Loading ...It can be extremely advantageous for a business to be registered as a local business with Google. Submitting your website to directories like the Google Maps local service can help to gain exposure for your website and increase the amount of traffic that visits your site. In search engine optimisation, working with Google in every way possible is often recommended in order to give you the best chance possible of having your website ranked highly in their search results.
Some businesses do try to manipulate the search engines into ranking them highly through the utilisation of black hat SEO methods. There are many black hat methods that are used, but all will have terrible consequences for a business if they are found to be using unethical techniques by the search engines. The search engines are constantly trying to combat these attempts at manipulation and Google has developed some new guidelines to make it harder for businesses to unfairly use the local business service they provide.
It is now only possible for businesses to register with Google Maps if the full and legal name of their business is given. This change has been implemented to try to stop some businesses using keywords in their name that are not actually included in their business name. Google uses the name of a business when ranking results and so adding extra keywords can have a big influence on where a business is ranked in the results provided by Google.
Google has also decided to stop allowing businesses that provide a PO BOX as their address from registering. This is because a PO BOX is often used when a physical location for the business is not actually present and some businesses register a PO BOX in a few different locations so that their business will be ranked as local. Google will no longer accept the address from a rented space either. They believe that this is unfair and require the address of the main office that is owned by a business in order for them to register.
These changes from Google represent their desire to stop businesses spamming the service and attempting to manipulate the results Google provides. These steps may go a little way to helping solve this problem, but it is likely that due to the nature of the service that this manipulation will continue in various ways and that Google will continue to develop new ways to stop it.
Working within any guidelines provided by Google is important if you want to run a successful search engine optimisation campaign and want your business to be successful. While it may be tempting to use unethical SEO methods in order to achieve relatively easy results, this may actually damage your chances of future commercial success significantly.
We at SEO Consult can show you how to work with all of the major search engines ethically, productively and efficiently so that your SEO efforts will really pay off and so your website will be ranked highly in the search results. We will identify the most suitable SEO techniques for your website to obtain top rankings from websites such as Google.
Related posts:
- Common issues with the Google Local Business Centre
- Google carries out changes to algorithm used in local search
- Using Google Local as part of SEO
- Local SEO can get you National Attention
- Favourite Places developed by Google
Tags: Google, local business, po box, search results, website rank
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