Google Local Business Data

It pays to make sure your dental practice data is set up correctly!

Google provides a number of tools and resources to help local businesses get found in the search results and to help optimise and analyse the performance of their websites.

All websites should be associated with Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics as standard. Additionally, all local businesses, dentists included, should register their business data with Google to ensure the best chance of appearing in the local search results and that their location appears accurately on Google maps.

Is the process straightforward?

Yes – and no. Over the last couple of years, Google has gone through a number of changes with its “local” business profiling and it’s fair to say that some of the changes have been somewhat confusing. Initially you could register you business via Google “Places” and in fact many still refer to it as that. However, Google then introduced it’s “social” aspect, Google Plus (or G+) and progressively integrated this with the local business set-up. So now we have Google Plus Local and Google “My Business” as (hopefully) the concluding episodes of this rather convoluted process.

So if you’ve followed the transition closely over the last few years, then you can work your way through it. However, for regular dental business owners, it may not be quite so straightforward and a little bit of experienced help would not go amiss.

As a consequence of this confusing transition, we see lots of mistakes made by dentists when they’ve attempted to set up their Google business data. In fact we see lots of mistakes made by dental marketing agencies too! Unfortunately, these mistakes, which you might consider to be relatively trivial, can cause an awful lot of problems and actually prevent a business from ever appearing in the local search results.

What can happen if your Google local business data is incorrect?

If you business data is not configured correctly, there is a good chance that you will not appear in the local search results. Smaller, but still important issues could be that your Google map position is incorrect or that you present important operational details such as opening times, incorrectly. So it pays to get it right.

Mistakes we see regularly

We see numerous mistakes with Google local business data configuration but here are some of the more frequent ones:

• business not verified – Google basically wants you to claim your “slot” in their index and as such you need to sign-in and verify your business. Google will either call you with a verification code to plug back into your admin. panel or send you the code on a postcard. So verifying your business is step one.
• multiple listings – this is where the business has tried to configure their data several times and got it wrong. Instead of correcting a single listing, they have another go, and another, perhaps with slightly different data each time, in an attempt to get it right. This is not good and can be penalised by Google. You need one main business listing which accurately details your business. I’ve even seen some agencies try to gain leverage by publishing multiple listings, but they just end up doing more harm than good.
• NAP inconsistency – ‘NAP’ refers to “name, address and ‘phone number”. These must all be exactly as detailed on your website and an accurate representation of your official business details. Remember that Google is a machine which makes decisions by looking for patterns and matches – where a business present different information on its local business data in Google to that which it displays on its website, then Google simply gets confused. The response to this is that the business gets sand-boxed and might not appear in the local search results. It sounds trivial but it’s actually a serious mistake.
• failure to complete the data set – Google wants you to provide a comprehensive set of data about your business so that users get a good experience when they are searching for your services. To that end they actually tell you a “% completion” figure when you are adding your data. Don’t try to be too brief and skimp it – add the data which Google is requesting until Google says you are 100% complete.

Cleaning up the mess

One of the initial tasks we undertake when starting a new digital marketing project for a dentist is to set up Webmaster Tools, Analytics and to check and optimise their local business data. Sometimes it can be in a complete mess and in need of some significant maintenance. However, for the business to stand the best chance of appearing in local search results and with an accurate maps listing, this has to be done. Just this week, I’ve finished cleaning up a listing for a new dental client where their previous dental marketer had attempted to set up 19 (!) different Google business pages. Now they stand a chance of making some progress.

Summary

Configuring your Google local business data is not trivial and less straightforward than you might imagine.

However, it is extremely important to get it right.

If you are not appearing in the local (“map”) search results on page one of Google, it may be that you business data which is registered with Google is not correct; or maybe not even registered at all.

If you have concerns that this may be the case, please contact the SEO team at Dental Media on 01332 672548 and we’ll be pleased to take a look and advise.