Local Visibility System

The Last Local SEO Guy You'll Ever Need

Phil

Your Google Places Landing Page: Homepage or City-Specific?

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What should you put in the “Website” field of your Google Places page: the URL of your homepage, or of one of your location pages?  You know it can affect your rankings.  Which one do you pick?

I suggest you use your homepage as your landing page, whenever possible.

There’s debate over which page to use.  This great thread on Linda Buquet’s forum shows that.

It’s a trade-off:

On the one hand, the homepage URL (AKA root domain) usually has the most page authority – from any links the site has earned.  Most of your links probably point there.

On the other hand, a location-specific page by definition does a better job of “targeting” (I hate that word) the city you’re in.  You’re talking about one city rather than several.

From what I’ve seen, the “authority” of the homepage seems to pack more punch for rankings.

Why?  As I mentioned, my best guess is that it’s because the homepage usually has the most link juice.  Or maybe it’s because most businesses’ “location” pages are thin on content or over-optimized – to the point that maybe Google dings them.  I don’t know.

What I do know is I’ve seen the homepage URL work time and time again for multi-location clients, and for business I stumble across “in the wild.”

I also know I’ve had a couple of clients whose rankings were nowhere until we switched the URL – on the Places page and in the citations.

I didn’t always err on the side of using the homepage as your landing page.  For a time, organic rankings and Google Places rankings could be mutually exclusive.  Google’s setup was such that if your homepage had a page-one organic ranking, and then you used your homepage as the landing page for Google Places, you’d lose your organic ranking if you started ranking in the Google Places “7-pack.”

That’s not the case now – thank goodness.  At least at the moment, you can have your homepage rank organically and serve as your Google Places landing page.

You may have other concerns about using the homepage:

1.  You’d find it hard to make the homepage title tag relevant to multiple locations.

2.  You feel that having the name / address / phone (“NAP”) info for multiple locations on the same page might hurt rankings.

For the title tag, just do the best you can – in terms of getting city names in there.  In my experience, it’s more important to make sure your main service(s) are in the title tag; Google knows where you’re located.

Speaking of Google “knowing” where you’re located, I’ve never seen any bad effects from having multiple blobs of NAP info on the homepage.

One last thing I’d like to mention:

Please use your discretion.  If you’re ranking well already, you should probably leave well enough alone.  Don’t go changing your landing page URL everywhere if you’re #3 and want to move up a couple positions.

The best situation in which to take my advice is (1) if you’re just starting your local SEO effort, or (2) if you’re not ranking well and you feel like you’ve tried just about everything else.

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What’s been your experience?  Which type of landing page has worked – or not worked – for you so far?  Leave a comment!

How to Structure Your Site for Local Search Visibility That Lasts

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The Ise Shrine is pretty cool.  The Emperor of Japan had it built in the 7th Century.  It’s made of untreated wood, yet it’s stood for over 1300 years.  How?

Because master carpenters rebuild the whole thing – board by board – every 20 years.

Your site won’t have to serve you for quite that long, but you can build it to last.  If you structure it according to a few best-practices, it’s more likely to rank well in the local results, and to be easy for customers to use.  It will also be easier to make changes later on if you need to.

I’m not talking about internal link structure (how your pages should link together).  Other posts deal with that nicely.  Nor am I talking about what should be on your pages.  I’ve talked about that, too.

I’m talking about where to put stuff.  Simply having “content” on your site isn’t enough.  You need to organize it in a way that Google and customers can understand all your business offers.

For my clients’ sites, there are some points I really harp on, and some that I don’t consider crucial – but wise to do.  Let’s go through the former – my “hard rules” – first.

My hard rules:

1.  Have one site – or as few as possible.  Avoid microsites.  Avoid mirror sites.

2.  Put your blog on the same domain.  Preferably it’s at yoursite.com/blog.  You want your posts and any links to benefit the site you’re trying to rank.  (By the way, if you don’t have a blog because your wheels are spinning, see this and this.)

3.  Your page structure should be granular: Have a page for each service, each location, each practitioner or employee.

4.  Form a “bulls’-eye” pattern with your content.  You should have an area of your site – like your blog – where you’re concentrating useful content, but you should also have “content” spread throughout the rest of your site.  That stuff can rank.  Think FAQ pages, bio pages, or city pages.

5.  Your homepage should be a static page, rather than feature your latest blog posts.  One reason (of many) is that Google needs a consistent picture of what your business offers, if you’re to rank for those services.  The blog post du jour won’t necessarily do that.

My softer rules:

6.  Your navigation should be dummy-simple.  You want to avoid pogo-sticking.  If you want people to see your “Products” page, it should probably be in your top menu.

7.  Avoid “island” pages – pages that have no internal links to them, or only links that are buried in pages few people see.  This is in the same vein as point #6.  Everything should be findable in 1-2 clicks from your homepage.  Google needs to be able to crawl those pages easily.  And if you don’t want people to find those pages easily, you should reconsider whether they even should be on your site.

8.  Use as few subdirectories as possible.  (Or else you get this.)

OK, time for a quick break.

Now, you may want to check out some examples of well-structured sites.  Here are a few keepers:

CohenWintersPlasticSurgery.com

NOVAChiroWellness.com

PringleLaw.ca

It’s also worth checking out these relevant posts (including a couple of mine):

Intelligent Site Structure for Better SEO – Joost de Valk

Site Architecture & Search Engine Success Factors – SearchEngineLand

The Anatomy of an Optimal Local Landing Page – Mike Ramsey

Location pages for local businesses and organizations – Google Developers

Microsites for Local SEO: the Pros and Cons – me

21 Pages a “Small Local Business” Site Needs for Tip-Top Local Visibility – me

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How do you suggest structuring a site for maximum local visibility?

Did I forget any big no-nos?

Leave a comment!

“Some of My Google+ Reviews Just Got Filtered. What Should I Ask My Customers to Do?”

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One of my oldest clients asked me that question the other day.  He had dozens and dozens of Google+ Local reviews that he earned over the months.  3-4 of them got filtered after living happily on his page for several weeks.

He then asked, “Should I just ask customers to repost their reviews on Google+?”

I said, “Take it easy, Rambo.”

Then I suggested an action plan:

It’s true that Google’s filters aren’t as tough as they used to be, but they still do filter reviews (as we’ve seen).   If Google sees customers re-post the same reviews that got filtered, that looks weird.

It also looks weird if a customer isn’t a frequent reviewer on Google+, and posts one review, and that review gets filtered, and he/she posts another review of the same place.

Here’s all you can do: if those 3-4 reviewers have written reviews of other businesses besides yours, it’s probably OK to ask them to post another review on Google+, provided that they rewrite it rather than post the same thing.  But if your business is the only one they’ve reviewed, don’t ask them to review you on Google+ again.  Ask them to write a review elsewhere.

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What do you suggest asking customers to do if they’re still willing to write a review after their first one gets filtered?  Leave a comment!

Overlooked Local SEO Posts of Early 2014

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The first 4 months of 2014 brought some big posts that got plenty of attention in the “local” space (and for good reason).

But then there were some great posts that didn’t get as much fanfare.  Not that they were ignored; I just think they’re widely useful.

Here are some posts worth reading:

Why You Should Check Facebook and Foursquare Frequently for Duplicates – Nyagoslav Zhekov

3 Local SEO Secrets Learned Over Time – Mikel Zaremba

7 Deadly Sins of Responding to Negative Reviews – Gradiva Couzin

Checking Google Places Penalties – Ben Roland

New Way to Measure How you Stack up to Competitors on Google Plus: View Counts – Joy Hawkins

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Of the above, do you have a favorite?

Any other “overlooked” posts you’d recommend?

Leave a comment!

How to Use Google Places Descriptors: Some Early Best-Practices

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In February, Google started allowing you to add a “single descriptor” to your Google Places page – that is, a word or short phrase that isn’t part of your business name.

It’s a huge departure from Google’s old policy, which was that you must use your legal or “offline” business name.  There couldn’t be any embellishment.

For example, under the old rules, if your business was called “Jones & Jones,” that’s what you had to put in the “business name” field of your Google Places page.  Now, it could be “Jones & Jones Roofing” or “Jones & Jones Bankruptcy Law.”

This rule-change is 30% opportunity and 70% problem.  To dig into the implications, read this post by Mike Blumenthal, this thread on Linda Buquet’s forum, and watch minutes 44-49 of this MaxImpact (then watch the whole thing).

I’d like to focus on how I’d suggest using a “descriptor,” if you’re considering it.

Do NOT take any of this for gospel.  My pointers are based entirely on what I’ve observed with a handful of clients who’ve used descriptors over the past couple of months.

I’m also not saying you should or should not use a descriptor for your business.  That’s for you to decide.

A few other things to keep in mind:

  • This is Google’s house.  Google’s rules.
  • The rules can (and probably will) change.
  • The rules are unclear.

Anyway, here are my personal descriptor dos and don’ts (in no particular order):

1.  Strongly consider adding a descriptor if there is a practical, non-SEO-related reason to do it.  For example, it’s probably worth trying if you have multiple locations you’d like to differentiate, or if the name of your Google Places is “Dr. John Doe,” or it simply gives no indication of what you do.  I guess don’t rule it out if rankings are your sole reason for adding a descriptor; just be more cautious (and paranoid).

2.  The fewer words, the better.  It’s true that Google is unclear about how many words constitute a “descriptor.”  But don’t assume it’s a free-for-all – or that you’d even benefit from stuffing in multiple words.

3.  Don’t change all your citations to match your tweaked Google Places name.  Google should be able to recognize that they all refer to the same business.  Also, if (when?) Google does another 180, you’ll want to avoid having to change all your citations again.

4.  Don’t keep messing with the descriptor.  No, it’s not set in stone.  But any change in rankings will probably take a couple of weeks to happen.  Also, for all we know, Google might penalize you for trying on 10 descriptors like they’re pairs of shoes.

5.  Put the descriptor at the end of your name.  Don’t perform surgery on your whole name by reshuffling the words.  That’s more likely to mess up your citation-consistency.

6.  Using your city name as the descriptor probably doesn’t make sense unless you’re multi-location.  Also, if you’ve done the proper work on your citations and you have your NAP on every page, Google almost certainly knows where you’re located.

7.  It should be a “keyword” or a city name, but not both.  That’s more likely to look spammy to Google.

8.  Do all the local SEO work you were going to do anyway – even if your rankings get a bump from the descriptor.  Otherwise your rankings are like Bill Murray’s character in Stripes before he joins the Army.

9.  First make sure your Google Places listing is live – findable when you search for it by name.  That gives you a baseline of where you are without the descriptor.  If your listing isn’t even publicly visible, you have no way of knowing what effect the descriptor might have.  And if you suspect a penalty, you also wouldn’t know what’s causing your listing to be penalized.

10.  If you have multiple locations, it’s probably not wise to use a “descriptor” for all of them at once.  See what happens when you try it for one or a couple of locations.  Dip your toes in the water.

11.  If you’re an SEO and you want to try the descriptor, ask your clients first!  Tell them the risks – even if they’re the ones who suggested it in the first place.

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What’s been your experience with the “descriptor” so far?

What are your questions?  Concerns?

Leave a comment!