Guide/suggestions for improving my GMB local listing? wordpress plugins?

[pete101]

Hi is there a guide on here to improve my google local listings via my wordpress page?

What tips are there and what plugins should i use within wordpress to optimise the google local listing?

Thanks

 

[Margaret Ornsby]

You strengthen your listing on a number of fronts - in order of priority
1) the listing itself
2) your website
3) citations & the rest of the web

Changes you make to your site do not directly flow through to your listing.

Listing -
Make your listing the best it can be by filling out every option available to you, with accurate and human friendly content.
Verify it.
Use the GMB Website builder to create Google's one-page site.

Website -
The site itself would want to be done well. Graphics to make it people friendly, as well as technically sound.
What plugins you "need" depends a lot on your intended audience and what you're planning on doing with it. This is a difficult question to answer - it's a bit like "what car do I need?"
Whatever you do with your site, ensure the information on the site corresponds to the content in your listing. Ideally the site will add depth and a little breadth to what your listing says about your business.

If you can refine your question a bit, the members here can give you a better answer.

 

[Hammer]

You strengthen your listing on a number of fronts - in order of priority
1) the listing itself
2) your website
3) citations & the rest of the web

Changes you make to your site do not directly flow through to your listing.

Listing -
Make your listing the best it can be by filling out every option available to you, with accurate and human friendly content.
Verify it.
Use the GMB Website builder to create Google's one-page site.

Website -
The site itself would want to be done well. Graphics to make it people friendly, as well as technically sound.
What plugins you "need" depends a lot on your intended audience and what you're planning on doing with it. This is a difficult question to answer - it's a bit like "what car do I need?"
Whatever you do with your site, ensure the information on the site corresponds to the content in your listing. Ideally the site will add depth and a little breadth to what your listing says about your business.

If you can refine your question a bit, the members here can give you a better answer.

Margaret, you mention Googles one page site. They are pretty atrocious for conversion and marketing purposes... do we have any proof or strong suspicions that they really help the SEO?

I’ve often wondered, would love any insight or info you can share...

- Hammer

 

[Garrett Sussman]

Hey Pete,

One type of plugin to consider for local ranking benefits is to mark up your online reviews with schema friendly data structured markup.

Not only will doing that showcase your positive reviews on your site as a form of social proof, but as long as you're doing it on pages that are not your homepage, you would see the stars in your search engine results like this:

We offer a plugin like that on the Grade.us agency plan, but if it's for a single location business, feel free to shoot me an email at garrett@grade.us and I can put you in touch with one of our resellers.

You can read our case study here.

 

[pete101]

You strengthen your listing on a number of fronts - in order of priority
1) the listing itself
2) your website
3) citations & the rest of the web

Changes you make to your site do not directly flow through to your listing.

Listing -
Make your listing the best it can be by filling out every option available to you, with accurate and human friendly content.
Verify it.
Use the GMB Website builder to create Google's one-page site.

Website -
The site itself would want to be done well. Graphics to make it people friendly, as well as technically sound.
What plugins you "need" depends a lot on your intended audience and what you're planning on doing with it. This is a difficult question to answer - it's a bit like "what car do I need?"
Whatever you do with your site, ensure the information on the site corresponds to the content in your listing. Ideally the site will add depth and a little breadth to what your listing says about your business.

If you can refine your question a bit, the members here can give you a better answer.

If i have an automotive based business trying to drive more traffic and ultimately ranking top 3 of google local listings for repairs locally etc does that info help?

I always assumed the google one page site would take over the actual website made in wordpress and you could only have either or.

I have noticed with local rivals if i type in 'cheap repairs near x location' it'll scan their website for such criteria and match it up in the results. I was aware that is done in meta tags?

How do i optimise the wordpress so say for instance i want google local listing to match up 'cheap repairs near x location' when customers search?
Thanks

 

[pete101]

Margaret, you mention Googles one page site. They are pretty atrocious for conversion and marketing purposes... do we have any proof or strong suspicions that they really help the SEO?

I’ve often wondered, would love any insight or info you can share...

- Hammer

I was on this assumption too but it makes sense that if google offers the option to make a one page site they might be bias towards that in some way.

 

[djbaxter]

If i have an automotive based business trying to drive more traffic and ultimately ranking top 3 of google local listings for repairs locally etc does that info help?

I always assumed the google one page site would take over the actual website made in wordpress and you could only have either or.

I have noticed with local rivals if i type in 'cheap repairs near x location' it'll scan their website for such criteria and match it up in the results. I was aware that is done in meta tags?

How do i optimise the wordpress so say for instance i want google local listing to match up 'cheap repairs near x location' when customers search?
Thanks

Have you tried the free version of the Yoast SEO plugin? That will help with optimizing your site pages and posts.

The same company also offers a Local SEO plugin for WordPress; this one is a premium plugin at $69 USD. I haven't used it but I believe some other members here have.

 

[pete101]

Excuse my newbie question but in order for google local listings to cross reference my site for say 'cheap repairs near x location ' what do i need to do in wordpress meta to rank high for that?

Do i need to make background pages which are hidden but published in order to keep the content fresh?

It will be just a static page on the main visible page with services and contact info.

 

[Margaret Ornsby]

Hi @pete101

The Google one-page site will not "take over" a WP site unless the one-page site is better than the WP site. I've not seen any bias towards Google's sites over any other. Happy to be wrong - if someone has a study that demonstrates they get preferential treatment, I'd love to read it. In my experience, they compete with all the other websites in the world.

Google sites are not magic bullets, and yes they are limited in functionality. The one page site is intended for businesses that do not yet have a website and have no coding skills. It can become supporting material for your regular site and your Google listing.

Can I remind readers the Google site is free? Don't make a big deal about it or poo-poo it for its limits. It's one piece of a much larger puzzle. And it takes all of about 10 minutes if you are starting from scratch with no pre-written content, to go live.

On your WP site, you need Google to be clear about your location. Using things like structured data, embedded maps, links to other online properties that confirm your location and so on, all help confirm the location. Yoast offers a local SEO plugin - I have used it in the past. It's also not free AFAIK.

For the structured data, you can find plugins that do that for you. Alternatively you can do a search for schema markup generators and create the code for your site from that. The json-ld script from those tools can be copied & pasted anywhere on the page. This is one I sometimes use: JSON-LD Schema Generator For SEO - Joe Hall

Whether you need a plugin to put structured data into a WP page depends in part on the theme and/or framework you're using to make your site. There are plugins that allow you to add your own schema script - I don't use them so I can't comment. Use the WP directory and do your research on the plugin that might suit you the best.

Google will show your listing in packs where it thinks the information it has about your business matches with the search query. If your site is all about cheap auto repairs, then that's how you would describe your business on your site and other places around the web. Put content on your site according to how you want your business to be known.

 

[Hammer]

I was on this assumption too but it makes sense that if google offers the option to make a one page site they might be bias towards that in some way.

But the problem is... more people see it, but it doesn't convert because it's a terrible site LOL. So it's not a win really...

 

[djbaxter]

See post by @Margaret Ornsby just above:

The one page site is intended for businesses that do not yet have a website and have no coding skills. It can become supporting material for your regular site and your Google listing.

 

[pete101]

Have you tried the free version of the Yoast SEO plugin? That will help with optimizing your site pages and posts.

The same company also offers a Local SEO plugin for WordPress; this one is a premium plugin at $69 USD. I haven't used it but I believe some other members here have.

Yes thank you i added the plugin, i dont follow some of the tips in the suggestions about focus keywords matching the snippet etc. It doesn't seem to be working for some reason as when i search on google it still just shows thr first 2 lines of my homepage instead of the snippet

Also when i tried to add the google search console meta tag it did nothing and i wasn't able to verify.

I had to manually paste the tag under the header in header theme and now i have managed to verify the google search console but unsure if it is working with yoast even though i have allowed it access.

I dont know where yoast puts the meta tag by default, would it still work even if i put it elsewhere below the header?

 

[pete101]

Hi @pete101

The Google one-page site will not "take over" a WP site unless the one-page site is better than the WP site. I've not seen any bias towards Google's sites over any other. Happy to be wrong - if someone has a study that demonstrates they get preferential treatment, I'd love to read it. In my experience, they compete with all the other websites in the world.

Google sites are not magic bullets, and yes they are limited in functionality. The one page site is intended for businesses that do not yet have a website and have no coding skills. It can become supporting material for your regular site and your Google listing.

Can I remind readers the Google site is free? Don't make a big deal about it or poo-poo it for its limits. It's one piece of a much larger puzzle. And it takes all of about 10 minutes if you are starting from scratch with no pre-written content, to go live.

On your WP site, you need Google to be clear about your location. Using things like structured data, embedded maps, links to other online properties that confirm your location and so on, all help confirm the location. Yoast offers a local SEO plugin - I have used it in the past. It's also not free AFAIK.

For the structured data, you can find plugins that do that for you. Alternatively you can do a search for schema markup generators and create the code for your site from that. The json-ld script from those tools can be copied & pasted anywhere on the page. This is one I sometimes use: JSON-LD Schema Generator For SEO - Joe Hall

Whether you need a plugin to put structured data into a WP page depends in part on the theme and/or framework you're using to make your site. There are plugins that allow you to add your own schema script - I don't use them so I can't comment. Use the WP directory and do your research on the plugin that might suit you the best.

Google will show your listing in packs where it thinks the information it has about your business matches with the search query. If your site is all about cheap auto repairs, then that's how you would describe your business on your site and other places around the web. Put content on your site according to how you want your business to be known.

Thank you for this. How do i get the wordpress to confirm my location, do i need to get a plugin to embed the maps?

Also sorry for my ignorance but for schema scripts what do they do?

If cheap auto repairs is what i need around do i need to keep posting dummy pages in the background with such data for SEO?

I use a landing page only so i wont have constant updates.

 

[pete101]

Hi @pete101

The Google one-page site will not "take over" a WP site unless the one-page site is better than the WP site. I've not seen any bias towards Google's sites over any other. Happy to be wrong - if someone has a study that demonstrates they get preferential treatment, I'd love to read it. In my experience, they compete with all the other websites in the world.

Google sites are not magic bullets, and yes they are limited in functionality. The one page site is intended for businesses that do not yet have a website and have no coding skills. It can become supporting material for your regular site and your Google listing.

Can I remind readers the Google site is free? Don't make a big deal about it or poo-poo it for its limits. It's one piece of a much larger puzzle. And it takes all of about 10 minutes if you are starting from scratch with no pre-written content, to go live.

On your WP site, you need Google to be clear about your location. Using things like structured data, embedded maps, links to other online properties that confirm your location and so on, all help confirm the location. Yoast offers a local SEO plugin - I have used it in the past. It's also not free AFAIK.

For the structured data, you can find plugins that do that for you. Alternatively you can do a search for schema markup generators and create the code for your site from that. The json-ld script from those tools can be copied & pasted anywhere on the page. This is one I sometimes use: JSON-LD Schema Generator For SEO - Joe Hall

Whether you need a plugin to put structured data into a WP page depends in part on the theme and/or framework you're using to make your site. There are plugins that allow you to add your own schema script - I don't use them so I can't comment. Use the WP directory and do your research on the plugin that might suit you the best.

Google will show your listing in packs where it thinks the information it has about your business matches with the search query. If your site is all about cheap auto repairs, then that's how you would describe your business on your site and other places around the web. Put content on your site according to how you want your business to be known.

Which online properties would confirm my location? Would my facebook page or instagram do that?

 

[Margaret Ornsby]

Hi Pete

There is no one single online property that would confirm your location. Allegedly credible sites such as Facebook would certainly help.
I recommend a range of sites depending on country, industry, and whether or not people want their addresses to show.