reviews may outrank you.  But rankings are secondary: The real point of reviews is to give people a reason to click on your listing and then to pick up the phone or visit your website.

• Reviews can only be written on Google+Local business pages, not on personal or on non-local-business Google+ page (more detail here).  If your page has the “Write a review” button near the top of the page, customers can write a review of your business on that page.

• Yes, customers must have Google+ accounts in order to write a review.  Having a Gmail account isn’t enough (it needs to be “upgraded” to a Google+ account).  That also means they can’t leave anonymous reviews; they need to be under customers’ real names.  But if you see a review that is anonymous – that says from “A Google User” – then that means it was written before May 30, 2012 (when Google started requiring people to have Google+ accounts to write reviews and to have their names on reviews they’d written in the past).

• Customers need to post the reviews themselves, through their Google+ accounts.  It’s not OK with Google if you transcribe and then post the kind words a customer has lovingly sent to you in a perfumed letter – even if it’s fine with your customer.

• Google has “filters” that are meant to prevent spammy or shill reviews from being posted.  But, like many other things Google has created, it only halfway works at the moment (and sometimes fails spectacularly).  It’s slowly getting better, but a lot of garbage reviews still make it through, while too many legit reviews still get filtered.

• A few of the factors that matter to the “review filter” seem to be: whether customers try to post reviews at an unnatural pace, how many reviews a given person has written previously, the wording of the review, and the user’s location (IP address).  We don’t know exactly what factors Google’s review filters consider, or which matter the most.  But the main thing you need to know is that Google has the facts on your business’s review-gathering activity and each customer’s review-posting behavior – and Google can take all of it into account when deciding which reviews to toss versus keep.  (For more on how to keep your reviews out of the filter, see my checklist.)

• There are several ways to navigate to your Google+Local listing on a desktop, laptop, or tablet: People can perform a normal search in Google, they can go through the “Maps” tab, or they can use the two search boxes in Plus.Google.com.  There is no one “right” way.  You just have to find out from your customers what they find easiest.  I’ve found that the easiest is to have customers search for your listing from within Plus.Google.com (once they’ve signed in or created their Plus account), because that’s where they’ll end up anyway to review you.

• Smartphone users need the Google+Local app, and they must navigate to your listing through the app.  Even if they have the app, they won’t see the “Write a review” button on your Google+Local listing if they navigate to it through their mobile browsers or by scanning a QR code.

• Customers can leave ratings (AKA “scores”) without actually writing a review.  Some people will do this, and although it won’t hurt you, you shouldn’t encourage it.  You want potential customers and Google to have the benefit of reading at least a couple lines on your business and on what makes you better than the next guy or gal.

• Your customers’ “friends” – the people in their Google+ “Circles” – may see you in their personalized search results as a result of your customers’ reviews.  To the extent your customers’ friends live or work near you, you’re probably reaching a few more potential customers.

• Google doesn’t set a minimum or maximum word count on reviews.  They can be as long or as short as your customers would like.  Nor have I found that Google is more likely to filter out one length of review.  My rule of thumb is that one small paragraph is a great length for a review.

• Customers don’t have to have their photo show up next to their reviews, if they don’t want theirs to; if they don’t add a photo to their Google+ profiles, none will show next to their reviews.

• Google has rules against cross-posting – that is, copying a Google review and pasting it onto your website or onto another review site (e.g. CitySearch).  If you try to build a clone army out of your Google review, it will probably be removed, and your clone army will wander around without a Fearless Leader.

• “Review stations” are not OK.

• Google is constantly changing.  Its policies, its staff, and its technology.  The difficulties in getting reviews change from year to year.  The only way to make it pay off long-term is to know and follow Google’s rules and to spend a few minutes every now and then reading up where you can (as you’re doing now).

What most business owners don’t know (but should)

• You shouldn’t focus solely on Google+Local.  You need reviews on a diversity of sites.  Give people options, and don’t push everyone toward the same site.

• I’ve always found that reviews are a huge boost to your Google+Local rankings, but the rankings benefit probably is more indirect than direct.

• At least in terms of rankings, the number of reviews you have seems to matter more than the quality of those reviews (i.e. whether your average “Zagat” rating is 9/30 or 29/30).

• It takes 10 reviews for your average “Zagat rating” to show up in the main search results

• If you see a review you don’t like – on your page or on a competitor’s – pretty much all you can do is flag the review and report it to Google.  The review may be a pack of lies, but there are not (as far as I know) human editors to whom you can appeal.  There is no Supreme Court here.  Google won’t grant exceptions (again, as far as I know).

• Google seems more likely to filter the reviews of businesses in certain industries than in others – particularly car dealerships and (in my experience) businesses that travel to customers.

• Reviews can vanish and then return.  They never seem to go away for good.  For instance, sometimes Google will temporarily lose many or all of your reviews – but then they might show up on your page again a few days later.  Google seems to mothball them away, rather than snuff them out completely.

• On the flipside, your reviews are never “safe.”  They can be thrown out even after having been on your Google listing for years.  This means, for one thing, that you should not focus exclusively on Google reviews.  It also means that if you cut corners in any way – which you shouldn’t do in the first place – even reviews that don’t get filtered may get the axe later.

• There’s no “reputation-management” service that can ensure your customers’ reviews won’t get filtered by Google.  Anyone who claims “We’ll get reviews from your customers and make sure they show up on Google” is lying.  There is no such trusted source that would allow Google’s little Algorithm Elves to say “Yep yep, another one from 5StarzGuaranteed.biz, let it on through…keep ‘em coming, you slackers!”

• Probably the worst thing about duplicate Google+Local listings is that they can split up your reviews.  In terms of your review “health,” two listings will weaken each other like Siamese twins.  If you have 10 customer reviews and 2 identical or near-identical Google listings, it might be the case that one listing has 6 of the reviews and the other has 4.  It’s better for all your reviews to be marshaled behind one listing that would get all the rankings benefit of those reviews, rather than have two listings that sorta-kinda benefit from a smaller number of reviews.  Also, with multiple listings, it’s harder to create a “wow” effect in the eyes of potential customers than if you had one listing with a ton of Google reviews.

• Google extracts the little “At a glance” snippets come largely from what customers write in your Google reviews.

• Google seems to mothball reviews.  In my experience, they don’t disappear forever – even if they’ve been filtered before ever making it onto your Google+Local page publicly, or if they’ve been on your page for a while and then thrown out post facto, or if Google has accidentally “stuck” your reviews on another business’s listing.

• If you relocate and open a new Google listing, you may be able to get your old reviews moved over to the new listing, but it’s not a sure thing.

• You can’t copy and paste your Google reviews and put them on your website, but you can take a screenshot of them and put the screenshot on your site, if you were so inclined.  It’s also fine to link to your Google+Local page from your website, but because you don’t want to shuttle people off of your website once they’re there, at least have the link open in a new browser tab.

• There are “Top Reviewers,” whose reviews Google “trusts” more than those of other people.  Reviews by these people may help your rankings more than will reviews by other people.

• Businesses can review each other.  This can be a good way to scare up some more reviews.  David Mihm has talked about this strategy ever since it became possible, and it’s a smart one.  (You can see a real-life example of this in a comment on a post of mine from last year, courtesy of Eric Marshall of ZCreative.)

• A review is not the final word.  You can and should write responses to the reviews, both good and bad.  When appropriate, you also can and should get in touch with customers who may have written a harsh review and simply ask – if it’s not clear to you already – exactly how you can improve.  Don’t ask for them to delete or change their reviews; just ask for feedback.  Many people (like me) respect and are impressed by that sort of thing.  )There’s also maybe a 10% chance they’ll edit or take down their review spontaneously.

Best-practices for requesting reviews

• Ask everyone for a review, not just your diehard customers.  Asking for a review should be like handing out your business card: something you do impulsively, almost without thinking.  Doing it in fits and starts doesn’t work.  You need to ask a constant stream of customers on an ongoing basis  – never too many or too few at one time.  Otherwise, Google and other sites may filter lots of your reviews, and (worse) getting reviews will just become another nagging to-do item that you’ll only get to when you “have time.”

• Don’t insist that people write you a review on Google+Local, to the exclusion of other sites.  Convey to your customers that although you always like Google reviews, it’s great if there’s another site they’d prefer to review you on.  This gets back to my earlier point about how you need reviews on a diversity of sites.  Asking about 50% of your customers for Google reviews is a solid policy, in my experience.

• Point out as often as possible that you’d like your customers’ honest feedback.  Having perfect 30/30 ratings is nice, but sometimes it can look fishy – to Google and (more importantly) to potential customers.  You can use reviews as a way to look perfect when you’re not, or you can use them as an opportunity to learn about where you can improve.  Your choice.

• Don’t tell people to leave a specific rating (e.g. “Excellent” – which is the equivalent of what used to be 5 stars).  I understand the temptation.  But most people are generous spirits, whom you won’t have to grease up in order to elicit a good word.  And if they’re not raving fans, there’s a good chance they’ll say why they aren’t – which means an opportunity for you to up your game.

• Don’t ask a bunch of customers at once to post reviews.  It should be as close to real-time as possible – right after the transaction, for lack of a better word.

• Expect a few lukewarm reviews or stinkers (or both).  They’re inevitable.  Even if they weren’t, getting a few harsh reviews is a small price to pay for getting your biggest fans to speak up.

• Don’t urge customers to use a specific device (e.g. smartphone) to post reviews.  They’ll use whatever works best for them.  Also, writing a Google review on a smartphone requires using the Google+Local app, which all but the most smartphone-happy customers might find to be a hassle.  So definitely don’t urge customers to review you on a smartphone.

• Don’t tell customers what to say in their reviews.  Just let them know that although more detail is always great, short reviews are also OK.  And don’t tell them to mention certain keywords.  That very well could backfire and leave you with filtered reviews.

• Don’t incentivize.  Not only is it against the rules, but makes you look as though you’re desperate. (Maybe you are desperate, but at least don’t show it blatantly.)  Worst of all, it actually can rub some people the wrong way.  Many people like feeling as though they’re granting a favor to someone, and would prefer not to feel like their words are being bought.  (This ties in with a great talk by Dan Pink – not to mention one of his books, Drive.)

• Don’t get greedy and insist that any one customer review you on more than one site.  For one thing, you don’t want that person to reuse the review he/she wrote you on Google+Local and use it somewhere else, or vice versa.  You also don’t want reviewing you to seem like a big, multi-step chore.  If a customer wants to, that’s awesome.  You both must be happy.  But don’t push it.

• Get a general sense of how many Google+Local reviews your local competitors have, and how often they seem to get them from customers.  That gives you a sense of what the “bar” is in your local market, and the extent to which reviews are even a differentiating factor between you and your competitors: Businesses in some industries just don’t get reviews, for one reason or another.  Don’t bust your butt to get 2 reviews each week if your competitors only get 2 reviews a year.

• When possible, try not to give customers the direct link to your Google+Local page.  Google most likely knows the referring URL – the page your customers were on before they came to your business’s listing.  It’s also likely that Google will start filtering some reviews if it looks as though nobody’s writing them spontaneously and as though you’re pressuring them.

• Do NOT delegate the requesting of the reviews to someone out-of-house.  It’s fine if your employee or receptionist does it, but the best is for the head honcho to be the one to ask.

• Respond to reviews – and not just the negative ones.  You don’t want it to seem as though the only way to get your attention is to slam you.

• You should ask using several different media.  Not just verbal, not just email, not just my handouts.  Test out which ones seem to work best, and use those.

• If you’re shy about asking for a review verbally, it might help to have some printed request and/or instructions. Even if it’s pretty much a worthless prop, it helps to have a show-and-tell piece. It can do a little of the work in explaining what it is you’re asking for. And it can take your customers’ eyes off of you for a second – which is a relief if you feel as though they’re staring holes into the back of your skull while you’re trying to explain what a Google+Local page is. You could probably do this by whipping out your phone, too. Whatever you like. Physical doo-dads in general make us feel much less awkward; that’s at least one reason there are drinks at parties, and I’m guessing that’s at least one reason the podium was invented for speakers. Figure out what makes you feel less shy – but if you use shyness as a reason not to ask for reviews, the loss is yours.

• You need a backup plan for situations in which customers try to write you a Google review but they get filtered out for no apparent reason.  If they’re willing to review you elsewhere, great.  But if not, be sure to say that it’s OK for them to add your business to “Circles,” or to write down a testimonial that they wouldn’t mind your posting on your site.

• Know how to tell whether a review has been filtered.  A customer’s review has been filtered if he/she is signed into Google and can see it on your Google+Local page but neither you nor anyone else can see it on your Google page.

• Do not stop asking for reviews.  Ever.  Even if Google throws out some (or all) of your reviews for whatever reason, try to figure out why they might be getting filtered.  But keep grinding away.

Hard-learned lessons

• You will not bat .1000.  Not everyone you ask will write a review.  Some who try will have their reviews filtered.  Some who try and succeed will write a review you don’t like.  But so what?  You’ve built a business.  That’s much tougher than pulling together some reviews.  Granted, it’s tough – but so is everything else that’s worth your time and effort.  You can do it.

• Beware of the “kitchen table” effect – where your request for a review sits on the place where your customers sometimes eat dinner with their families but more frequently pay bills and pile junk mail.  Some people will need to be asked more than once to review you.  And it’s OK for you to ask them more than once – just to remind them in a friendly, oblique way.  Even that won’t always work, but sometimes you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

• Some (or many) first-time reviewers’ reviews will get gobbled by Google’s anti-spam K9 unit.  There’s not much you can do about this, other than (1) to avoid asking a bunch of customers at once for a review, (2) to encourage honest reviews over unnaturally glowing reviews, and (3) to let customers know that their reviews don’t have to be of a certain length.

• If you’re giving instructions to people who don’t have Google+ accounts, don’t tell them first to find your Google+Local listing and then to sign up for a Plus account. It’s usually much easier the other way around. Some people say to me, “But Phil, if you just type our name into Google, our listing is right at the top. Isn’t that the easiest way to find our page?” To which I reply “Yes, but if some of your customers don’t have Google+ accounts, they’ll be prompted to create one and will have to search for your listing a second time before they can review you.” The other issue is Google sometimes won’t show your Google+Local listing at the very top of the search results, even if you search for it by name. Google often reshuffles the rankings. An easy way to find your listing today might not be as easy tomorrow. The bottom line is you should only ask customers to go to your Google page after they’ve got a Plus account.

• Save each review in two ways: (1) copy and paste the text of each review into a document that you’ll be able to dig up easily later, and (2) take a screenshot of each review a customer has left on your page.  You do NOT – and never will – “own” your Google reviews.  But at least this way you post them as testimonials on your website if it comes to pass that your reviews get filtered and you’re convinced they’re not coming back.

• Your customers care.  Not all of them, sure.  But many will write a review if you ask and maybe give them basic instructions as to how.  Don’t assume that you have to wave a Starbucks card in their faces in order for them to do good deed.

• Review-gathering can (and should) serve as a mini-diagnostic of your entire business and your practices.  For instance, if all your customers say they’d be happy to write you a review but none follows through, that might tell you that your customers don’t have as close a working relationship with you as they should.  Or if you’re consistently at 4 stars, and nobody’s angry with your service but nobody loves it, that might tell you something else.  Your reviews don’t just tell potential customers about your business; they can tell you about your business.

Examples of requests/instructions for writing a Google review:

A great video by Susan Walsh of ElSue.com:

From BarbaraOliverandCo.com (Mike Blumenthal’s flagship client):

From Yours Truly (click to see PDF):

Resources

Principles for a Review Plan: Considerations in encouraging customer reviews – Mike Blumenthal

Checklist for Keeping Google+Reviews out of the Filter – me

Asking for Reviews (Post Google Apocalypse) – Mike Blumenthal

A Way to Avoid the Google + Local Review Spam Filter? – Joy Hawkins

8 Ways to Recognize Fake Google Reviews – Nyagoslav Zhekov

The Coolest +Local Feature No One’s Noticed? – David Mihm

FAQ about Local-Business Reviews (on Google+Local and Third-Party Sites) – me

Should You Count Ratings Out In Google Local Rankings? – Chris Silver Smith

 9 Questions To Assess Your Review Management Stress Levels – Mike Blumenthal

The Local Business Reviews Ecosystem – me

My SMX West 2013 Presentation on Customer Reviews – me

What Should You Tell A Client When Google Loses Their Reviews – A 4 Part Plan – Mike Blumenthal

5 Ways Negative Reviews are Good for Business – Matt McGee

Local Search Ranking Factors – David Mihm

—

Any tips or anything else you’d add to the list?  How about questions?  Leave a comment!