Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
The Basics of Listing for Success
Here is a simple list of what is I have discovered is necessary to start improving your ranking at Google Maps and Yahoo Local.
As I have worked with local listings over the past year I created this small check list for achieving some measure of success. These points may be self evident or they may require additional clarification which I will be attempting to provide over the next several days. They all need testing and examination.
1)Be sure to edit the local listing and include the relevant business categories
2)Enhance the title of the Business to include the key phrase(s)
2a)Craft the categories and the description to reinforce the key phrase(s)
3)Get lots of web references (these are like links but not as rigidly defined) that reference the main key phrase and location of the business
4)Be sure that your own site has lots of references to your local address and key phrase
5)Join the Better Business Bureau/Mobile Travel Guide/Talking Phone Book etc. etc. that Google uses to provide details
6)Be sure to get some good reviews from the reviewing services the Google & Yahoo uses
Unlike optimization for organic search, optimization for local search at the major engines is in a much less developed state. It seems to have many fewer people poking, prodding and testing the hypothesis of local search and coming up with a definitive set of best practices. This is list is an attempt to create that model that we can all test. Have a go and let me know.
© Copyright 2024 - MIKE BLUMENTHAL, ALL RIGHT RESERVED.
Comments
3 Comments
Great to see your blog, Mike, found via Bill Slawski’s SEO by the Sea. I agree 100% that this is one of the most important areas for search, particularly with the explosive growth in the Mobile Internet, as Raffi said on another topic. I look forward with interest to coming topics and will certainly add my 2 cents when appropriate.
Barry
Thanks for coming, commenting and possibly collaborating. I look forward too (and feel that there is a desparate need) for collaboration in this area. It is a big suject and will take many people’s contribution to truly get their hands around the subject.
Mike
[…] I experimented with tweaking our own listing and in our first listed category out of the 5 categories I had entered we succeeded in having our local listing include a map (and exclude other local listings from the front page). I obviously followed my own instructions and was able to achieve this ideal placement but do not fully understand exactly why the listing was upgraded from the normal 3 local text links that appear on the main search result. […]
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