Google Places Help...

Did you change the title of the business name? I have heard that this throws a flag to google to review the listing. And make sure the page doesn't seem to be keyword stuffed.

http://www.warriorforum.com/offline-...rrggghghg.html

i'm sure this discussion will be surely helpful.

How many citation sites did you list the business at?

Based on my experiences with local clients, here’s my best educated guess about what matters the most today for ranking in Google Maps.

1. Your address. If you want to rank for keywords related to a particular city, you better be located in that city. My wife ranks highly for “richland wa real estate agent” because that’s where her address is; she’s nowhere to be found for “kennewick” or “pasco” (the other main local cities) keywords. An exception: She also ranks highly for “west richland wa real estate agent”, primarily because there’s only one real estate agent with an office in West Richland (Tri-Star).

Google maps screenshot

2. Your business categories. I’m sort of torn over this and the next factor as to which matters more. But I think it’s slightly more important to have your business be categorized correctly than to have the right keyword in your business name. When I dug into the “san francisco bakery” 7-pack, all seven businesses were categorized as a bakery. I often see similar results on other searches.

3. Keyword in business name. I’m ranking this highly mostly based on what I’ve seen lately while watching real estate keywords. The agents who have modified their listings to say “real estate” as part of their business name are doing very well these days.

Google maps screenshot

I thought it was a shame that, in the LSRF replies on this factor so many folks focused on the potential spammy aspect. But there are a ton of businesses that legitimately have a keyword in their business name — I ate breakfast at Henry’s Restaurant yesterday, for example — and I’m sure this helps them rank better.

4. Citation quantity. As David Mihm famously wrote, local citations are the “new” links. Google relies heavily on citations — mentions of your business elsewhere on the web — to validate your business name, address, and phone information. The more validation via citations, the more trust Google has to show you in its local/maps results. Quick story: Earlier this year, my wife’s Place Page lost all of its citations; every one. Her listing vanished immediately from the 7-pack.

Be sure to read Why Citations Are Important to Your Local Business Listings from GetListed.org for more on this.

5. Completing your business profile/Place page. I don’t think that just claiming your listing really matters jack-squat on its own; there are plenty of unclaimed listings that rank very highly in Google Maps. (Only one of the seven San Francisco bakeries had claimed its listing.) But what does matter, a lot I think, is completing your profile. I’m talking extra information like hours, payment options, a well-written and complete business description, and especially adding photos and videos to your listing. Google is directing more users to Place Pages, so it’s logical that pages with a lot of good information would rank higher.

6. Business data consistency. I ranked this very highly in 2007 when the original article was written, and it’s still hugely important as a general local search ranking factor. Your business name, address, and phone number need to be consistent across the many sources of local business information.

local search data providers

But since this article focuses strictly on Google Maps rankings, I say this isn’t as important. A local insurance agency is doing just fine with its claimed Place Page at its current address … meanwhile, an unclaimed listing associated with its old address is also in Google Maps’ database and ranking right below the claimed one. Duplicate listings with inconsistent addresses or phone numbers are not uncommon inside of Google Maps. (In fact, Google has gone to great pains to explain how to handle duplicate listings and the general advice is to be careful.)

7. Reviews and ratings. Google Maps is, at its core, a recommendation engine. It recommends Italian restaurants, dry cleaners in Dallas, and hotels in Manhattan. If Google made a habit of recommending local businesses that offered poor products and customer service, how long do you think people would keep using Google Maps? Right. Not long. Having (positive) reviews and ratings gives Google more confidence to recommend a local business. Google is extracting what reviewers say about local businesses and showing the sentiment analysis right on Place Pages.

8. Proximity to location. We tend to talk about “proximity to city center,” but I think “proximity to location” is more accurate to think about because a lot of searches are about a specific location: hotels near the Space Needle, restaurant near art museum, and so forth. To me, proximity to city center is much less important than proximity to the location being searched. The city center/centroid factor seems to be decreasing in importance, for what it’s worth. So don’t worry as much if you’re business isn’t located right near your city’s red marker.

city-center

9. My Maps and other User Content/Data. At the very bottom of a Place Page, Google shows the user-generated content associated with a business. This is typically in the form of people using Google “My Maps” tool to create their own maps and add important locations/businesses to those maps. I believe this is becoming a more important signal recently, in part thanks to what seems to be more people using My Maps. But there are other forms of user content, too, such as geotagged photos of a business. I believe all of this adds to a local business’s Place Rank. In the bold heading for this item, I have “Data” at the very end because I also believe that user data, such as how often a Place Page is clicked/viewed, plays a part.

10. Certain traditional SEO factors. I don’t think most traditional SEO factors play a huge role in Google Maps rankings; this is a different ball game than regular organic listings. But I think some SEO-related elements do come into play. In that list, I’d include things like age of the Place Page and/or age of the domain associated with the business; the business URL that’s included in the Place Page — i.e., a domain with “real estate” in the URL may get a slight benefit — and so forth.

I suggest redoing the website's About Us page (or, really, any page on the client's website that's a child of the home page) to include most of the information exactly like it is on the Places page: address/citation, contact info, map, operating hours, payments accepted, etc. While citations are the link juice to your Places page, the client's website is very important to Google as THAT is really what it's promoting. I would be surprised if you didn't see quite a bump after doing that, unless you have some other major issues holding you back, like different city, etc. Good luck!