GI've noticed that Google has a blended places results, where any location based search has a map incorporated into it. Example: vietnamese restaurant chicago. Just wondering how to optimize for this. I've created a places page my aunts restaurant and have started link building to her site, however I think it is more complicated than that when it comes to places. Any tips?
Google Places relies heavily on reviews, but you can't just make up your own. Google uses the reviews from their own Places page for a business, but it also incorporates reviews from places like citysearch, and for restaurants, Urbanspoon, Yelp and other sites like that come into play. Try to come up with ways to encourage restaurant customers to write reviews. This is no easy task as most review sites require the user to register, and sometimes they have to post a few reviews in order for the reviews to go public. This is to prevent people like you and me from going to their sites and writing a bunch of fake reviews. Little things like adding pictures or videos to your Google Places page can help too. You almost have to treat your Places page as if it is the official restaurant website. You may even want to try to do some SEO for it by getting some backlinks to it. I operate an internet marketing company called Ker Communications and we have been very successful in helping restaurants succeed online. I would post a link, but I am too new to the forum to do that. Google us if you need more help.
you have to create you own map after that google will send you a post card, just to figure out your actual or described map, you will get this post card after 2-3 weeks, and i think google also take a landline number for the sake of right map
What about optimizing for specific keywords? Anchor text typically helps getting websites rank for specific keywords. But for places pages? Do you building anchor text links to your places page? Or are there any keywords that need to be implemented in the places page?
Firstly, Reviews arent hugely important on a places listing. They are beneficial but not by a huge amount. Here are all the important factors to Places listings: - Local Telephone Number Address close to keyword area Reviews Ratings (Stars) A Full and complete listing User Verified Business Keyword in listing title is a plus Dont put a location in the business title The web address that you are linking to should contain the address and telephone number mentioned on the listing MOST IMPORTANT: Citations Citations are the most important and effective way of ranking well locally. To get citations you need to be listed in all local directories, niche directories things like yelp, brownbook, yell etc. A citation is basically your business name, address and telephone number placed upon another website. Google scraps this information when it is on the page and gathers 'More about this place' for your places listing. 'More About This Place' is at the bottom of your listing and will show you all your citations. It generally can take from 1 month to 6 months to show your citations. And only 40-50% of citations will show. A good organic SEO + places optimisation will result if giving you a good ranking. Places has a heavy weight upon local search results. Another factor to keep in mind is that google will probably start introducing social recommendations soon, from facebook, twitter etc. So mentioning your business and business address on social networking sites will soon get you set up nicely for that.
Luke is right....reviews is one of the small parameters. I believe inbound links with the city name has a big impact.
As someone who has much experience with restaurant marketing, I beg to differ based on my experiences. For restaurants on Google Places, reviews are extremely important. In addition to the reviews on the Places page itself, the reviews and ratings from sites like Yelp and Urbanspoon are also factored in. Just being "cited" on those is not enough. I have had two different restaurant clients see their Places page drop significantly around the same time as the appearance of several bad reviews. It turned out that the reviews were from competitors and it was easy to prove to Yelp, Urbanspoon and Citysearch that they were malicious and possibly slanderous in some cases, so they were removed or filtered. In about a week, my clients' Places pages returned to the top of the local search results. For what it is worth, the competing listings on Places are nearly identical in content, so it seems pretty clear that reviews and ratings are pretty important. I don't know if Google handles things like that differently for different types of businesses, but in the restaurant business, reviews (non-internet) are everything. Perhaps Google weights it differently for certain types of businesses. For general use, Luke's list of important factors is spot on, though I would be careful about including keywords in the title. Google used to clearly state that the title should contain only the business name, but I think they have backed down from that a little as long as you aren't doing some ridiculous keyword stuffing. Personally, I think it looks spammy and unprofessional to have a local listing that says "Fine Dining Italian Seafood Outdoor Seating Restaurant - Bob's Bistro" rather than "Bob's Bistro" with a well written description and a fully completed profile. Keyword stuffing titles may help you rank highly, but it doesn't help fill tables at restaurants. Now that I think of it, the only Google Places listings I have seen with keywords in the title were from SEO companies - and not very good ones either.
The terms you are looking to have defined have varying definitions. I will give you the ones most commonly used and give you some places to look for additional information.