This link has been bookmarked by 402 people . It was first bookmarked on 17 Jun 2008, by Alvin Tan.
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Jason Rogers"Over the course of the past year, we've seen the search engine result pages that Google returns for Local Intent searches get more and more complex. Just over a year-and-a-half ago, Google introduced Blended Place Search, merging its traditional organic algorithm with its index of Local businesses from Google Places. But this was just the beginning."
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29 Dec 12
Peter Sullivan"Over the course of the past year, we've seen the search engine result pages that Google returns for Local Intent searches get more and more complex. Just over a year-and-a-half ago, Google introduced Blended Place Search, merging its traditional organic algorithm with its index of Local businesses from Google Places. But this was just the beginning"
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Quantity of Inbound Links to Website
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Physical Address in City of Search
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- Manually Owner-verified Place Page (PLACE PAGE)
↓1 - Proper Category Ass
- Manually Owner-verified Place Page (PLACE PAGE)
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ociations
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roper Category Ass
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Volume of Traditional Structured Citations (IYPs, Data Aggregators)
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awlable Address Matching Place Page Address
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Crawlable Address Matching Place Page Address
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(WEBSITE)↑
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PageRank / Authority of Website Homepage / Highest Ranked Page
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Quality of Inbound Links to Website
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- (OFF-PLACE/OFF-SITE) ↑9
- (OFF-PLACE/OFF-SITE)
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Crawlable Phone Number Matching Place Page Phone Number
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Local
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rea Cod
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Place
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Landing
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Eliminate data confusion.
5. S -
reviews
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customers
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happy
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olicit reviews from
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- Place Page Criteria
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Off-PlacePage/Off-Site Criteria
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Website Criteria
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Review Criteria
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ite Criteri
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3.77 0.86 N
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Off-PlacePage/Off-Site Criteria
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Review Criteria
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Physical Address in City of Searc
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h (PLACE PAGE)
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Authority of Website Homepage
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Authority of Website Homepage
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Highest Ranked Page
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- Volume of Traditional Structured Citations (IYPs, Data Aggregators)(OFF-PLACE/OFF-SITE) --
- Volume of Unstructured Citations (Newspaper Articles, Blog Posts)
- Volume of Traditional Structured Citations (IYPs, Data Aggregators)(OFF-PLACE/OFF-SITE)
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Proper Category Associations
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Manually Owner-verified Place Page
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Location Keywords in Anchor Text of Inbound Links to Website
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Product / Service Keyword in Website URL
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Authority of Landing Page Specified in Places
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Quantity of Inbound Links to Website
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Quantity of Inbound Links to Website
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Quality of Inbound Links to Places Landing Page URL
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- Product/Service Keywords in Reviews(REVIEWS) ↑9
- Location Keywords in Reviews(REVIEWS) ↑21
- Volume of Native Google Places Reviews (w/text)
- Product/Service Keywords in Reviews(REVIEWS)
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Volume of Unstructured Citations (Newspaper Articles, Blog Posts)
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Volume of Third-Party Unstructured Review
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Crawlable Address Matching Place Page Address
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Authority of Landing Page Specified in Places
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Numerical Percentage of Place Page Completeness
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Verified KML File on Domain Name
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The first number listed to the right of each factor indicates the relative change in importance as compared to last year's position. A positive number means the factor became more important this year; a negative number means it became less important.
The second number listed is the average position of that factor in respondents' rankings. The higher the number, the more important it was considered.
The third number listed to the right indicates the standard deviation of the responses. The lower that number, the higher the agreement of the panel. The higher the number, the more the experts' responses varied.
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Optimize your website for location+products/services, including building good links to your pages.
2. Choose the proper categories in Places.
3. Make sure Google can associate your website and your Places page together.
4. Eliminate data confusion.
5. Solicit reviews from happy customers.
6. Work on everything else as time and budget permit. -
NAP consistency
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Before you do anything you need to do research to figure out the absolute best NAP to use on Place page. THEN need to decide which is the most advantageous Place page to keep.
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If you deal with professionals like Drs and lawyers, this is especially important for 2 reasons: 1) To attribute as many existing citations and reviews as possible to the Place you decide to optimize. 2) To help clean up the dupe mess. Then after determining best NAP, be sure site NAP matches Place page NAP, then try to correct the most important data sources.
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I'll include Places business name including location and/or service keywords in the name as a ranking factor but only if the business can legitimately use it, as in it is actually part of their official name. Otherwise it can cause a penalty.
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So, Proximity and Categorization remain very strong factors for this results set.
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, it's good idea to review your Trusted Providers NAP + W (Name + Address + Phone / Website) information and correct any errors before you claim,
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rack all history of NAP and make sure it's consistent
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no PO boxes, zip code, local phone
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Proper Category Associations
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Proximity of Address to Centroid - We often see businesses rank higher for search queries in the city that they are closest to the centroid for, even if it isn't the city that their business is located in.
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Location Keyword in Business Title - This is critical for search queries that include the location. Not as important for generic search queries that trigger local results.
Product / Service Keyword in Business Title - This is critical for search queries that include the specific product or service keyword. Not as important for tail end search queries that trigger local results. -
i) N.A.P consistency ii) Overall volume of structured, 3rd party, and unstructured citations. iii) Overall volume of native Google and 3rd party reviews from authority sites.
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As to putting local city name or service in a places page, it could either help or cause a penalty. To the extent that doing so escapes Google's review it helps in rankings. In a different competitive situation, sites with enormous volumes of reviews as compared to competitors w/ scarce numbers of reviews do very well. Of interest in some of those cases with lots of reveiws, the same information shows as citations--so the generators of those reviews give the places page a double dose of value.
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Most important is to manually claim your Place Pages listing
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Unrelated categories can send very confusing signals to Google.
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keywords without geo-modifier as categories - photos and videos - utilizing description for additional "categories" and secondary service locations - custom attributes for additional "categories"
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Physical location & links are basically the only factors that really matter. Reviews, citations and keywords in text associated with the queries can make a difference, but I have seen too much evidence that fake addresses, UPS mailboxes, temp office space in the right location, etc. and a couple of links can get you a #1 ranking every time to think that the other factors are even remotely as powerful.
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We've found that for many clients in narrow channels, the results are not mirrored as they are for much larger channels...say 'stapping machine service' versus 'running shoes' -- the difference is notable as well as confusing when it comes to gauging factors that work for Place specific rankings....so as yet, we continue to be analyzing the data..
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teady, accelerating growth is ideal.
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Optimizing your website for location+product/service terms strengthens Google's trust in where you are and what you do.
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NEVER only list an 800 # without a local number, and NEVER only list a PO without a physical address.
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hCard and KML helps, but is not crucial.
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The website primarily serves as a citation and 3rd party review source for Google Places Pure search results. Key factors include microformat inclusion, location and category keywords in Titles, Headers, and Body Content. Additional tips include adding location and category keywords to URL slugs. While Google has been sluggish to pick up hReview formatted reviews from small business websites, it's finally starting to do so. It's definitely important to have your testimonials page coded in hReview and hReview aggregate. Then, go ahead and tell Google about it by enrolling in their Rich Snippet program.
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At a minimum, make sure you home page META title, H1 and content include your main services/products and main location area(s). These are the clearest and easiest signals to provide to Google.
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Site title with appropriate keywords is a strong influencer even when those keywords are not part of the business name.
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Don't over-optimize! If you stuff city/state into every title on your site, you could get dinged.
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Local directories, an area that we've always been sceptical on, have in the past year, become more important to our client rankings -- enough that we now feature our own select group of same and actively pursue same for our client roster...citations DO work....and we think that the list of available citation spots is growing....and is listened to by all search engines as well!
--Jim Rudnick -
1. Citations
2. Reviews
3. User Generated Data -
If Google can't associate your website with your Place page, you won't get a blended listing.
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The factors on the website need to sing in unison with the factors on the Place Page.
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In traditional SEO, you want your website to tell Google that it is about X. With blended local SEO, you need the website to tell Google it's about X, the company name is Y, and the company is located in Z.
--Brian Combs -
The title tag of the website became as big a factor for local as it has always been for traditional organic. You can expect ranking and ctr to be effected by how the title is written.
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Highly relevant landing page, specific for the location and the authority (PageRank, volume of incoming links, anchor text relevancy of links, etc.) of the domain.
--Aleyda Solis -
Links and link-text are obviously highly influential as part of the PageRank elements involved in blended Place Search results. In addition, non-link citations may be increasingly factoring into rankings, although they are more difficult to analyze and quantify in terms of impact.
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Quality links, diverse link sources, and anchor text are incredibly valuable.
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Taking the time to network via Social Media often results in quality links, mentions and citations to your business that all support rankings.
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- Physical Address in City of Search (PLACE PAGE) ↑1
- Manually Owner-verified Place Page (PLACE PAGE) ↓1
- Proper Category Associations (PLACE PAGE) --
- Volume of Traditional Structured Citations (IYPs, Data Aggregators) (OFF-PLACE/OFF-SITE) --
- Crawlable Address Matching Place Page Address (WEBSITE) ↑25
- PageRank / Authority of Website Homepage / Highest Ranked Page (WEBSITE) ↑34
- Quality of Inbound Links to Website (OFF-PLACE/OFF-SITE) ↑9
- Crawlable Phone Number Matching Place Page Phone Number (WEBSITE) n/a
- Local Area Code on Place Page (PLACE PAGE) ↑18
- City, State in Places Landing Page Title
MOST RECOMMENDED FACTORS TO FOCUS ON
79 → 1 34.44 → 37.61 ▲ - Physical Address in City of Search (PLACE PAGE)
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Diane Hibbs"MOST IMPORTANT REVIEW ENGINES (U.S. Specific)
Yelp (-- from 2010)
Google Places (↑ 1)
Citysearch (↑ 1)
Yahoo Local (↓ 2)
Niche Industry Sites (including TripAdvisor, OpenTable, and DealerRater) (↓ 2)
InsiderPages (↓ 1)
JudysBook (↑ 1)
Superpages (↓ 6)
YellowPages (--)
Kudzu (↑ 2)" -
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Matthew OgstonExcellent report on the ranking factors that affect local search rankings
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Jon DeLauriekeys to local rankings servey
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