Top Tips for Google Places
I often mention that i’m going to ‘optimise your google places listing’ to my clients when discussing the on-going SEO work we do as part of our management packages. Optimising for local search is extremely important for dental websites – if you want to attract new patients your website needs to be ranking highly for local search terms. A well optimised google places listing is a massive factor for ranking highly for local keyphrases.
In this blog i’m going to highlight a few tips for optimising your places listing to get you up the rankings!
1. Create Google Places page
The first thing to do is claim your Google Places listing if you haven’t already. Search for your business on Google Maps and click on the listing to claim it. Google will then offer 2 options to verify ownership, a PIN by phone or by postcard. Once you have confirmed your listing you can begin editing your Places page.
2. Add keywords to your business description.
A Google Places page lets you describe your business in up to 200 characters. Make sure you use your most important keywords — but don’t just stuff keywords in. Write a useful, compelling description that will appeal to readers first and to Google second.
3. Use standard categories when possible to describe your business.
When building your Google Places page, you can list up to five different categories to describe the products or services you offer. I would recommend using 3 standard categories such as ‘Dentist’ and ‘Cosmetic Dentist’ then the 2 custom slots for any treatments you may offer such as teeth whitening or dental implants.
4. Don’t add a keyword to your Google Places page’s business name if it’s not actually part of your business’s name.
For example if your Dental Practice was called River Side Dental and you are located in Portsmouth – don’t include Portsmouth in your business title because Google may penalize your listing.
5. Encourage satisfied customers to add reviews to your Google Places page.
Reviews are one of the most important ranking factors for local search. You can get reviews from 2 channels – directly through Google or from 3rd party websites such as dentistfinder.net. Both 1st and 3rd party review are indexed by Google but using Dentist Finders review request system you are likely to get more responses.
6. Space out reviews as much as possible.
It’s best to get a steady stream of reviews, rather than having a bunch appear all at once. Again, the search engines are always on the lookout for spam, hoaxes, and frauds and may see a sudden surge of reviews as suspicious. At worst, this might cause Google to push your Place page down in search results.
7. Get your business listed in appropriate online business directories.
Listings of your business in directories such as Local.com, Yellowpages.com, your local city’s chamber of commerce, or a directory affiliated with your profession can help boost your Place page’s ranking.
8. Add images and videos to your Places page.
You can add up to 10 photos and up to five videos for free. SEO experts don’t uniformly agree that adding photos and videos per se helps boost your Places page ranking. But some believe geo-tagged photos and videos in particular may give you a bump. At a minimum, photos and videos can make your Places page more appealing to potential customers.
9. Monitor your Places page analytics.
Make it a point every so often to log in to your Places page account. You can learn the top search queries that caused users to see your listing and how many clicks occurred to your website over the past week or month. The information isn’t nearly as comprehensive as what you get with Google Analytics, but it’s helpful nonetheless. You can have analytics automatically emailed to you as well.
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