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Google Places Tutorial and Tips - SEO Tutorial on Local Search via Google Places
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Local search is critical for many businesses, both large and small. Google is struggling mightily to replace the Yellow Pages as the pre-eminent way that consumers find local businesses like restaurants, tax accountants, chiropractors, plumbers, and others. And Google is also engaged in a competitive war against Yelp, the dominant player in local search in many markets. How does a business get listed in Google Local (now called Google Places), or Yelp? What are the best practices for effective Local Search SEO?
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By Jason McDonald
Senior SEO Instructor - JM Internet Group.
Posted: May 21, 2010
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Contents:
Local Search: Figuring out Your SEO Keywords
Local search is important to many businesses, both large and small. As we have seen throughout the SEO arena, keywords are the driving force of the process. Customers search by keyword, and Google indexes content by keyword. For local search, however, there are certain twists to the process that intervene.
First, customers may, or may not, search by your geographic terms. Consider a simple search for 'Pizza.' If I enter the term 'Pizza' in my Google search query, I get results that are tailored for my local IP address, i.e. Google 'figures out' that I am in Fremont, California, and returns some local search results that are tailored to my location.
Looking more closely, however, I realize that Google is really tailoring only two sets of results based on my location. It is tailoring the 'Google Local' results, where I see restaurants in the 510 area code, and it is also tailoring the AdWords ads, wherein I see some ads for local pizza restaurants. For natural search, I see 1) Pizzahut.com, 2) dominos.com, and 3) papajohns.com.
Let's compare this for a search, 'Pizza Fremont CA.' In that case, I see Google Places results for Fremont, CA, and I see AdWords ads for Fremont, CA, and I also see natural search for Fremont, CA - namely Mission Pizza, Mountain Mikes, and a Yelp link for Pizza in Fremont.
So here is the rub for SEO and Google Places. If your target consumers do not enter your local community name, then it is extremely difficult to get to the organic / natural / free results on Google. A simple search for 'Pizza' is a very short tail search and nearly impossible for a small business to get to the top. The big chains will outcompete you. If your target consumers do enter your local community name, then you can get to the top of the organic results. Simply treat that local community - whether it is 'San Francisco,' 'Los Angeles,' 'Tulsa,' or 'Milwaukee' plus your core keywords such as 'Pizza,' 'Tax Accountant,' 'Feng Shui Consultant' or whatever as a target keyword and follow the best practices of SEO. Not easy, but can be done.
Beyond that, how can you compete in local search using free resources? Let's investigate Google Local and Yelp.
Google Places: Best Practices
Google Local, which was recently renamed Google Places, is the No. 1 easy free opportunity to get to the top of local search. First, before getting your listing, do some research on terms that matter to you and peruse the businesses that get returned on the first page. Here are some example searches -
- Pizza
- Tax Accountant
- Roof Repair
- Family Law Attorney
- Dry Cleaners
- Car Repair
Try these searches without your local community. Then try them by affixing names of nearby communities or possible targets. If you are in San Jose, for example, you might try 'San Jose Roof Repair' as well as 'Santa Clara Roof Repair' or 'Milpitas Roof Repair' to see variations in your search for nearby towns.
Getting Listed. If your business does not yet have a listing, the listing process isn't that difficult. First, find the link to get to the Google Places home page. Oops! Google has done a terrible job making that one easy to find - so here is the direct link - http://www.google.com/places. You have to really wonder sometimes about the people at Google. Insane geniuses - world's best search engine, but a seeming inability to make it easy to use for advertisers, vendors, and others to 'get listed.' Oh well. So, first go to google.com/places. Then follow the instructions there to list your business.
In creating your Google Places listing, here are some things to watch out for. First, be sure to include your keywords in your company name, company description, and categories. Make it easy for Google to figure out what you do by entering keywords in all areas. If you are a roofer, and called AGP Inc., make sure your Google Places name is AGP Roofing Inc., for example. Include the keywords in your business name. Second, be sure to select your service area. Click Yes, this business serves customers at your location - even if you do not. If you are a pizza restaurant, for example, and you serve not just your own local community by nearby towns within a ten mile radious, by selecting this option, you can set your service area. Thus, a pizza joint that serves not just Cambridge, MA, but also Somerville, and Medford, can be visible in Google local for these towns as well! Here's the screen shot -
Finally, get reviews. Having keywords in your business name, description, and keywords is very important as is selecting a broad service area. But reviews clearly intervene as well. Having more reviews is better - so start soliciting your (happy) customers to review your local listing. In our forthcoming webinar on 'Getting Local,' I will explain how to use a tinyurl to direct your customers easily to your listing for review purposes.
Yelp or Be Yelped!
Yelp, if you do not know about it, is located at http://www.yelp.com. Like Google Places, Yelp is attempting to become the yellow pages of tomorrow. Anyone can search Yelp by keyword to find local businesses like restaurants, hair salons, attorneys, Feng Shui consultants - you name it. Like Google Places, businesses have listings, and control some of the basic features of the listing. Users can write reviews. Again, like Google Places, getting to the top seems to be a function of having the keywords in your business name and description. And, again like Google Places, having lots of reviews seems to help you.
Yelp has a few idiosyncracies. Yelp will list your business whether you want to or not, and is much more aggressive about placing businesses in than is Google. So it becomes Yelp or be Yelped, meaning you are much better off claiming your listing on Yelp. Yelp also tends to display reviews in a more haphazard fashion than Google, and seems to heavily reward the first review - so get listed, and solicit a favorable first review ASAP. Finally, Yelp has been strongly criticized for favoring advertisers over non-advertisers so for some it is alleged Yelp is a pay-or-play system.
To get listed on Yelp, simply go to http://www.yelp.com/business and follow the instructions there. One advantage to Yelp is that often the local page on Yelp becomes one of the top pages on Google Local / Places, and so being Yelped can help you on Google as well.
In sum, both Google Places and Yelp offer you free ways to get local coverage and can be used to mitigate the difficulty of SEO for local, especially when local users do not enter their local geographies as part of the search.
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