Question about categories on different business listings around the net?

[Desouza]

After reading this post by Phil Rosek and Mikel Zaremba,
#1 Rank Killer in Your Restaurants Local SEO & How To Fix It, the importance of having consistent categories across my different business listings is clear to me.

Although, I have a question that many of you may be able to answer.

What do you do if your listing your business on several different directories (ex: yelp, yellow pages, facebook page, google+ page, etc..), and they each have set categories that you can choose from, and they are not all the same?


In the link provided above, Mikel suggests picking 1 main category and 3 or 4 subcategories, and always stick to the EXACT same ones across every citation source, and in the same order.

Can anyone advise me on how this is possible? thanks!!

 

[Phil Rozek]

Re: question about categories on different business listings around the net?

What do you do if your listing your business on several different directories (ex: yelp, yellow pages, facebook page, google+ page, etc..), and they each have set categories that you can choose from, and they are not all the same?

That's fine. Your job is to pick out the most-relevant categories on each site, one site at a time. As you said, they don't match up perfectly from site to site. And that's OK.

 

[Desouza]

Re: question about categories on different business listings around the net?

That's fine. Your job is to pick out the most-relevant categories on each site, one site at a time. As you said, they don't match up perfectly from site to site. And that's OK.

thanks for the reply Phil.

Doesnt that going against what is said in this video though, from 2:10 - 2:40 : http://youtu.be/V1kuQX9ea1M?t=2m10s
(btw, your blog is great Phil!)

---------- Post Merged at 04:56 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 04:54 PM ----------

That's fine. Your job is to pick out the most-relevant categories on each site, one site at a time. As you said, they don't match up perfectly from site to site. And that's OK.

Also, in the new Google my business, would you advise me against creating my own custom categories?

Or should I only stick with the categories that generate in the dropdown?

 

[Phil Rozek]

Re: question about categories on different business listings around the net?

Nope. See the 2:45 mark

You may also listen to the long discussion between Mike and me.

FYI, there's no such thing as a custom category in Google Places anymore. Google did away with custom categories in April 2013.

 

[MikelZaremba]

Re: question about categories on different business listings around the net?

Desouza - I'm speaking specifically of restaurants in the video. Because there are so many more niche categories for these I advise nailing down your top 5 (if you have 5) and trying to use those.

What I find to be true in restaurants who try to do their own local SEO is that they forget or don't pay attention to how they categorize the business.

It tends to happen a lot with places that have a broad menu. The restaurant is an American restaurant but they serve seafood, and and have a a couple other menu options and instead of sticking with the main American restaurant (pretty common category in most citations) as the primary they substitute other categories.

 

[Desouza]

Re: question about categories on different business listings around the net?

Nope. See the 2:45 mark

You may also listen to the long discussion between Mike and me.

FYI, there's no such thing as a custom category in Google Places anymore. Google did away with custom categories in April 2013.

Desouza - I'm speaking specifically of restaurants in the video. Because there are so many more niche categories for these I advise nailing down your top 5 (if you have 5) and trying to use those.

What I find to be true in restaurants who try to do their own local SEO is that they forget or don't pay attention to how they categorize the business.

It tends to happen a lot with places that have a broad menu. The restaurant is an American restaurant but they serve seafood, and and have a a couple other menu options and instead of sticking with the main American restaurant (pretty common category in most citations) as the primary they substitute other categories.

thanks for the replies guys.. in Google My Business, is it bad if I change my categories after I set them?

Also, is there such thing as too many citations, or listings in unrelated directories that will actually hurt my seo efforts?

I was reading that some directories are better than others for specific industries.... but is having your business listed in these directories, plus any others you can find a bad thing?

Thanks again

 

[Desouza]

Re: question about categories on different business listings around the net?

Also, is it bad if on different citations, I use the exact same description for example?

Or should I be creating a unique description, about me, etc for every citation? Seems like this would be a hard thing to do.

Sorry for the questions, I tried researching for an answer without any luck. Thanks


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[Colan Nielsen]

Re: question about categories on different business listings around the net?

Also, is it bad if on different citations, I use the exact same description for example?

Or should I be creating a unique description, about me, etc for every citation? Seems like this would be a hard thing to do.

Great insight on these threads

http://localsearchforum.catalystema...ns-description-google-places-description.html


http://localsearchforum.catalystema...descriptions-citations-duplicate-content.html

 

[Desouza]

Re: question about categories on different business listings around the net?

Awesome Colan, thanks so much for that. Some mixed opinions but I think the majority vote goes to it not being a duplicate issue.


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[HurricaneK8]

Re: question about categories on different business listings around the net?

We've tested using different descriptions across citations and have found 0 difference in effectiveness of citations So you're probably safe to copy & paste away!

What we do for citations is keep the official NAP & description (plus categories, store hours, logo) in our CRM system. That way if anyone in the office needs to fill out this information, they don't have to guess

 

[MikelZaremba]

Re: question about categories on different business listings around the net?

Also - I updated the video to help clarify.