Keywords in GMB title...

[Mike-i]

Hello,

I have a client who is trying to rank in Maps for "city name house call vet." Their GMB name is NOT their business name... it is: "Business Name the House Call Vets, Dr. Jack Millen"

I know that it is a best practice to have the GMB title be ONLY their exact business name.

However, I worry if we take out the keyword "House Call Vets" from the GMB business name, they will tank for Google Maps "house call vet" searches.

All the top ranking GMB pages have "house call vet" in the GMB  business name (even though it is not in the actual business name of all those businesses).

Should I worry about deleting "house call vet" from their GMB page even though it is not a part of their actual business name?

Will Google still rank them for "House Call Vet" searches in Maps?

Right now they are ranking like 6 which is not great but not horrible in a very large market but also not as high as I think they could be.

Thanks in advance for the help!

[Roman-Delcarmen]

If I could, I would give you the answer to your question but unfortunately, I can't and as I see nobody is helping you, maybe the right place to look help is on Google Advertiser Community.

[ThompsonPaul]

Putting keywords in the GMB business name has a very high risk associated with it. It's against Google Terms of Service and they say they will suspend any account they catch doing it.

But as you note, many businesses are doing it and getting away with, at least for some period of time.

So the question becomes "how much risk is the client willing to accept"? Because if they get caught, their account gets wiped out and they lose all the work they've done to build up ranking, reviews, images etc for their GMB page.

I tend to agree with Miriam Ellis who just wrote about exactly this on Monday in her post. Build a good-quality GMB page within Google's guidelines to ensure long-term survival, including optimising for the "housecall" terms in description, reviews, etc. Then spend a bit of time reporting the offending pages as spam

Hope that helps?

Paul

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Mike,

I hope you'll take a peek at my Monday blog post which Paul has linked to in his reply to you. It deals with precisely this topic. Your dilemma is a really common one, and so frustrating, I know! Basically:

1. Yes, you should remove the keyword stuffing. It's a guideline violation, and therefore, a risk.

2. Yes, this may cause rankings to drop - you will have to build authority in a Google-approved way to get it back.

3. Yes, Google can "soft supsend" the listing if you don't remove the kw stuffing, which will likely cause your listing to become unverified and your reviews may get lost because they aren't associated with a GMB account anymore. You'll have to re-claim the listing if you get caught, but I can't guarantee the reviews will come back (this is scary).

4. Yes, Google is doing an awful job catching this type of spam, so help them out. Once you've cleaned up your own listing, start reporting every single competitor for spam. It would help if you could achieve Local Guide status in Google, as it will give your spam reports a bit more oomph...better still if you can get to know a few other Local Guides and team up to repeatedly flag a business for spam. You have to be on the lookout after you report a business for business title spam - very often, they reappear with the spammy name intact! Arggh - so annoying. But be persistent.

Again, hope you'll read the article, and thanks for asking an important question.

[Ben_Fisher]

I would like to add, that I completely KW stuffing is not a good idea at all.

Adding a city name will not really help you, adding a service type might. BUT, this is all very risky.

Additionally, if you consistently are getting your name edited to what it reflects in the real world (As a TC I check the Secretary of State and the Street View) , there is a limit to the number of times a listing can be corrected before a suspension happens.

In some cases, you may also end up with a hard suspension. (Especially if a TC gets involved.)

Play by the rules, and make edits to competitors as Miriam suggested. Also, if you do the legwork report competitors that are using Virtual Offices/PO Boxes in the advertiser forums.