Question for everyone on GMB Titles versus Business Name

[sip]

Hi All

Optimising the Title in your Google My Business Listing is a good way to increase rankings. Its common practice for some of the bigger Local management companies such as DAC group and i want to hear your feedbakc on what you think is the right approach.

Example as follows

Company name is 1234 Acme

They sell boxes and tape.

The website landing page for their local strategy details their address as

1234 Acme
1 example road
example town
Postcode
UK

Now for NAP consistency we should add their google my business listing exactly as above as well as any citation building.

However we can see from experience that if instead we add the GMB listing as

1234 Acme Boxes and Tape Example Town

then we normally gain an immediate higher ranking.


So my question is this.

What would you normally do for your clients.

1. set everything to just the normal business address ignoring keyword inclusion in titles to achieve total NAP consistency
2. Optimise the Google My Business Title to include keywords but dont do it on citations.
3. Optimise the Google My Business and All citations but leave the site as normal
4. Optimise all titles on Google My Business to achieve total NAP consistency

Or another combination that i havent mentioned if you think there is a better way. including optimising some aspects but not others.

This is all about the NAP consistency and optimisation / keywords in the titles rather than any other aspect of local.

 

[Linda Buquet]

My vote went for: "Dont optimise Titles anywhere its not good practice"

It's a violation of GMB guidelines. So it's not really optimizing but considered as spamming.

And you don't want to add KWs other places because then NAP would be inconsistent and worse yet, could cause Google dupes which usually kill ranking.

 

[sip]

thanks for the reply Linda,

I agree with the against google guidelines bit. however its the old arguement of what google says and does are two different things. From my tests and local ranking factors research like https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors keyword inclusion in the title is one of the biggest gains.

Have you ever had an issue with keywords in the title of a listing that has been taken down or penalised in some way? would be interested in the circumstances.

 

[Linda Buquet]

What Moz is referring to is if your business already has and legitimately has KW or city in the name - Like Dallas Dentistry. They are not suggesting adding KWs to the real name.

Google currently does not seem to be penalizing for this violation. But it often comes up at the Google forum where competitors reported and Google changed to the real name. So you just got the client a spam flag and lost the KW advantage anyway.

Google also OFTEN tells you not to do something in guidelines. Let's it slide for awhile and then later DOES start penalizing.

Plus we've had many discussions here where we tell and encourage consultants and agencies to report/edit bogus names to even the playing field, so those that violate don't get that advantage.

 

[CodyBaird]

Sip,

I'm with Linda here.

It will work like a charm until it doesn't.

I'm super old school. Use to build link wheels with the best of them. It leads to a life of peaks and valley's. Great rankings followed by months, sometimes years of penalties.

I found that investing my time in less risky efforts to pay off better than the short term bumps from various hacks.



Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

 

[James Watt]

It's really frustrating that Google still has keywords + geo in the name of a GMB listing as a big bonus. I'd be really surprised if it stays that way, since it heavily encourages the kind of spam you're talking about, and since (more importantly) putting weight on that ranking factor doesn't actually contribute to better results for customers using Google. I'd be very surprised if that's not nerfed by the end of the year, but we'll see.

For the time being, you're right... having the name be keyword + city is of benefit. If that's the only gray hat thing you're doing, from what I've seen, you won't get slapped to hard when you get caught either, you'll just get your name manually changed to your real business name. The times when I've seen it cause bigger issues, is that it can get eyes looking at your page... something that could fly under the automatic algorithm might not fly if someone at Google manually looks over your listing and decides it's sketch. Sometimes a flashlight in all your dark corners isn't something you want, and this is something that can end up getting you that kind of attention.

Also, in my view, you forgot the right answer in your poll. Don't 'optimize' your GMB or any citation business names... they should all be exactly what your business name is. On the website though, your title tag itself (not your business name) should of course be optimized.

Linda's right too... there's a ton of ways for your business information to leak online. Even if 100% of the citations you create and the GMB profile have an 'optimized' business name, your real name is still likely to spread online through different sources. What IS a good strategy at the moment (unfortunately, in my view) is that if you're starting a new business, to name it keyword + city. I feel like that leads to a poor customer experience (Portland Dentist is a lame brand) and I don't think it'll help long term, but for the time being if you want to take advantage of this ranking strategy and you're working with a new business just starting up, that's the only way that it's truly safe to go for it. Just don't be surprised if you get caught a year from now with a stupid name and no benefit. Kind of like Aardvark pumbing from back in the days of the yellow pages I guess.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Don't do it. It can cause the account to get suspended and it's just a matter of time until someone picks up on it and edits your listing. Google doesn't exactly announce how they are penalizing for breaking guidelines. Currently, they don't penalize a listing for doing this, they just change it. However, at any point, they could introduce a penalty for this and you would then have to explain to your client why your actions got them a penalty. I just don't find it a good long-term strategy.

 

[Dillon Brickhouse]

I'd definitely call it a bad practice. While it would be ideal for a business name to include a keyword as part of its official name, keyword stuffing just isn't worth the risk.

Besides that, onsite optimization still has an enormous effect on local search, so I'd rather spend my time writing great content for the site and creating meaningful local landing pages. That seems much safer and more sustainable. Awesome (real) reviews would be great as well.