One of the area’s we knew we wanted to cover when we launched the premium content from the Internet Marketing Podcast was Google Local. In this week’s episode of the podcast we give you a quick rundown on some Local SEO ranking factors that act as a lead in to the premium content on the subject
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You can listen to the episode on the player below, subscribe to the podcast feed or listen in on iTunes
Show Notes After the Jump
- Our Premium Subscription Service
- Citations from Major Data Providers
- Don’t be too concerned if you get mentions without links
- Categorisation on You Google Local Business listing is important
- Claimed Business Listing Rank Better than unclaimed ones
- Google look at keywords in your business listing title and descriptions
- In-bound links are also a factor
- Volume and Quality of Reviews is important
- Encourage customers encourage them to leave a review
- Full address on Contact Page that matches the consistancy other mentions across the web
- PO Boxes won’t help
- How Near to Centroid (i.e. city centre)
- Have your local phone numbers if your targeting a specific local area
- Upload a video
- Kodak Zi8
- Upload picture
- Use hCard Microformats
- Age of local business listing
- Upload Coupons
- Negative Reviews are bad for rankings
- Keep your business name consistent
- Keep your phone number consistent
As always you can get in touch by emailing kelvin.newman@sitevisibility.com, leaving us a comment at https://www.internetmarketingpodcast.org or using the Twitter hashtag #impc or leave us a voicemail question on +44 1273 256 150
Comments
Not sure what gound research you’ve done but I can tell you that you have overstated the importance of 12 of the 20 items and where most of those have no influence in ranking performance.
Hey Jim, Be interested to hear which you disagree with? it’s based on a mixture of personal experience and those listed in https://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml
Well, where should we begin? My intention is not to discredit, rather to challenge and debate. I would value some good response to what I present. That said, I have pulled just one example from extensive ground based research we have compiled over the last 6 months in 50 plus US cities and across more than 20 business categories. And these undeniable findings dispute many of the claims made by the likes of David Mihm and other so called “map gurus” including M. Blumenthal, who by the way, strongly suggested in a recent blog that the newly exposed geo modifier that can be seen in the custom service area configuration option is directly correlated to a local business’s potential to achieve rank when their location falls outside the defined geo modifier configuration. – So, “Carpet Dayton”, Google search; Top 10 rankings, only 1 out of 10 have claimed listings which consequently, as I am sure you can deduce, displaces the influence of general categorization. 6 out of 10 have no reviews and 2 more have 1 review each, which in turn negates the positive versus negative influence (compare to the top 30). Those ranked 37-39th average 17% more citations than 5 of the top10 results and where all other factors are not disqualifying. You can also see that the correlation of descending rank to geo modifier centroid is far from linear assuming general relevance is in play. Do citations play a role? Sure, but only to a limited degree spread over the top 20 results. But my position is that the “balance” of influential ranking factors has never been defined by credible research and one should never second guess Google by use of empirical findings. Case in point. On March 19 of this year, there was a very significant implementation into the Map algo and in hindsight, I have no doubt that is was indeed an inflection point. Yet, I have not read one blog or publication that noticed the changes. I can tell you that the analytic data in the dashboard was corrupted for about six weeks and it was related to this major change. Google finally acknowledged the technical issue when it was brought up in a forum numerous times. Anyway, thanks for your consideration, I’m out.
I had my listing for 3 years and gathered decent genuine reviews, someone reported it to be closed/not existing and its now been relegated as you can only see it of you click on red marker. It doesnt appear in listing as natural find. I Had pics-video -full address- and all of the above and google in there wisdom removed it due to some cowbuy claming its been closed.
There is no way to control the listing its whatever google decides.
Why no response from Kelvin to Jim Ryan’s post? Especially since Kelvin asked him to respond, Jim took a good time to respond, and Jim asked for a response? Seems kind of suspect.
Interesting Jim, I’ve got to admit not having done extensive testing in the area I’ve tended to rely on the people who specialise in this area, and it’s interesting you’ve found different findings to them.
Have you summarised your findings in a blog post, I’d love to read it?