Google has been known to change the appearance of their search results for some time now. I’m not just talking algorithms but the visual appearance.
It looks like in the last couple of days they have changed their Google My Business listings within the search results.
This is what it looked like before:
This is what the sam search result looks like as of today:
Gone is the A – G or A – C mapped icons. The map has moved from the right of the screen to the top.
Before when you wanted to learn more about a business, you could just scroll of their listing in A – G or A – C listings to see the snippet of their business, reviews, contact info and hours of operation. Now you have to click on a business to see that info. When you do so you are taking to page which shows all the business info along with listings to other businesses.
What’s the take away?
Before the Google My Business listings would show either 3 or 7 listings. Now they are only extensively showing 3 businesses across all the searches I have done.
Take a look over those and get refreshed. Getting in the top 3 now means the world or else you are relaying on people skipping over the first 3 results and finding yours.
Back in the end of January, I ran an experiment to find out how long does it take to rank on page one. In the post I stated a goal of trying to rank a new website and business on page one within two months. Bold, I know.
The reason for such a short time frame was due to the fact that I had purchased an old keyword rich domain for my mother’s Victoria BC bookkeeping business.
I wanted to see if that alone was enough to get a website ranked on the first page faster than normal. The keyword rich domain was owned by another bookkeeping company in Victoria but they decided to change their domain to a branded one. Since the domain was old, it had some trust built up with Google and contained a keyword, so I figured it would take less time to rank on page one.
That hasn’t been the case organically. As you can see by the Bright Local search rankings, the website isn’t ranking within the top 40 organic websites. I’m going to plug how great the Bright Local software is for showing how to track search engine rankings. Plug over!
Interestingly enough, the Google Local/My Business page ranks already on the first page. But that doesn’t count as the goal was to have the website ranking on page one, not the Google Local page.
What’s Next?
This is a experiment and experiments are about discovery. My discovery from this experiment is something I alluded to in my seven trends for local SEO success in 2015 post. What is this discovery?
More content.
When the website was created, we added seven blog posts relating to bookkeeping and common questions my mom gets asked. That didn’t help and to be honest, things have been really busy so no more content had been added to the site.
That was until this past weekend when we added seven more pages to the website. These pages haven’t made a difference to the rankings yet. But this strategy has been extremely successful for our other clients.
In my blog post on seven trends for local SEO success in 2015, I mentioned you should create blog posts and webpages where you answer common questions. This is one method of creating more content. Since that post though, I’ve had a consultation from another local SEO.
In the next blog post, I’m going to reveal the tip and what types of pages and content need to be added to your website to increase its search engine rankings. Make sure you sign up for our email list so you don’t miss that post because as I mentioned, we’ve seen some great results implementing this strategy into our content marketing.
One of the most common questions we get asked when it comes to our Victoria BC SEO service is “How long will to take for my website to get on the first page?”
This is such a difficult question to answer as every website is different. So is the competitive landscape. Some businesses have 5-10 competitors in their area. While others can have 50. The more competitors you have, the more websites we have to out rank with our SEO service.
We might have left one out and that is the domain.
Ranking New Domain or Old One
We get a lot of enquires from new businesses who want to hire us. They will inevitably ask us “How long to get my site on the first page?’
If we learn that their the domain is brand new, we tell them a few months longer than if their domain was already well established.
Why is this? Because a new domain takes longer to get on the search engines radar.
We had a potential client approach us last summer with a new domain. When we told them it could take 8 month, they were obviously disappointed.
After explaining why that would be and what they could do to help us, they hired us and it took us about 4 months to get their site on the first page. It should be noted that this client has only 15 competitors. Getting on the first page meant trying to out rank those 15 sites and the YellowPages and Yelp directories. Your competitive landscape and where you are ranking right now might be different.
But we can safely say it could take 4-8 months to rank on the first page locally here in Victoria BC.
This section talked about domain age. We’ve found older domains are easier to rank than newer domains.
However, there might be a faster way and it boils down to the domain name itself.
Exact Match Keyword Domains
An exact match keyword domain is a domain name that contains a keyword you are trying to target. An example in the local SEO world would be if a painter in Victoria BC was trying to target the keyword “painters Victoria BC”, they would try and purchase the domain http://paintersvictoriabc.ca.
Now I say try because years ago, buying exact match keyword domains was all the rage. People actually made a business of buying these domains and selling them. But as they have become less of a ranking factor, these domains can be bought for fairly cheap.
If you find an exact match domain that is a few years old, you might rank faster.
The Experiment
My mother has been so kind as to help me with bookkeeping for Meaningful Marketing. She owned a business for 8 years and completed the Bookkeeping Administration Program at Sprott Shaw here in Victoria. She’s semi-retired but still wants to work and loves numbers.
Since I know a lot about SEO and internet marketing, I thought why not create a website for her and do some local SEO on it.
Knowing that buying a new domain might take longer to rank, I searched for expired domains and found an exact match keyword domain. That domain is http://bookkeepingvictoria.ca.
There wasn’t much on the domain at the time but it was still alive then. A company called Canwest Accounting owned the domain and eventually got a nice website up on that domain by May 2013.
For whatever reason though they decide along the way not to renew the http://bookkeepingvictoria.ca domain and move their website to a branded domain http://www.canwestaccounting.ca/.
Their loss is hopefully my mothers gain!
I purchased that domain on January 22nd 2015.
Today is January 27th 2015 and I have the website up and running with a little bit of content. I’ll be following the seven trends in local SEO for 2015 post that I created last week.
Content and backlinks will be the biggest areas of focus for getting the website ranked organically. Creating business citations will be the focus on getting the business to rank in the Google maps.
The site has already been indexed and crawled by Google which is a great sign and the reason why buying an older, exact match domain should help her website rank faster for “bookkeeping Victoria BC‘ search terms.
I ran a search ranking report for the site today and it isn’t ranking in the top 50 for any of the search terms we’re targeting. But it’s ranking in the positions from 51-100 which is another great sign. Especially after buying the domain five days ago and getting optimized content up yesterday.
The goal of this experiment is to get the website ranking on the first page for the search term “bookkeeping Victoria BC” by the end of March. I will update the status at that time.
What’s very important is having your business listed consistently in these directories.
Consistent NAP
Having your name, address and phone number listed the same everywhere will ensure Google knows your business and it’s address. Any variation and Google will get confused. As smart as Google is, if it sees your business listed with different names, addresses and phone numbers, it will start thinking that each of those is a different business.
Here is a screenshot direct from their GMB support area which talks about establishing a strong and accurate presence on the web.
This is an issue if you have changed your business name, address or phone number. This can also be an issue if you take over an existing business with the same address and phone number.
You’re going to have to sort that out as it will hurt your Google Maps listing ranking.
How can you make sure you’re business listings are consistent?
Google Yourself
Remember a few years back when people would Google themselves to see what would come up? Well, you have to do the same. But for your business of course.
It’s tedious work, but simply Google your business name. Then you will see it show in directories such as Yellow Pages, Manta, Yelp, Foursquare and others.
Double check the business info is correct and up to date. If it’s not correct, chances are your business has moved, changed names or phone numbers. This is most likely hurting your rankings.
In this case, each directory will give you the option to update the information. Some take longer than others, so make notes to follow up in two weeks to see if the info was changed.
While you’re doing this checking, see if there is an option to claim, manage or take ownership of your listing. In many cases you will not have submitted your business to these directories. They would have just added it themselves.
I came across this while helping with Rodco Interiors, who sells and installs motorized blinds in Victoria. They’ve been around for a few years. But haven’t done anything online except set up a website.
I followed the step above to make sure their business info was correct. I was shocked to see how many listings they had. None of them were submitted by them.
So I claimed all that I could, updated the business info and added a backlink to Rodco Interiors site when possible (get for backlinks and local SEO).
Document
Taking ownership will save you work if you ever have to move or change phone numbers. I suggest keeping a spreadsheet with each listing and the user name and password to sign in. This way if you do change addresses, you can log in and do it yourself.
It’s good to have all of your listings documented anyways. This is something we do for our clients, and then send them the information when we’re finished. We believe they should have full control over all their listings.
There you have it. Be consistent, take ownership and document your business’ directory listings on the web. This way you can help your Google Maps listing and local SEO in the process.
We offer a few different services when it comes to Google My Business. Learn more about our Google My Business packages where we can audit your citations and send you a detailed report on how to improve your rankings.
But recently I’ve been asked a lot by local business owners about how to improve their Google My Business rankings in 2019. Once you have optimized your Google My Business listing, it comes down to five things which I am about to explain.
#1 – Business Listings
Getting ranked high within Google My Business comes down to Google verifying that your business is real. It does this by determining how often your business name, address and phone number (NAP) is cited or listed on the internet. It’s the exact same as how backlinks act for search engine optimization. The more you have, usually the better your search rankings will be.
The easiest way to get cited or listed is to submit your business to local and national business directories. Our Google My Business package includes listing your business in the top 50 directories you are not listed in.
#2 – Consistent NAP
The way your business NAP (name, address and phone number) is listed in these directories, on your websites contact page and within the Google My Business listing must be consistent and up to date. Here’s how to ensure your business NAP is consistent across the web. Google website crawlers will get confused should you have a different NAP listed on various business directories.
To make sure your NAP is consistent, do a search for your business. Click to see what every listing of it looks like. If the information is incorrect on a website, contact them and have it changed. This is something a few of our clients have had to do as they’ve changed addresses or phone numbers. Using the best local SEO software out there, we can track our clients business listings to see their NAP.
Here’s a look at one of our clients with a very solid NAP score.
Here is a potential lead that has a very poor NAP score.
#3 – NAP On Website
You will also need to list your business name address and phone number on your website. I’ve read other SEO companies say it’s good to have it in the footer or header of your website so it shows on every page. If you can do this, then go head as it’s good for the user experience. I’ve found that it’s fine to have the name, address and phone number listed on the contact page. Bonus points if you do so using the Schema markup.
Here’s an example of our NAP on the contact page.
Got all this so far? Great! There is one more thing that should be on your contact page.
#4 – Embedded Google Map
If you go to our contact page, you’ll see an embedded Google map. It’s good practice to have your businesses Google My Business listing embedded on your contact page. This way Google can be certain you are located at the address you have listed by confirming that with your Places listing.
Embedding is easy. Simply search your business name while in Google Maps. Once you have found it click on three lines beside your business name in the search bar on the top left. Then you can click on “Share or Embed Map”.
Once that is selected, click the embed map option at the top of the pop up box. Then copy the iframe code and paste it into your contact page.
The last and most important factor to improving the ranking of your Google My Business listing is coming up next.
#5 – Reviews
You need to get everyone to review your page. This blog post and this blog post cover two easy ways to get more Google reviews.
Think about it. If Google sees a page with 20 or more reviews, won’t it want to show that page in the mapped listings over a page that doesn’t have any reviews?
This falls in line with Google’s approach to search. Providing the searcher with the most relevant search result and business.
Evaluate Rankings
Once you have changed what is above and still notice your rankings are low, then you might need to have your business cited more. You can do this two ways.
Find out where those competitors who rank higher than you are cited. Do a search for their business and if they come up in a directory, find out if your business is listed there. If it’s not, add it.
Much like SEO, Google uses business citations as a means to provide their searchers with the most relevant businesses within the Google Places rankings. Follow the instructions I have laid out in this post and watch your rankings improve. If you need help with your rankings, visit our Google My Business packages page for different packages and services aimed at improving your rankings.
