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Offliners: Any Idea How Google Ranks their Local Listings?

by MisterMunch
12 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi!

I hope some of you can help me with advice on this. I am going to set up several local listings for different businesses, but I do not have any information on what I need to do to get them to rank higher on the list.

I would also be interrested to know how to drop keywords in there.

Is there any resorces available on this issue (like SEO for loacal search), or do you have any advice? The effort I do will only be when registering at google, but I am also interested to know if other things might help.

Munch
#google #idea #listings #local #offliners #ranks
  • Profile picture of the author Music City Copy
    Check out David Mihm's stuff on Local Search Ranking Factors. It's awesome.

    Local Search Ranking Factors | Google & Yahoo Local SEO Best Practices
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  • Profile picture of the author Money on the Side
    Originally Posted by MisterMunch View Post

    Hi!

    I hope some of you can help me with advice on this. I am going to set up several local listings for different businesses, but I do not have any information on what I need to do to get them to rank higher on the list.

    I would also be interrested to know how to drop keywords in there.

    Is there any resorces available on this issue (like SEO for loacal search), or do you have any advice? The effort I do will only be when registering at google, but I am also interested to know if other things might help.

    Munch
    Citations will help immensely.
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  • Profile picture of the author MisterMunch
    Sorry, but what is a Citation? I am total newbee when it comes to local listings
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  • Profile picture of the author Music City Copy
    A citation is a "mention" of your business on other websites like directories, yellow pages, and any site that has a local focus.

    Here's a great resource from OutspokenMedia: Small Business SEO: How To Launch That Web site

    Lisa's list of sites to get "citations":

    https://my.superpages.com/spweb/prod...siness-listing
    https://selfenroll.citysearch.com/
    ADD or CHANGE YOUR LISTING
    Free Advertising | Get a Free Business Listing on YELLOWPAGES.COM
    Find Your Business
    Business Listing Management
    http://www.openlist.com/update/
    http://www.yelp.com/
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    • Profile picture of the author MisterMunch
      Originally Posted by Music City Copy View Post

      A citation is a "mention" of your business on other websites like directories, yellow pages, and any site that has a local focus.

      Here's a great resource from OutspokenMedia: Small Business SEO: How To Launch That Web site

      Lisa's list of sites to get "citations":

      https://my.superpages.com/spweb/prod...siness-listing
      https://selfenroll.citysearch.com/
      ADD or CHANGE YOUR LISTING
      Free Advertising | Get a Free Business Listing on YELLOWPAGES.COM
      Find Your Business
      Business Listing Management
      http://www.openlist.com/update/
      http://www.yelp.com/
      So in good old SEO terms, that would be backlinks, only from local directories (or national directories with local subpages). I understand the backlinks/citations would be to the website and not the local listing itself. This is currently out of my controll, as I am only assigned to build the local listings. Still, it is good information. I guess this will also help for local SEO.
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      • Profile picture of the author Music City Copy
        Originally Posted by MisterMunch View Post

        So in good old SEO terms, that would be backlinks, only from local directories (or national directories with local subpages). I understand the backlinks/citations would be to the website and not the local listing itself. This is currently out of my controll, as I am only assigned to build the local listings. Still, it is good information. I guess this will also help for local SEO.
        Actually. it's not exactly just "backlinks" that count as citations. It's actually "mentions" of the business on local-focused websites. No link is necessary.

        So, for example, if there is a listing of your business on Yelp (or any of the others) EVEN WITH NO LINK, that will count as a "citation".

        As long as the address and phone number are the same, Google Local Business Center will give it all that good "link juice" as it's called in organic SEO.

        A citation is different from a backlink. No link is needed. Just a listing of your business's information.

        Hope that helps clarify.....
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  • Profile picture of the author freudianslip27
    I'd also suggest completely filling out the local listing. Put pictures in, a youtube video, and so forth. I even create coupons for my customers (If they don't have a coupon, I just take a picture of something on their site that emphasizes something they do).

    Even just claiming your listing will help immensely. I've noticed that it is easier for a longer-established business to grab a top listing.

    Matt
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  • Profile picture of the author mezloh
    My most useful tip is to optimize every title (blog post and pages titles), all images (on site and in GP and other sites that allow images), videos, with the keyword (or product name, service) you are targeting followed by - your business - your city,state

    Hint: If you use the All In One SEO plugin or similar plugins for wordpress just add your business name, city, state in the titles and then every time you create a post or page this will be added to the end of every title after a | seperator.

    I tested this theory out on youtube with my video titles and it only took 5 minutes to take the top 5 spots (5 different videos) in the google video search results. And this was after the videos were posted a couple weeks ago. I went in and changed/optimized the titles like my recommendation above, 5 minutes later I took over the top 5 search results for videos and #2 and #3 organic results plus 3 other top 10 spots. I mean the results showed up without pinging, indexing or anything.


    So far 12-14 images in the image search results, A Spot in Google Places, #1 for blog search results, and 5 of the top 10 organic search results out of 2.3 million results.


    This goes to show the power of Google's focus on returning relevant local results. I am a one man web consulting business while most of my competitors are medium to large web consulting companies. They are supposed to know better right?
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  • Profile picture of the author kposs
    Don't neglect the off-site links. I work with a lot of local search sites and keyword anchored backlinks work for me every time.

    I create backlinks with all combinations (keyword city, keyword state, keyword city st, keyword city state) starting with the main city/region for the business and working down to smaller cities and regions in the area. I sometimes have 200 to 500+ keywords in rotation.
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    • Profile picture of the author attorneydavid
      kposs- are you backlinking the places page or the site?
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      • Profile picture of the author kposs
        Originally Posted by attorneydavid View Post

        kposs- are you backlinking the places page or the site?
        Hi David,

        I'm backlinking the site.

        thanks,

        Valerie
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  • Profile picture of the author redlegrich
    If you are focused on Places then get Offline Bully. Their step by step process is really stellar. Also, many of the processes and suggestions will work great for image and video SEO. Very good stuff.
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