google places experts...I have a question...

4 replies
Guys, please forgive my ignorance if this is a silly question. Admittedly, I am just starting to dabble with ranking in google places.

With that said, here is my question:

I understand you need citations, as well as reviews, photos, videos on your place page to rank. A regular website helps also.

Does it matter if the city/town is in your keywords for the photos on the places page? Does it matter if the site has the city/town in your keywords on your site (the site will have some citations - address etc).

So if I have a plumbing business. Do I need "town name plumbers" or "town name plumbing" in my photos, keywords, etc OR is it ok to just use "plumbers" or "plumbing" on the photos on the places page as long as I am using citations in other areas and getting reviews?

Also, using google keyword tool as an example, most local keyword searches "town name plumbers" in google keyword tool are insubstantial or less than 10 searches a month. Is this something to worry about as far as generating leads for a client? Or is the keyword tool not useful when it comes to google places?

Hope this makes sense...

Any advice would be great...thanks
#expertsi #google #places #question
  • Profile picture of the author Seantrepreneur
    By in the photos do you mean in the actually photo or the file name of the photo? Yes, you want the file name to be "plumbers in city". That's part of optimizing the listing. Also, you want the video title, description and tags to have your keywords in them.

    Don't worry about the keyword tool right now because Google Places has great insights that you can look at once the listing is up and running. Your client should be happy seeing his listing at the top of places because he will understand that he is more likely to receive calls being number 1. 20% of searches done on Google have local intent so I'm certain ppl are looking for plumbers in your town.

    Hope that helps,

    Sean
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    • Profile picture of the author Pasquach
      Originally Posted by Seantrepreneur View Post

      By in the photos do you mean in the actually photo or the file name of the photo? Yes, you want the file name to be "plumbers in city". That's part of optimizing the listing. Also, you want the video title, description and tags to have your keywords in them.

      Don't worry about the keyword tool right now because Google Places has great insights that you can look at once the listing is up and running. Your client should be happy seeing his listing at the top of places because he will understand that he is more likely to receive calls being number 1. 20% of searches done on Google have local intent so I'm certain ppl are looking for plumbers in your town.

      Hope that helps,

      Sean
      Sean, thanks this helps. I was hung up on seeing how searches in the keyword tool came up (like a traditional site) and nothing on most of my businesses had searches. And I will be charging some of my clients for leads, so I was concerned of going through the whole process and then not getting leads. But if I am optimized correctly, I should get leads based on the 20% rule you mentioned, maybe even more.
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      • What I recommend is just do regular national KW research for instance to see if cosmetic dentistry or family dentistry gets more search volume. Then just realize that based on size of city, that city will get a percentage of searches for that KW.

        According to fairly extensive research I've done, consumers search most often for plumber, dentist, etc WITHOUT city. It's still a local search and Google will show them local results based on their IP. Plus any city + KW searches are splintered into so many variations. City KW. KW in city, KW near city, KW City State, KW city st abbreviated.

        So city plumber in small towns may not show much volume, for a wide variety of reasons, but still may get lots of searches.
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