Citations/Google Places Question

From my understanding, you put the exact company name, the physical location address (same as for the Google mapping) and all other contact details as well as the standard url

Cheers
Warren

If the business doesnt have a website, you can still give it a business presence on a site like servicelance.com or similar. Having a url that the business owns that is additional to the place page tends to give confidence to the one looking at the place page. And for keywords where the google places results combine with on-site seo, the best way to rank is to have a website or business profile somewhere permanent.


Free Google Places Pack / 10 Box Finder Software - free google local keyword tool
A quick way to check whether a group of keywords returns places results on the first page

Just use the website URL. When you are doing any kind of SEO, local or global. You need to think about if it looks natural.

Does it look natural if you link to your Google Places listing instead of your website? I don't think so.

The question was about the best website URL, not other standard info to include! I think that is why the others who responded didn't mention that. But I agree with the rest - Name, Address, Phone (local) is standard.

Back to the OP question.....I always use their website assuming I am optimizing it. Otherwise, I use a specific review site, typically InsiderPages, which creates decent on-page SEO citations.

Another thought, go ahead and create a subdomain on the clients website. We've been doing this for the last several months. Great results so far.

Ex: AtlantaDentist.johnsmith.com

You've now given yourself a keyword rich URL and can easily create a very well optimized page with a focus on converting Places visitors.

Brian

To OP:

I think you may be confusing citation with directory listings and/or review sites. A citation is the mention of your business throughout the internet. It generally includes your business name, address and phone number. That's your citation.

Adding your business to a directory listing or review site is very similar and in fact, you should get a citation from that listing. I'm just trying to make the distinction here because generally, your url is not included in your actual citation, but you certainly want to include it in any listings you can.

So, should you add your website url or your Google places url to the directory? I concur with most others in this thread and would suggest you use your website. Look closely at what LiquidSeo has suggested. Makes a lot of sense.

A BIG key to places success is the pre-work. If you're setting up a places page for a client, to increase your ranking you must set up other directories google considers authority. A big part is the quality back links from other top directory listings feeding into your places page. Optimizing your page is important, but you must be well rounded to start climbing in the rankings of your competition.

**Info from top S.E.O experts** A few tips.


3 areas google looks at for places

• citations
• reviews
• places optimization

the citations and reviews are pre-work you need to do before you get to places

first thing is start to build citations: or listings in directories: here are the hot sites:

• insider pages
• yelp
• super pages
• hotfrog
• yellow pages group
• angies list-
• local.com
• city search

Research
choose top 3 keyword phrases of keyword pharses
review listings in the 7 or top 10 in google results.
create citations for each directory listed before places
get them indexed (use a pinger service)
Build 5 backlinks with the 2 top keyword phases to each citation
match biz name, address and phone number across the board
-Google is looking at the number of inbound quality links coming to your site
you cannot use ups addresses. reason being. “slick” marketers are taking advantage of using fictitious addresses to rank higher
REVIEWS
used 1-2 KW Phrases in the review
use a geo locator
create at least 5 reviews to get the star rating
don’t do reviews in 1 day or from 1 ip address
continue to build KW enriched reviews over 30 days and expand the variety of directories
use QR.CODES-

googles overall intention is to make it the center of local search..so local potential customers get true recommendation on products and services..part of googles strategy is to take the top rankings of the directories..these directories often provide useless information, so they are going for the top
THE PLACES LISTING-Google places
-dont stuff keywords in the category section
-dont use geo locators in the category section
- -good example: roofer
-bad example: greenville roofer

- If you need more info just send me a PM

Good insight guys, thanks for the input!
I think I had a general knowledge of the idea, but I was getting my terms mixed up. Looks like I will be using the company URL for all director submissions! Thanks again!

I think the most important thing is that everything match on all of them - phone, address, and website. If those don't match up, the reviews and citations won't end up showing up on your places page.

And, hopefully the client has a real website and isn't using insider pages or google places as their only website . . .

I think I will reiterate here...a citation is simply a mention of a business. Besides the common 'directory" sites like Citysearch, Insiderpages, etc., I use BuildMyRank and they will include a citation in posts. This is a citation: Apple Glass Company, 3111 Antoine Dr, Houston, TX, 77092, (713) 680-1400. Notice that everything is comma delimited and included is a phone number. This should match everywhere.

Another helpful tip is that you could use some of the more authoritative aggregators which the directory sites will populate their databases from. Like localeze.com, and mybusinesslistingmangager.com (Axciom). Every 60 days or so, other directories will pull their listings from these aggregators. Or to make things happen quickly, you'll have to go and create listings and accounts everywhere. Try to do this BEFORE you claim your Google Place page...and let Google find them naturally.