Venice Update
If you have a business with multiple locations or if you have one location but service multiple cities then are you optimizing or have you optimized for the Venice update?
The Venice update has changed the way in which results for broad search queries are brought up in that they have localized them. So, if you search a broad keyword term like, “family doctor”, then Google will bring the most relevant results to you based on your location. The Venice update takes into consideration (1) your location (based in IP address), (2) the service or product you searched for and (3) websites optimized the best for those factors.
Google Places
Venice has also emphasized the importance of Google Places by merging organic search results with Google Places results.
What You Need to do
What Google has done with this update is that they have assured that wherever you search from the organic results given to you will be localized to your geographical region. They do this by using your IP address. If you operate multiple locations or if you are a big chain, then you need to be optimized for each one of your locations. That means on-page and off-page.
Different things that you can do for optimizing your page is:
(1) Create a local landing page. Even if you don’t have a physical office in that region you should create a landing page for it. Remember, Venice also throws into consideration Google Places, so you should consider getting a physical address for added relevance.
(2) Localized page content. If you want to rank for your service + geographical region, then you need to include page content with appropriate use of such keywords. Remember, to get the best results and to avoid a penalty from the panda update, make sure that the content for each page is unique. Don’t use the same content with different location information.
(3) Title tag and description should include your keyword and location. This may seem simple but it is a huge ranking factor.
(4) Geo Site Map. You should add a geo site map to your website so that when Google crawls it the map is seen and considered as relevant to a searchers location.
Optimizing for Venice off-page:
Link building– When link building with Venice in mind you should go after anchor texts with location and keyword in mind. This is a simple recipe that will help you to appear as legitimate as you are and help you to rank appropriately according to your location.
When you are link building make sure that you are only pursuing authoritative websites. Guest posting is a great way to link build, but you have to remember to do it right and make your anchor text look natural and not promotional.
Another good place to get good links and help you to rank for local relevance is review websites. Yelp is a perfect example of an authoritative site that will help boost your local relevance. With Yelp you can optimize your listing to include all of your service locations. There are also many other websites like Yelp that can help you with this.
The Venice update has improved search results for users and made the web an easier place to find exactly what you are looking for. If you are a business owner with a website then this is good for you too, but you have to make sure that you are staying up to date with all of these changes. If you do not play by Google’s rules and optimize accordingly then you are only hurting yourself. If you are not sure how to optimize your site accordingly then seek consultation with a reputable internet marketing company that offers SEO services. It is not an easy job but it can be done and you can reap the rewards by keeping up.
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Tagged Under: google algorithm update, local seo, venice update