Local SEO in Travel
Yesterday I was reading the Google Maps help groups for business owners, and a question was raised if it was Okay with Google to submit (self contained) accommodations to the Local Business Center.
we’re an accommodation
provider with over 150 self contained holiday listings. We’d like each
of these properties to appear on the local business center maps but I
want to be sure we aren’t spamming.
I think the question was a good one, just to be sure that you are not spamming Google Maps. Maps Guide Jen responded that you are free to go as long as the accommodations all have a physical address, andyou are the representative. Although they are not being validated by regular mail. They do go through the stages of bulk upload though, which means that the listings are not activated right away, but it might take up to several weeks.
Although this might have been obvious, for me this was always a shady grey area, because if you are a representative, you are not the actual business owner but a caretaker of multiple individual listings.
So this opens up opportunities for travel agencies, rental apartments, holiday housing providers, ferienwohnungen, bed & breakfasts, etc. who are representing these business locations and want to be visibile in the local search engines and thus increasing traffic.
If you upload your data to Google Maps using the LBC and want to include a URL to that listing, make sure you deeplink it to the property URL! It looks less like spam, and hey, it increases the conversion rate!
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Local Business Ads owners - please use the LBC to the fullest
This is a call to all Local Business Ads owners.
If you are running an Adwords campaign for your Local Business Ads I’m quite sure you have entered your business details in the Local Business Center.Most probably you are running the Adwords campaign because you want people actually visiting your website. Well, best thing is, you can even have free traffic! I have seen cases where information was entered into the LBC just to support the Adwords.
Some ’statistics’:
amount of impressions were in thousands, the amount of clicks in hundreds. But no URL listed. Oops!
lesson learned: provide Local Business Center with full details about your business. This will increase traffic at no cost.
