Monthly Archives: May 2014

Use Schema.org Markups to Increase Your Local Search-ability

Google Rich Snippets

Marketing your local business online is becoming more complicated as technology advances and your potential
customers expect to find your business instantly. If you’re working with a business that has multiple locations, we’ve
put together a few best practices to that’ll help your business rank better in the Carousel or the Local pack in Google
SERPs.

1. Use Schema.org Markups 

For a single location, search engines are usually very good at parsing a business’s web site and determining its NAP (Name, Address and Phone) information. However, it gets a bit trickier for the search engines to get it all right for businesses with multiple locations, which have several (perhaps even hundreds) of addresses and phone numbers. The good news is that Google and Bing have made it easy for us to distinguish exactly which NAP information goes together with a specific form of structured markup called Schema.

Schema data is more or less equivalent a business card for the search engines though. Your schema markup clearly tells them what your business name is, along with the street address and phone number combination for each and every one of your locations. It is advisable to use schema wherever you display NAP info on your Web site.

Here is an example of a schema code for a local business:

<div itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/LocalBusiness”>
<span itemprop=”name”>The Cleaning Authority</span>
<div itemprop=”address” itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/PostalAddress”>
<span itemprop=”streetAddress”>610 North Alma School Rd, Suite 44</span>,
<span itemprop=”addressLocality”>Chandler</span>,
<span itemprop=”addressRegion”>AZ</span>
<span itemprop=”postalCode”> 85224</span>
</div>
Phone: <span itemprop=”telephone”>480-857-4045</span><br>
<a
href=”https://www.google.com/maps/preview?ie=UTF8&cid=16227635319544351318&q=The+Cleaning+Au
thority+-+Maid+%26+House+Cleaning&iwloc=A&gl=US&hl=en” itemprop=”maps”>Location Map</a>
</div>

And, here is how it will appear on your website:

The Cleaning Authority
610 North Alma School Rd, Suite 44, Chandler, AZ 85224
Phone: 480-857-4045
Location Map

Be completely sure that you are using almost all of your available options for a particular type of schema.

Google and Panda 4.0 – What You Should Know

 

Panda 4.0

Google has rolled out Google Panda 4.0 update yesterday. Google’s Panda Update is a filter introduced in February 2011 meant to stop sites with poor quality content from working their way into Google’s top search results. Panda is updated from time-to-time. This is a new Panda algorithm, not a refresh that we’ve seen almost monthly. Please refer to the below article for more information.

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-4-18583.html