Optimising Current Citations To Increase Ranking

[Oliver Keates]

Hi

For example if you have created 50 citations with the same service/product descriptions and photos for a specific business location will updating these citations to have a unique description for each citation increase the local search rankings.


thanks

Ollie

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Hey Oliver,

This question is currently open for debate and there aren't any test that have been performed to determine the answer to your question.

We are actually in the process of testing this out

We will be updating this thread once we have some findings - Information alongside NAPs

Great question!

 

[Oliver Keates]

Great, I look forward to the update.

I am a new member and i recommend it to others as a good resource to have.

Thanks

 

[adammaxum]

Hmmm..

Unless you're changing the anchor text of links within the citations, which you can't normally do, I'd guess the effect is not worth the additional effort.

The only difference I can think is if changing the description text helps that specific citation listing to have a better chance at being indexed by Google. If more of your citations get indexed, the better for the website, especially if they contain a link back.

 

[Phil Rozek]

There is no earthly way unique descriptions on directories would help your site's rankings (i.e. in Maps or in the organic results). Directory results for specific businesses or for categories of businesses rank well or rank poorly in Google independently of your site.

Now, a unique description may help your rankings within a specific directory (like YP), especially if the description hews pretty closely to the categories on that site. The lineup of business categories varies from site to site. I could see how you might boost your visibility IN a given directory by tweaking your description to fit the names of the categories there.

 

[Dan Foland]

There is no earthly way unique descriptions on directories would help your site's rankings (i.e. in Maps or in the organic results). Directory results for specific businesses or for categories of businesses rank well or rank poorly in Google independently of your site.

Now, a unique description may help your rankings within a specific directory (like YP), especially if the description hews pretty closely to the categories on that site. The lineup of business categories varies from site to site. I could see how you might boost your visibility IN a given directory by tweaking your description to fit the names of the categories there.

How do you figure? Specifically for organic.

I disagree that they don't play a role. Let's say I'm a personal injury lawyer and I have 10-15 directory listings. An industry relevant directory listing with my NAP and a link only will likely have some benefit on its own. But when Google crawls these directories and continually sees content written by us that talks about car accident injuries it would make sense to believe that if Google continues to see our NAP and link (particularly do-follow) near our content that continually talks about car accident injuries Google will make the connection that we specialize in car accident injuries. If Google is trying to show the most relevant search results it would make sense to show sites that they've tagged as specializing in car accidents rather than workers comp for example.

 

[mborgelt]

I agree with Phil. Description optimization within profiles usually only shows benefits in the given directory.

There are so many other more important ranking factors that I highly doubt you'd see any boost in ranking from this activity.

 

[Phil Rozek]

@Dan Foland, I suppose that's within the realm of possibility, but for me it's a real stretch.

If the content in a local-directory profile is great, detailed, and relevant, your business may rank better within that directory, and maybe that page itself will rank well in Google (i.e. "barnacle SEO"). The directory gets much of the benefit, partly because the content is on their site, not on yours. (Though if you get a ton of referral traffic from it, maybe Google would give your site brownie points.)

The other issue is I suspect Google would have a hard time associating the good content on your directory pages with "you." Most local directories are badly policed, and the profiles are easy to manipulate (and create), and most business owners don't update or ever even bother with theirs. To find the 1 business in 100 with "good" content on its directory page Google would have to sift through so much junk that I just can't imagine Google pays it much (or any) attention.

But who knows for sure. (Not me.)

I agree with Michael: there are just so many tasks with clearer payoff.