subject: Are The New Changes To Google Places Results Costing You Website Traffic? [print this page] Are The New Changes To Google Places Results Costing You Website Traffic?
Some search results have seen practically the whole of page 1 being dominated by the Google Places results and if you were previously appearing on page 1 in the organic listings you may have seen your website being pushed down and off the page.
If you are targeting keywords that Google deems as deserving the return of local results and you are not appearing in the Google Places results or in the top two or three of the organic results this could have a huge effect on the amount of traffic you are now attracting to your site.
The normal organic results are now being influenced more by the location of the person making a search and as a result you are much more likely to see Google Places results returned for search terms than you would previously. More and more people are using their mobile phones to search for products and services and the searches made on mobiles are even more likely to return local results.
You may have spent considerable amounts of time and money in attaining high organic rankings for your website which have been reaping rewards in terms of visitors to your site and sales of your product and service only to now see all that hard work and financial outlay being diluted due to the changes that Google have made.
Although the situation is not something you would have wanted to see happen there are steps you can take to try and regain the traffic you have lost.
Claim your business listing and ensure that Google Places Optimisation has been completed for your main keyword/s and location.
For the keyword/s that are now being affected by local results formulate a strategy to try and get your website listed in the top 2 of the organic results.
Find alternative long-tail keywords that are not returning local results that you can target.
See what other types of results Google is returning on the first page for your keyword/s. Are there images, articles, videos or any other non-standard organic results being shown.? If so, target those.
Consider a Pay Per Click campaign.
It is evident that Google is placing more and more emphasis on Local Search and it is simply a matter of accepting this fact and altering your internet marketing strategy accordingly.
SEO Manchester specialises in gaining free traffic to the websites of small and medium sized businesses via search engine optimisation, local business search seo, social media business marketing, video marketing and mobile marketing.
Call Mark on 07901 563546 or email mark@seomanchester.org.uk
