Just read an article called PLUS Local Ranking Factors You Need to Know about best practices in regards to the NEW Google Pluse Local platform that has recently replaced Google Places business listings.
This is a great article because it doesn’t try to be high-brow with complicated internet marketing industry jargon and speaks to small business onlines on small actionable steps they can choose to take. (Much like what we attempt to do here at SBOC).
The writer uses a helpful acronym that spells out “PLUS” to help small business owners with their Google+ Local business listing visibility:
Poke Your +Local Page- you “poke” your account by doing these steps:
- sign into your “Google Places” dashboard/ back-end (as it is still called that to sign in)
- click ‘edit’
- then don’t edit anything
- then click ‘submit
This is called a ‘poke’ and tells Google that this is an actively managed and owner-verified listing and helps anyone from editing your listing.
Links to Google+ Local pages and Location keywords
In the old Google Places, those pages were not indexed so you couldn’t build links to them, but you can to +Local pages because they are indexed.
The author is rightly cautious in pointing this out and advises that you could possibly lightly do this in citation and social media channels where you link to your +Local page like a secondary website.
URL Naming and Structuring
What this means is that the URL or webpage address would benefit your +Local page if you had an interior page used that had the main service that you provide and your location in the URL/webpage address.
Structured and Unstructered Citation
A citation is any mention of 2 or more parts of your NAP info (business NAME, business ADDRESS and business PHONE NUMBER) on other websites that is a vote on the legitimacy of your business as it gets mentioned on more and more sites across the web.
- Structured means that your NAP info is in consistent format as it is mentioned on websites.
- Unstructured means that a website mentions your business name within the body of a page of content.
Overall, it’s a great article with a lot more detailed than given here and tons of helpful graphics and the bottom line is that it’s worth two minutes of your time to hop over there and give it a good read.
What might interest you also is this amazing SBOC Team webinar on Local Ranking Factors.
