Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I totally agree hee with you. Keep it and start working on the pages with the wrong information.

I agree with Stephan's comment regarding making sure that it's pet specific. If you ever get into PPC, you're going to need to do a lot of negative keywords to make sure you're not showing up and paying for people looking for how to keep grandma fit.

haha. I was originally told by a representative that they would spend at least 5 to 7 hours a week on our SEO with a dedicated account manager and that they had 8 people in house to do links, copywriting etc. Then I called the owner of the company. He said "oh no, that isn't right, it is more like 10 hours per month." He wasn't sure why the site packages listed it incorrectly. Then he mentioned that they have a "network" of support - so basically no one in house. He also said " yeah man" a lot. I don't know which is more difficult...doing SEO on my own...or finding a reputable SEO company. Needless to say I am not going with the SEO Godfather.

Google has a public cache (i.e. what you see in the search results) and it's own private cache which is used to evaluate site rankings. Although when the public cache is refreshed it more than likely updates several ranking factors, there's also crawling done behind the scenes. Backlinks can and most likely will be picked up before the public cache is refreshed. I've noticed google is getting quite fast on updating rankings and new back links can have an impact sometimes within a day or so now.

Hello PMC. I've seen you around SEOmoz for the past couple months and I recall your struggles with Google Places. If I may make a suggestion...the SEO world is unfortunately full of a huge variation in quality. I would hesitate to grab anyone based on a nice website. Since you have a large focus on local SEO and Google Places, my recommendation would be to do some google searches on those subjects. Instead of looking for websites, find blog articles and forum posts which cover those topics. Look for someone who repeatedly shares articles on those topics or responds to Q&As. Another though to share is if you find someone you have confidence in but their rates are too high, consider hiring them for just an evaluation of your site and talk about your goals. You may be able to do a lot of the implementation work yourself and save some money that way. Another idea for your business. In Las Vegas there are a lot of show animals. I am unsure if your clinic focuses only on traditional pets or if you are able to service some of the tigers, dolphins and other show animals. It can be great PR to share that you are the official vet for Casino XYZ.

I'd also say read the Beginner's Guide to SEO (from SEOmoz). This will help you be able to judge if the people you are looking to hire know what they are talking about or are just telling you whatever they think you want to hear.

Hi, A lot of changes have been happening with Google places over the last few weeks, we have seen 3rd party review data changed. And Google has been making a bunch of tweeks. another thing I noticed where Google is taking more and more time to make changes is the verification of things it will take 8+ week to get bulk upload feeds accepted these days. I also wonder when Google will fix the problems but for the moment you have to sit tight and monitor the blog: <cite>google-latlong.blogspot.com</cite>

It's a fine topic for discussion. The counter argument is there are reasons CTR should not be part of the algorithm such as users manipulation. Either way PPC is very different from organic search results. Bounce rates and returning to Google for new searches are also different topics. Even if CTR was a factor, meta descriptions are only one component. There are page titles, urls, breadcrumbs and other factors which can affect CTR. Even if meta descriptions were a factor, Google often will replace your meta description with another one of their choosing.

Have also had tons of problems with google places over they years. Did this get resolved? Looks like your description is up there, and only google reviews at this point.

Hi, personally I wouldn't delete the Places page. It does look a little over cooked which might be why the description is being deleted. Try to objectively look at the copy of the description - is it factual or full of keywords? You may need to rewrite it. There are people out there who can help you - have you tried http://getlisted.org/resources/trustedproviders.aspx ? Not sure what to do about the sitebuilder. If the relationship is OK, you could ask for them to request the page is removed from the directory via their webmaster tools. Good luck

That is what I was thinking. Thanks for checking!

I agree with this post. Google Webmaster Tools seem to have a mind of their own. OSE it!

Brant This might be your issue... Do this site search in Google: site:www.petmedicalcenter.vetsuite.com Google still has about 112 pages in its index from your old site, all with "Pet Medical Center of Las Vegas" in the title tag, and an address in the description.  Maybe of these still pages from the old site are still in the cache.  AND there are no 301 redirects at all pointing to your new site. So there lies the issue I think. You may want to see if it is possible to 301 redirect all the old pages to their corresponding new pages.  If this is not possible technically, you need to do a domain forward to the new domain. -Dan

I recently read about a phenomenon called "google places purgatory" basically this is when your listings are all active and have no suspension or holds but still you cant seem to see any activity on that listing. This happened to two of my listings. Many of the suggestions were to delete the "broken" places ad and start over. Still tracking the result of this. I'll let you know if i find anything significant.

I agree with EGOL. Since you are looking for a specific figure I'll share a 4 - 10 month timeline for achieving results is quite reasonable. That timeline depends on numerous factors which definitely include your client's ability to quickly implement requested changes and produce quality content as per your agreement.

PMC, Absolutely!  One of the biggest ranking factors for your Google places are your citations. Anytime your clients business is mentioned online it acts as a citation. If you are using different NAP you wont get the credit from these citations.  The other issue is this can cause duplicate places page in Google. When this happens your clients best places page is pushed down and the new less optimized duplicate listing shows up. At this point you will need to claim this listing and TRY to delete the duplicate listing. This can take a lot of time. If you're going to use a different NAP for tracking purposes you'll want to do it as an image so Google bot can't read it. I've also attached a link where you can read about duplicate listings in Google places Hope this helps, Bill

In addition to the resources already listed, I'd also recommend checking out the learning center at http://getlisted.org/resources/ Specific to the, "Any surefire ways to get more citations there?" question... Check out your competitors places listings, too. See if they're getting any citations from local sites, resources, or lists. If Google is indexing these citations for your competitors and adding them to place pages, it will probably tie them to your places page too, if you can get listed.