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Google Places SEO: Ranking Factor Correlations + Tips and Tricks for Local

Google Places SEO: Ranking Factor Correlations + Tips and Tricks for Local. Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-founder, SEOmoz November 2010. Correlation Data. Methodology. 220 Search Queries 20 US Cities

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Google Places SEO: Ranking Factor Correlations + Tips and Tricks for Local

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  1. Google Places SEO: Ranking Factor Correlations + Tips and Tricks for Local Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-founder, SEOmoz November 2010

  2. Correlation Data

  3. Methodology • 220 Search Queries • 20 US Cities • Albuquerque, Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Cleveland, Denver, Fresno, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Louisville, Memphis, Miami, Milwaukee, Nashville, Omaha, Portland, Sacramento, Seattle, Tucson • 11 Queries per City • attorneys, book stores, car wash, dry cleaner, gyms, hospitals, hotels, ice cream, parks, restaurants, yoga studio • Analyses of Web + Places Results • Spearman’s Correlation of “Better” Results (e.g. lower ranking number, higher PageRank, etc.)

  4. Classic Link Metric Correlations

  5. Title / Places Data Correlations

  6. Interesting Web Results • mozTrust, mozRank, PageRank all ~0.2 • Links, linking domains, PA, DA, DmR, DmT also ~0.2 • Links to Page slightly better than links to Domain • Keyword matching in URLs, titles not well correlated

  7. Interesting Places Results • Domain link metrics slightly better than Page metrics • Matching the city name in the URL has a surprisingly high negative correlation with ranking in Places • Matching the city name in the title/business name has a relatively high positive correlation with ranking • Owner verification has a low positive correlation

  8. More Interesting Places Results • Quantity of “more about this place”, “reviews from around the web”, Google Places reviews and “related maps” were all 0.16 - 0.20 • Star rating + # of reviews from Google users were much lower 0.06 – 0.10 • # of linking root domains had highest correlation of link metrics 0.12 (PageRank was the lowest)

  9. Are there unique ranking algos?

  10. For cities, the algo’s probably the same. But for query/biz types…? “Table 3 shows the results from the ANOVA analysis. City is not a significant source of variation for any of the variables, suggesting that Google’s algorithm is the same for all cities. However, for 9 of the 24 variables we can reject the null hypothesis that business type is a not significant source of variation in the correlation coefficients at =0.05. This is highly unlikely to have occurred by chance. Unfortunately there is a caveat to this result. The results from ANOVA assume the residuals to be normally distributed, but in most cases the residuals are not normal as tested with a Shapiro-Wilk test.”

  11. Recommendations for Ranking in Google Places

  12. Register Your Business www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter

  13. Optimize Names + Titles Likely gets higher visibility / CTR too

  14. Optimize Names + Titles Customize and complete every detail you can – hours, photos, categories, etc.

  15. Get Listed Everywhere Yes, even at the “hippest guide to the lesbian scene”

  16. Prioritize Listing Sources where High-Ranked Results are Listed Where are these top 4 results included?

  17. Make sure to nail address, name, phone number, category consistency Every listing on these sites needs to match up precisely

  18. Subtly Encourage Reviews

  19. Get Listed in Google Custom Maps Consider reaching out to these types of map creators

  20. Don’t Just Optimize on Google These sites will likely send great local traffic too

  21. Tricks + Tools for Local / Places SEO Analysis

  22. View “Local” Results from Anywhere

  23. Getting “Location Agnostic” Results

  24. Getting “Location Agnostic” Results http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=your+query&gl=us

  25. City Centroid Calculations

  26. Distance from Centroid These are the distances!

  27. Rand’s Opinion: Some “Sources” Matter More

  28. Rand’s Opinion: Some “Sources” Matter More Look at a few dozen listings in your city; the sources appearing higher may be more valued than the lower ones

  29. Google “Hotpot”: How GG’s Customizing Places

  30. Ratings: The New “Reviews”? http://blumenthals.com/blog/2010/11/22/google-places-are-ratings-the-new-reviews/

  31. Don’t Use 1-800 Numbers! http://blumenthals.com/blog/2010/11/18/google-places-do-800s-put-your-listing-in-places-purgatory/

  32. Just Read Mike’s Blog Every Day  Blumenthals.com/blog

  33. Whitespark/Ontolo Local Citation Tool http://www.whitespark.ca/tools/local-citation-finder/search.php

  34. Location 3 WhitePaper http://www.location3.com/local-search-tips

  35. David Mihm’s Local Ranking Factors http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml

  36. Q+A Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-Founder, SEOmoz • Twitter: @randfish • Blog: www.seomoz.org/blog • Email: rand@seomoz.org

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