Google My Business and Reviews
Yes I know, Google My Business is tied to a Google+ Page and no one seems to like Google+, but I have to say that there is a place for Google My Business and the reviews that are done there.
I recently moved to the Fredericksburg area which is in central Virginia. I need all new doctors, a new beauty salon, a new dentist – well new everything! How have I, an experience web marketer found new businesses to trade with and doctors to go to? From Google My Business!
As Google showcases Google My Business listings in the search results preferentially and returns them based on your own location, the results are catered to you personally. Click a result and you do not go to a website, but rather a larger map view with all local listings at the side and a plethora of reviews.
Which listings did I take time to review – those with reviews. Who did I not even bother to look at – anyone with no reviews or those with poor reviews and a low number of stars.
I never even went to any websites but the last two selections I made and then to only get the phone number and check out the faces of people who I would be trading with.
That’s the new way Google is forcing us to use their search engine. Clicking into a business website is secondary to getting the information you need fast right from Google AND this is where the Google My Business page is so important, as this is now the landing page before a client even gets to your website.
If you are smart and work the Google system, you will start now by setting up your Google My Business page and then aggressively working to add reviews to that page. Remember, Google is wanting people to stay on THEIR site to serve ads and to not even need to click into your website for information.
If you need savvy solutions to help with your website visibility visit us at McCordWeb.com – there’s no SEO “snake oil” here!
The End of Manipulating Google Places
Very quietly Google has changed Google Places to remove the ability to manipulate a listing for organic performance. This action has very quietly slipped under the radar, but the changes are big for businesses.
First, this last month, Google sent out notices to all Google+ Local businesses that duplicate listings of the same business would not be allowed. Google immediately disable access to all Google+ Local pages (also known as Google Maps pages and Google Places accounts) to email addresses that did not carry the business domain or were not recognized by Google as clearly being the account owner by email, or having the business phone number or carrying the registered address. This effectively locked out all third party account managers and update services.
Google then advised all account access users that the main account owner – not even the originator of the account, would have to allow access to any users from the parent account. Additionally that any approved users would then have to manage the account for two full weeks before transfer of the account could be done.
By making the linking and transfer process so complicated Google has effectively locked our all parties except the one account owner. Of additional important note is that Google has been removing one by one the items a business owner could actually change on their account.
Over time, Google has removed the ability to add keywords and to craft a message that helped the business place locally. Google even removed the ability for a monthly promotion as well as comments from the page owner.
With this most recent update Google has now forced all Places pages now into the format of a true Google+ page. No longer is the look and feel different of a Places page from a postable Google+ Business page but identical and one that you can now post to with a third party app like HootSuite.
These huge changes to who can own and update the page, what the page looks like, and how you interact with the local page have now made Google+ Local pages unable to really be optimized for organic placement. This bad for businesses, but great for Google. Google gets more people forced into Google+ and now nets out manipulation of local results.
How to Place Locally on Google – National Service Provider with Several Locations
In our series on placing for local searches on Google, this is our last option and one of the toughest although there are still some smart things to do to attempt to reach local buyers. This article is for the scenario when you have a business that has one or several far flung locations but sells nationally.
Here’s what I’ve found works for location specific placements when you are selling nationally.
1. First, see our post from 4-8-14 on how to rank for one city. In this twist of one business selling nationally, again it is key to put all your location addresses in the footer of your website. If you have more than three or four locations, I would do a location page for your website and then just list the city and state names in the footer hyperlinking to your specific location page. You may have offices in only one city or two, but having the local addresses is still key. However I would add a tag line after the locations stating something like “Serving clients nationwide for 10 years.” Make sure in your content that you are talking about your nationwide services.
2. Here a page for each state may not work or may be too cumbersome and the truth is that a nationwide provider will be at a disadvantage when compared to a local provider for location specific searches. Make sure that any city you are located in however, does still get mentioned by location as you do still want to place locally for your branch offices.
3. Setting up a Google+ Local page for each location is really key for organic placement where you have a branch office. Take some time and put some thought into what you will write and make sure the pictures and videos if you have them (highly recommended) are unique to that location.
4. Where you can, make sure you validate your Google+ Local page. A PIN will be hard copied mailed to the physical address. Your staff needs to be vigilant to find this PIN envelope. It will look like junk mail and will have NO Google ID on it. Nothing will show on Google until you validate and then typically a two to four week delay after verification to show in the results is not uncommon.
For nationwide providers the reality is that to be visible locally you will need to move into paid search if you want prominence on local placement. There is simply no way to scam Google into showing a Google+ Local page or for that matter even be able to validate one where you do not have a physical location. By setting up your AdWords program to target local city names or state names with dynamic keyword insertion your ad will appear up at the top of the page for these important location searches just not in the organic section.
One caveat on this. I have found that when you can own the state organically, Google will preferentially show your results in many cases for all cities in that state. So it is not a bad thing to create location specific pages but the content must be unique, of value, not keyword heavy and be state specific.