Local SEO for Medical Websites – Medical Marketing Monday
Local SEO for Medical Websites – Medical Marketing Monday
Learn how Google’s local search results differe from the traditional search results and what you can do to improve your rankings in this weeks Medical Marketing Monday. Learn more at http://mdwebpro.com
Hi Everybody,
It’s Marc Ohmann with MDWebPro and we’re back for another Medical Marketing Monday. Today we’re going to talk about “Local Search Results on Google”. Now many of you are familiar with the Google Results page and what we’re looking at today is a search on “Plastic Surgery in Austin”. In October 2010, Google changed how they handle a location in a search. What Google is trying to do is tailor the search results to a location. When the search includes a city name, Google tries to return businesses that are near that cities centroid. Even if you don’t include a city name, Google is going to guess what your city is by looking at your internet service provider. Google is going to take its best guess at what city you’re in and then show you the results based on the city identified. Google is using this more and more in all of the search results we track. We monitor which search result has this local component and what we see is the number of search results with this component continue to increase, so Google is getting smarter and smarter about this local search and when to show local results. Google is really beginning to do a very good job at it and it’s really making for a better search experience for the user.
Today we want to talk about what goes into a local search and how does Google determine which search results should show up at the top of the results page. As I mentioned, up until October 2010, we just had standard search results where you see the first ranking, second, third, on down the page. There’re some paid listings above and a second set of paid listings down the right side. Today we’re focusing primarily on the organic listings in the center of the search results page. Google still ranks you based on the content of your site, the authority of your domain and now as of a couple of years ago the location of your practice. You’ll recognize these local results by these little thumbtacks which you’ve probably seen in Google. What those thumbtacks correlate to is a map which Google displays showing your current location and the location of these search results based on their guess of your location. These thumbtacks represent a local search and an actual physical location. The first key to ranking in the local search results is to have a physical location near the locality being searched for. You need to have a “Name/Address/Phone (NAP) and keep your NAP consistent across the web. You start by placing your NAP on your own website. Here we see that West Lake Plastic Surgery has an address and phone number. West Lake’s NAP needs to be consistent across the web because this helps Google determine who is for real and who actually has a physical location. Google wants to return here, they’re charged with the task to determine the best search result and the only way they can really determine that you’re really in Austin is through this NAP and also their own Google+ Places. Google’s verification method includes the sending of a postcard or actually calling your business. So Google has two primary techniques and the main one is when Google looks at your NAP to see how many times throughout the web your NAP appears because the actual number of times it appears reinforces that you actually exist and that you’re not a guy who actually lives in Minneapolis trying to pretend he’s in Austin so he can get these search results. Now that’s Google’s task, so the next question is how do they do that? Google indexes the whole web on a regular basis and what they’re looking for is this NAP and how many sites it appears on what we call a “Citation”. Now I’ve added the number of citations here for the Top Seven search results for the search Plastic Surgery in Austin. What you see is the top result has a total of 93 citations. What that means is 93 times out on the web, Google has found this NAP and this business name. The #2 listing has 75 citations, #3 has 83 and #4 has 121. You can see that having the most citations doesn’t always mean you’re going to rank higher. What we do see is that all things being equal, with two businesses with the same location, the same site authority, a rank with more citations will outrank a site with fewer citations. And almost in all cases, a site with 93 citations is going to outrank a site with 10 or 20. Google doesn’t see sites with only 10 or 20 citations as being very authoritative. Why does your site only have 10 or 20 citations when we’re finding sites with 80, 90 and 100? Google correctly ranks the sites with the higher citations near the top of the search results page because those sites appear more authentic to Google. Transcript continues on http://mdwebpro.com