Google Places: Location Matters

Many of my clients want to know how they can move to the top of the Google Places “pack.” Place listings can push organic results down and often affect where your organic listing shows up on the 1st page. A website that used to be 4th on the 1st page may now find themselves pushed to the 2nd page for certain terms. Search Engine Optimization experts will likely tell you different ways to move up on your place listings.  Jeremy Sussman a product manager from Google Places described the Google Places to having three main pieces:    

 

1. Location

2. Relevance

3. Prominence. 

 

In this blog, I am discussing location:

 

If you want to show up for a specific city, Google looks to see if you have an office located there. If your physical address is different than the city you are trying to show up for, you will likely find it more difficult to show up.  For example, if your office is in Lonetree, Colorado and you want to show up for Denver, you have a lower chance than if your office was in Denver; this is because you are competing with businesses in Denver.  However you should show up better than Denver offices competing for Lonetree. There are exceptions to this depending on the size of the city. If you are in Denver, trying to show up for Lonetree and there is only one other office in Lonetree competing for the spot, you will have a higher chance to show up. It really depends on the size and competition of the location you are trying to target.

 

Proximity to what is being searched is also important. Google takes into account how close you are to what the user is searching and compares it to other things in that area. So, if they type “Lawyer Denver” Google may rank you lower if a competitor is closer in proximity to the city’s center. 

 

But don’t run out and buy an office in your city’s center just yet, like in SEO, there are several elements that go into Google ranking place pages. Just because you have an office in the city center of your target keyword does not mean you will automatically show up 1st. Like in SEO, they are looking for the BEST resource, which means they take into account several categories, location is one of them. 

 

Want to know what else Google looks at? Give your Internet Marketing Consultant a call today!

 

~Ashley Martin