SEO Tips for Goolge Places

 

SEO for your Google Places website landing page is not unlike any other page, in that the same techniques and best practices are used to maximize the visibility of the page. The only real change is the location is now just as important as the keywords.

Selecting your Website Landing Page for your Google Places Page

For all intents and purpose the Google Places page is where the information about your business is kept. Included in that information is your website address. The website address you enter(ed) is the website landing page we’ll be optimizing. For many businesses that will be the home page of the website — for larger businesses with multiple locations that should be an internal page of the website.

The decision here is determining whether more relevance should be put on product/services or location. If you are just selling locally then you have an easier task as you have only one option and that is to the home page of your website. If you have multiple locations in one city or nation or multiple countries then your strategy will be more far more complex and products become secondary to the Geo strategy.

Domain and URL Structure SEO for Your Google Places Landing Page

If you already have your domain then city/state keywords should occur in folder and page names when your landing page is an internal page (bigger multi location business).

Optimize Title,  Meta and Micro Data

Words in the Title element are weighted heavier (have more relevance) at the beginning than words at the end. It is also known that Google only weights around 84 characters as a weighted title and anything beyond that is treated as just part of the page. We know this from tests using the Google intitle syntax in searches. It is not known for sure if word counts include stop words or not so I prefer to use the 80-84 character range. Google Displays about 70 characters in the SERP result so the most important words should be in the first 60-70 characters, be coherent (don’t stuff with |’s and keywords) and hopefully include a Call to Action.

Meta description is important because this is the text that accompanies the Title (linked) in the SERPs. This description is your message to the user to get the user to click through to your website so make it a Compelling Call To Action! Mention the location primary products and services. The description should be about 160 characters in length and try to include phone numbers (especially on home page!!) because if it is a mobile search the phone numbers are clickable. If your character limit permits add your business address and postal / zip code.
Microdata information and syntax is available at Schema.org. I strongly recommend using structured data on your contact page and I always include full contact details in the footer of every page. I now recommend this information be marked up in structured data as well. Reviews, events, testimonials and more can be included in the SERP and these “Rich Snippets” always drive more clicks on your listing. The number of testimonials and ratings on your website affects the ranking. I strongly suggest a link from the home page to your testimonials page to maximize the link equity to the page and structured data it contains.

KML File: Add this file to your domain and get a bump in rankings! You can get info at

https://developers.google.com/kml/documentation/

Match Your Name Address and Phone

Including the full contact information on every page adds local relevancy to that page and transparency builds trust with users that are potential customers. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to find contact information on a website you want to do business with.

SEO Tips for Goolge Places