Archive for January, 2010
Google Maps Going Real Time?
Thursday, January 14th, 2010I just finished building this website for an auto detailing shop in Vancouver, BC and today am editing some stuff in their Google Maps profile when I spotted something new. Now you can post up to date events and specials about your business as seen in the screen shot below.
You get 160 characters to write something, and it will auto expire in 30 days.
Below you see how it appeared on their Maps Place page for the business shortly after adding it.
Notice the “54 seconds ago“. It seems to show up on the page in a minute or less.
If you post another one it will overwrite the old one, not post more than one like a twitter feed kind of setup.
Great way to keep fresh content on your maps listing and promote your specials, events, and other timely stuff.
Question is, will posting this stuff on a regular bases have any influence in rankings?
Update :
Seems others are commenting on the Twitter-esque or Facebook-like functionality of this new feature. Seb Provencher suggests it’s Google’s shot across the bow towards Twitter and Facebook and goes so far as to suggest Twitter and FB need to start building business profile pages to compete with Google Maps.
Over on Mike Blumenthal’s post the commentors are picking up on the facebook Fun Wall and Twitter stream look to it.
Greg Sterling suggests it should eventually be tied direct to FB and Twitter so you could post it once in the LBC, and auto update your FB wall and Twitter stream in one go.
Transferring Google Local Business Center Accounts
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010Following my previous post where I recommended that Google should be allowing shared user access in the LBC I’m now thinking about best practices for transferring accounts. Basically how to pull it off with the minimum disruption to your listings current rankings.
Maybe your web designer went ahead and created a maps listing for you, in their account. Or a family member that knows a bit about the web went ahead and did it for you. But now you want it in your own account where you can control it.
As it stands there is no way to simply transfer ownership of a business listing from one Google account to another. Essentially you must delete one listing and create a new listing in another account. This will temporarily remove the original listing from search results and may take some time for the new listing to resume in its place.
I am actually in the process of doing one of these now and the following is how I’ve gone about it. With relative success. We did loose a couple spots in rankings.
Create A Listing in Second Account
First create the new listing in the other account. Make all the details of that listing identical to the other one. Same name, description, contact info, etc… but add a few more details such as a few extra “Additional Fields”, maybe a few more images. This may make the new listing the more powerful of the two.
Wait for the Merge
Wait a couple weeks to see if a data merge takes place. In the two different LBC accounts you should start to see identical impression and action statistics. Also the listing details on the place page for that business should be now showing those extra’s you added to the new listing version. This is similar to merging duplicate listings within the same account, except in this case its across two accounts.
Edit Original Listing
Once you are fairly confident a data merge has occurred go and edit the original listing, the one you want to remove from the other account. Strip out all the information except the name phone and address. Delete the description, images, hours, additional fields, etc… but don’t touch the name, phone and address fields. Save those edits.
Wait Some More
Now wait and watch for a couple weeks. Hopefully rankings did not plummet, the listing appearing in results still has all its details, from the new listing you created, all or most the reviews and web citations (”more about this place”) are still appearing in the businesses place page, etc…
Delete the Old Listing
Now you should be able to safely delete the old listing from that other account.
What I saw happen in the case I’m dealing with is some of the reviews from other sources, outside Google’s own reviews, got dropped. I do expect them to return at some point. The business dropped out of the top 7, where it had been ranking #7, falling to #9. Loosing those reviews may have been the kicker there. Seems we still have all the web citations. When those reviews come back, plus other optimization tricks begin to kick in, we should see this business back into 7 pack, and hopefully ranking a bit higher next time.
Update: They came back into the top 7, at #4, after a few weeks.
Google’s Local Business Center Should Allow Shared Users
Monday, January 4th, 2010Note to Google – this should be a priority for 2010
I believe that business owners should own and control their online data. Or as much as is possible. Google generally feels the same way and recommends that business owners claim and verify their own listings in Maps.Too many small business owners are not getting this message.
Why Google does not have a shared user system, like it currently uses in products like Google Adwords and Google Analytics, baffles me.
What I see happening, too often in fact, is marketing agencies, SEO’s, and whatnot creating, claiming and verifying listings on behalf of clients from within the agencies LBC accounts. This makes it much easier for the agency to manage their clients info, and, as a fair number of small business owners are a tad handicapped when it comes to just about anything computer related, it’s also easier for the business owner to have someone else handle it for them. But it poses many problems. Some big nasty ones, in my opinion, that create significant business risk.
Risks Associated with Not Controlling your Own Google Maps Listing
- Being Held Hostage by Marketing Companies – read that as “keep paying monthly or we delete your listing”.
- Lack of Transportability – Must create new account and listing, wait for a data merge, then delete old listing. Potential 2+ week disruption.
- Unable to Make Your Own Changes when you Need To or Want To – Don’t like your description? Want to add new hours or payment methods? No can do.
- Open to Spammy Abuses by Unscrupulous Agencies or Amateurs – these could get your listing penalized at some point.
- Potential for Duplication of Listings – multiple internet yellow pages type sites are adding Google Maps marketing up-sells, where they create maps listings and/or are using their own call tracking numbers. eeek!
Any of these could cause a noticeable drop in rankings for anywhere from a few days, a few weeks or a few months.
Risks of Having to Share Login Info
You should not share your Google Account with others. Whoever you share your Google Account login info to has access to all your Google services. That includes your Gmail, where you may have private information in your inbox, Google Adwords where you are spending money on advertising, Google Docs where you may have important documents such as business plans, etc…
Sharing your login info to allow a 3rd party to “optimize” your Maps listing should only be done after you’ve established some level of trust with that 3rd party. Even then you should probably change your password to a temporary one, for while they have access, then change back to your preferred one and lock them out after they are done. Note, while that third party has access it is possible for them to change passwords and lock you out!
That said I often have clients send me login info so I can set things up for them. But I’m upfront about making them aware of what it means and what I have access too. In cases where the client does not yet have a Google Account yet I go through the process of setting one up, creating an iGoogle page, Analytics, Local Business Center, and in some cases Adwords. Show them how it all works then tell them how to change the password so they then have control.
Keep Business Accounts Separate from Personal Google Accounts
A tip to business owners. Keep your business data separate from your personal data. This includes your Google accounts. Google recommends this too. At some point you may need to share login info regarding business stuff, or in the future when you sell your business, you want to be able to easily transfer ownership of business data online.
Ideally The LBC Should have Shared User Access Functions
This would solve a number of problems while still allowing agencies and SEO’s to manage things efficiently. Google already has the infrastructure in place. A simple cut and paste of code from Adwords or Analytics, some tweaks to apply it to the LBC, and presto, shared user capabilities.
I worry about the many naive small business owners facing the growing onslaught from mediocre quality and sometimes outright exploitative companies working towards scaling local SEO to capture the big market where those naive and spendthrift people lie.
I see some “local SEO agencies” springing out of the multi-level marketing (MLM) world and it makes me shudder. Not to mention those springing up outside of North America and Europe. That’s not meant to be a xenophobic/racist comment by any means. I’m just generally not comfortable with the quality of service coming out of certain parts of world where tech labor is abundant on the cheap. Also many larger agencies don’t apply any sort of exclusivity on their service and offer the same services to local competitors, and thus are privy to your performance data which can than be applied to assist your direct competitors.
Google Maps team, get on it!
Future Proof Your Google Maps SEO
Friday, January 1st, 2010Google Maps is still in it’s early stages of evolving and improving the ranking algorithm. Lots of easy, often spammy, methods for ranking are still working, but slowly many of these will be getting picked off by the G team. Are the current optimization methods you’re using today going to continue to work in 3 months? 6 months? A year or more? Or will you be one of the many complaining in the maps forums or various blogs about how your highly ranked listing suddenly dropped to page five.
Strive for Quality
Google ultimately wants to provide relevant and quality results to it’s users. It’s simply in their best interest to do so. It’s in your best interest then to satisfy Google to that end. Give them reasons to believe your business is a quality one. Give those quality cues early.
I see many small business owners, too many really, hoping for that quick fix home run, only to be continually chasing it over and over again when something in the ranking algorithm changes. Think about each and every aspect of your listing and why you are doing it the way you are.
Tone Down the Keyword Spam
Keyword spamming of business name titles, descriptions, and additional fields is a common tactic. About a month ago there was a rash of complaints over lost rankings due to keyword spamming in category fields. This sent hundreds of business owners scrambling to figure out what was wrong and how to fix it. The same is likely to happen when Google ads more filters to cut other forms of keyword spam.
Much has been discussed elsewhere about keyword usage in business name titles, and Google’s stance on it, so I won’t say much about it here other than to say if you do it, keep it light.
Writing and crafting descriptions and additional field information is not simply about jamming in keywords, the quick and dirty way. Instead take your time to craft a good description that uses a couple of your main keywords in a natural way. You should really only need 1 or two variations of your main service keywords and one instance of your city name within your description. At 200 characters your description field may just give you enough room to word it in such a way as to also include a Call to Action of some sort.
Use Additional Fields to help target other service keywords, as well as reinforcing your main keywords one or twice more. Write nice little sentences that may provide real information to a potential customer.
Some examples of bad Additional Field usage;
- NYC Laptop Repair : Yes
- Laptop Repair : New York
This would be an example of quality in an Additional Field;
- Laptop Repairs : Our NYC computer technicians can repair your laptop or notebook with ease. From broken monitors to dead batteries.
See the difference? Those bad examples, I’ve seen all kinds of that out there. Not only from small business owners that don’t really know better, but from some larger scale SEM agencies optimizing listings for clients. Tisk, tisk.
Just look at what we accomplish with the higher quality Additional Field that is targeting the exact same keywords. A user can actually read it and get some value out of it, thus building goodwill and trust (not much, but miles above that lame crap in the bad example). You are hitting not only your main keywords, but a few other relevant ones as well.
It might take an extra 5 minutes to try to write something decent that will fit inside the 120 character limit but in the long run it’s well worth it. When Google adds a keyword density filter, or something similar, you won’t be scrambling to rewrite your Maps listings again.
Be Careful with Reviews
Upon realizing reviews have an effect on Maps rankings many business owners jump to trying to amass a number of reviews quickly. Often taking the easy route of creating fake reviews. Woa! Careful there. Fake reviews are easy to spot, both by users and by search engines.
I repeatedly see legitimate reviews commenting upon what looks like a fake review for the same business. If a couple people are taking the time to write such a comment in the reviews how many more are noticing it and are left scratching their heads as their trust levels diminish. Fake reviews are also quite easy to spot by a computer algorithm. Where has that user left other reviews? Did that same user claim that business listing? Is that same review content appearing for other business listings, or from other review sources? Copypasta is easy but tastes horrible.
Instead, create and implement a system that will continually encourage the generation of reviews over the long haul. Include links to review sites in thank you emails sent to customers. Hand out a thank you card at the cash register that includes information on leaving online reviews. Get creative, there are lots of easy and non-spammy ways to get real reviews.
Recognize Inherent Limitations
Maps search is primarily about the broader categories of business services, for the vast majority of businesses out there. It is not much of a long tail search play. That is much better suited to organic SEO and Pay Per Click advertising.
Now there is a bit of a long tail effect in Maps but it is very weak in comparison. With only 5 categories to choose from, very limited space for descriptions and other information, and the fact that a map is only triggered in the Universal Search Results for mainly those broader category types, the system itself creates limitations. Recognize them and work within them to maximize your relevance to the types of key phrases people are actually using to find your services.
Diversify your Local Marketing
As Google Maps has grown in prominence I get more requests for help with Google Maps listings but I’m seeing many who are relying solely on Maps to generate business. That’s a dangerous position for a small business to be in. Anything could change at any time such as a massive algorithm adjustment that bumps you out of the top results, or a silly mistake in your optimization triggers a filter, or Google completely changes the game with a new version of Universal Search Results, perhaps as simply as occupying the entire visible page, before scrolling down, with paid ads.
Don’t neglect organic search optimization and the long tail riches it trickles your way. Or PPC ads that help you pull a larger fraction of total available traffic (yes, even for same keywords you already rank well for in maps and organic). Experiment with social media marketing via Facebook and Twitter. Try the Pay Per Click options through Facebook. Advertise locally on relevant local websites. There is a lot more yo can do besides just Google Maps.
So for 2010, and beyond, focus on quality to win the local SEO game now and into the future.
