Tracking Traffic from Google Places in Google Analytics

A lot of business owners and webmasters who have been actively involved in Local SEO, have come up with a question to me: How to track if a visitor came from usual web search results or from the Google Place page? For those who are new, Google Places is where you add your Local Business to Google. Google Places results are given a lot of prominence in search results when the query either has a location modifier in it or has a local intent. For example, Psychotherapist in Beachwood or Plumbing Supplies Parma. Here is a screenshot:

Tracking Results from Google Places Listing (and the 7 pack) in Google Analytics

For this to work, you should have a working understanding of Google Analytics and the tracking code (which is a Javascript snippet) should be inserted properly in your web pages.

Google Places itself gives a superficial analysis of the keywords that were used, number of impressions and the activity, but this indeed is very vague information. Where were these impressions generated from? Where they from Google Places, Maps or the Universal Search (Google O Pack or 7 Pack) as it is formally known.

To track the results, you need to tag your URLs with the correct parameters. Say if your business has one or multiple locations, a specific URL would be used for every location. The URLs (with parameters) can be built using the Google URL Generator tool. Add parameters like Campaign Source (Google), Campaign Medium (Places) and add a campaign name too. (Like say Location-1). Just copy paste this newly created URL in the Google Places listing. Remember that with the update of the URL, a review process is attached and it will take minimum 5-7 days to get it cleared from Google Places (may take even more).

On the Google Places listing, the URL that you see would be stripped off any parameters and only the main URL would be shown. This is how the data would be shown in your Google Analytics interface (go to Google Analytics Dashboard ->Visitors -> User Defined)

 This is important information at your disposal that will help you take proper marketing and promotion decisions. Location where the inquiries are the most from, keywords that bring in traffic (and for the ones you are already ranking well) and ways in which people interact with your site can not only teach you a lot but also help in taking informed decisions on your marketing spent. A nice web design firm can only help you with website architecture, you need to find an Internet Marketing Consultant to win the online race.

What Local Search Elements Should Cleveland Business Focus Most On?

Asking questions about things that matter to your business usually forms the basis of selection or rejection of an SEO company or expert. Your likely analysis system of an incumbent SEO expert or an SEO company is literally falling apart as you are too confused to see almost all of them having different or sometimes even contrary views. It is not their mistake and neither it is yours. With SEO, things are anyways quite speculative and local SEO goes a step beyond since this field in itself is new, very dynamic and in a manner concealed by Google and other search engines.

Whether it is a do-it-yourself for you or hiring a search engine optimization company, many of the things that you need to rely on are rather vague. If you would really like to do a complete x-ray of the industry views on local SEO, read this Bible on Local Search Ranking Factors. For others, here is a list of the most likely ones that you should focus on to see a benefit in terms on rankings and visibility.

1. Your Business Location: Glad I said. But this is so true. Everyday, we have to make clients understand that a web based business doesn't means that you can rank well in all the cities of all the states. If you REALLY have a business location in a city, add that information to your Google Places account, if you have multiple locations, add all of them and you stand a chance of ranking well when keywords are combined with those location names as modifiers.For example. Cleveland Real Estate Agent. 
2. Semantic Keyword Usage in Business Name: Many SEO companies and Local SEO experts would lead you to believe that keyword usage in business name=SPAMMY. Well that is not true. If you are Presti Bakery, then the word "bakery" comes there automatically. Similarly, if I ate at "Blue Point Grille", I ate a restaurant, so they can include the word restaurant and since they are one, it would never hurt them adversely. 
3. Business Category: This one is kind of tricky and lets you determine a primary defined category and other categories where keywords can be used. It is advisable that if a major portion of your business comes through one product or service, then to use that keyword and its variations as categories. For example, if you are a musical instrument seller but mostly only sell guitars, then focus predominantly on that keyword. This will help you develop that "bias" for a particular product and in enhancing the visibility for that market. 
4. Business Citations: This has directly been borrowed from the academic mansions which house research papers. The research paper which is cited most by others becomes more and more authoritative and hence more "findable" when a search is made against such a database for example at NCBI Pubmed. Citations help your business in leading the O pack results. Citations are like links in regular SEO and they refer to a consistent mention of your business name and location/phone/fax number etc. 
5. Complete Business Profile: Numerous examples exist of non claimed profiles ranking much higher than claimed ones. For those who joined late, Google Places lets you claim your business profile if it exists on Google Maps. This way you can put up more and more information about your business on Google Places. The main reason of having a claimed listing is to put more about your business like images, videos, work hours, payment acceptance methods and so on. An incomplete business profile is just like an unclaimed business listing. Better spend an hour or two update as much information as possible. 
6. Consistency of Business Data: Consistency is the buzzword for Google Places. Businesses are mobile, they shift, they pack and unpack. It is essential that addresses are updated and the claimed listing is the ONLY one which shows in the O pack results or even on a Place page search. (it looks like this). Duplicate Google Place listings should be deleted anyhow. Remember that we are NOT talking of removing the listing from the Google Maps but just from Google Place page. 'Delete' > 'Remove this listing from my Local Business Center account. Here is a link to SE Round Table's coverage on this. 
7. User Generated Content: Users tend to add photos and descriptions of their favorite places on Google maps. This kind of data always helps a business in ranking above other competitors. Also, the placeholder location on the map should be as accurate as possible. We have seen cases where inconsistency of this data has lead to a ranking decrease for some businesses.
8. Location proximity: For big cities like Cleveland, Akron and Columbus, a centroid is becoming less and less important. Imagine a visitor to Cleveland who is not staying in the downtown Cleveland area. They are bound to look for eating joints, recreation places and movie halls in THEIR vicinity and to rank businesses based on a Downtown location would be highly inaccurate. Though the condition is that the searcher should correctly specify her location. That is good news for businesses which are not located or cannot afford to be located near the city center. 
9. Sentiment About Your Business: Poor business practices, bad customer experiences DO affect the ranking of your business. If at the core of your business you have a failed product or appalling service or many unhappy customers, Google Places, as a recommendation engine, would shy from you and your business. SEO or local SEO can never be a solution for mistimes products, bad customer service representatives or abhorring business policies. 
10. Traditional SEO factors: Traditional search engine optimization factors like anchor text relevance, quality of backlinks,  number of backlinks, onpage optimization and domain age/authority too, play a significant role in Google O-pack placement. If you want to rank well for say "lawn mowers Akron", place those words in the title tag of your homepage, in the links that point back to your site and in the internal linking within pages. What perhaps doesn't matters sop much is the crawl depth of the site which means show many pages from the website are indexed in the search engine. One most important factor would be the domain age and site trust (which again comes with domain age and link popularity). 

Ultimately, your rank would be a function of your location, popularity and relevance and the fine mix of factor weights would differ from city to city, industry to industry and query to query. If above best practices are followed, chances are high that your business would attain higher visibility in Google 7 pack and on Google maps.

What Google's 7 pack means to your business fitness?

No, we are not talking about abs here. We are rather referring to something that has an impact on your business health. A must have for all locally oriented business in Cleveland or anywhere in the country - The 7 pack or the O pack as it is known.

This Google listing appears as 7 prominent results just below the "Sponsored Results" on a Google Search Engine Results Page" (SERP). These mostly appear when the searcher attaches a location modifier along with the keyword such as Car Service Cleveland or Tax Attorneys Akron OH. These results might also be generated WITHOUT the location modifier sometime but the condition is that the searcher must be logged in to her Google account and should have her Web History enabled (this happens by default in Google).

Two interrelated reasons why you should care, if you are selling your services in Cleveland, in Akron or in any city/state in US:

• The visibility of these results is quite high, so much so that it cannot be overlooked. 
• Searchers who have a location modifier attached with their search tend to buy more. In other words, these are actual buyers who might be interested in your product or service offering. 

How to Get in the Google 7 Pack for Local Business?

This is an art AND a science in itself and there are many SEO companies in Cleveland who should be able to get you in there. For more of the do yourself types, here are some suggestions:

• Claim or create your Local Business Listing on Google Places (Google Places was formerly known as Google Local Business Center)
• Add multiple locations in case you are physically present at multiple places, but do not fake a listing. 
• Make sure that you have consistent address  information on yellow pages, directories, partner sites and elsewhere. 
• Use "Suggested Categories" and Custom Categories efficiently while optimizing your Google Places listing. Do some keyword research
• Use an H card generator for producing address related microformats.
• Add photos, coupons, videos, custom maps to your listing on Google Places
• Have your customers review your site and services on Google Places and other review sites and Yellow page sites. 
• Build citations and links to your business website
• InfoUSA –  Submit link
• Superpages.com –Submit link
• Localeze – Submit link
• Yelp – Sign up as a business owner
• InsiderPages – Submit link
• Judy's Book - Submit link
• Merchant Circle - Submit link
• City Search - Submit link
• Follow SEO best practices on your website. 
• Hire a Local Internet Marketing Expert

For more information on how to sell more locally, keep reading this blog. Other important blogs that delve deep into local SEO in particular are:
Mihmorandum by David Mihm
Mike Bluementhal
Dev Basu