What is the best approach: abbreviated citations or fully spelled out citations?
-
What is the BEST approach: abbreviated citations or fully spelled out citations?
For the purpose of ranking locally in google what is the best method of formatting citations? Would it be abbreviated or fully spelled out addresses.
Southwest v.s. SW v.s. Sw
Avenue v.s. AVE vs. Ave
-
So glad to be of help, Erik. Thanks for using Q&A!
Miriam
-
greast response. It makes sense they can understand the difference. Seems like a basic thing. Just want sure how picky they are regarding to consistency and format. Thank you all.
-
Hi Erik, Smart question, and it's one that I've actually discussed in the past with other Local SEOs. My belief is that Google has no problem understanding that Ave and Avenue are the same thing, so this is not the kind of consistency you really need to worry about as I do not feel it has any effect on rankings. What does have a big effect is inconsistencies like differences in business name (i.e. Joe's Plumbing vs. Joe's Plumbing & Heating) and failure to correctly list elements like suite addresses every time. Hope this helps! Miriam
-
That's a good idea. Ultimately, remember that Google buys data from the big 3 aggregators, InfoUSA, Localeze, and Axciom. These guys buy data from the Telco's like AT&T etc. Make sure you have a copy of your phone bill (if you aren't using VOIP) and match it to your Google Local+/Places address format.
-
I would also cross check it against the USPS format if you are starting out just to find a good consistent format that is right with the USPS.
-
For address suffixes, Google displays them as abbreviated (where Street=St, Place=Pl, Avenue=Av etc.) So it follows that that would be an optimal convention to use. Note however that it is more important that you ensure that your citation format is consistent across the web. This will have a far more significant impact on your local ranking.
Marc @ PoweredbySearch.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Best way to handle outdated & years old Blog-posts?
Hi all, We have almost 1000 pages or posts from our blog which are indexed in Google. Few of them are years old, but they have some relevant and credible content which appears in search results. I am just worried about other hundreds of non-relevant posts which are years old. Being hosting hundreds of them, our website is holding lots of these useless indexing pages which might be giving us little negative impact of keeping non-ranking pages. What's the best way to handle them? Are these pages Okay? Or must be non-indexed or deleted? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Which is the best way - to have all FAQ pages at one place, or splitted in different sections of the website?
Hi all, We have a lot of FAQ sections on our website, splitted in different places, depending on products, technologies, etc. If we want to optimize our content for Google's Featured Snippets, Voice Search and etc. - what is the best option: to combine them all in one FAQ section? or it doesn't matter for Google that this type of content is not in one place? Thank you!
Algorithm Updates | | lgrozeva0 -
What is the new / current google algorithm update targeting and how to adapt / fix SEO approach accordingly ?
Over the past c. 3 weeks our average Google SERP rankings for a site have been as follows : week 1 : average 3rd in SERP week 2 : average 1st in SERP week 3 : average 7th in SERP Reading on sites including Moz, SEO Roundtable and looking at Moz's mozcast tool it seems there is allot of change going on with Google's algorithm at the moment. Is there a general consensus as to what the new algorithm update is targeting so that we can adapt our site / marketing accordingly ? Or is it too early to adapt ? When Google rolls out an update like this is it common to see fluctuations as they try out things or if we are currently down in the rankings should we take action now. I know there a tools that look at your google analytics data an overlay a list of major google updates such a penguin and panda, but from what ive read this is a generic algorithm change rather than a defined named update.
Algorithm Updates | | jpeg800 -
Best length for a video on a website
Most of us deal with UI/UX questions and SEO questions from clients on a daily basis. I was discussing video length with a client recently and I realized that he was in his video. This made me think about the thrill of seeing yourself in video might cause someone to make their video longer at the expense of UX. So, I thought I would put it to the Moz community. If a company is doing a "typical" home page "Explainer" video that tells about a company. This can be in the B2B or B2C sectors. I want to withhold my opinion at this point for the discussion.
Algorithm Updates | | RobertFisher0 -
Site´s Architecture - Categories . What´s the best in my case?
My Dear friends of MOZ, I´ve got you a case that has been driving me crazy for 2 weeks, Im doing an SEO audit for big brand that sells electronics. Since they sell all kind of electronics, and are very popular the site is quite big and has several categories. Now...Im working particularly in a kind of micro-site that sells two kind of products that are very similar but not the same. Lets say in this site they are selling super-light-weight-Laptops and tablets, so if you look the site its a Laptop/Tablet site. But the site is not under a laptop/tablet directory, some pages are under laptop and others in Tablet directory . For example : Home page URL: /light-laptops/home.asp ; Products general page page URL is light-pads/products.asp ; and each single product page is under laptops or pads according the type of product. From my point of view, they should create a new directory called /light-laptops-pads/ and single directories for products, and case studies, etc.. Since they want to show both products together when you click in products (off course they will be creating sub-directories for the two types of products). At the begining I thought they were really mistaken, but now that I see that all light-pad content is in one folder and light-laptops content is in another, and the site jumps from one category to the other I am a little bit confused. PLEASE HELP ME PD: I want to make clear that general categories like products, case studies , contact us, solutions pages are in some cases under /light-pad/ directory and in other cases under /light-laptops / directory PLEASE PARDON MY ENGLISH!
Algorithm Updates | | facupp10 -
Google's spell check recognize a keyword with volume
When the keyword "acls recertification" (an important keyword for our client) is typed into the Google search box, the word "recertification" is underlined in red. Note that you only need to type "acls rec" to make the red underline appear.BUT, Google does not underline the word "recertification" when it is typed into the search box alone, nor does Google underline the word "recertification" when the following keywords are searched: cpr recertification bls recertification pals recertification ^These are all closely related to the keyword "acls recertification," so this spell check behavior is very inconsistent.Why does this matter? Because no matter how close you come to typing "acls recertification," Google's autocomplete suggestions never include "acls recertification" (because of the perceived misspelling?).BUT, Google does suggest "acls recertification online" in the dropdown menu. If you select the "acls recertification online" suggestion then backspace until the word "online" is gone, the red underline disappears, and "acls recertification" becomes an autocomplete suggestion. VERY strange behavior...I have replicated this issue on various depersonalized browsers and devices, so I am confident that this is not related to my personal settings.This keyword contributes to a large portion of our client's business (they specialize in acls certification and recertification), so you can imagine how concerning this is for us. Note that until very recently (3-4 months ago), this keyword did NOT have any spell-check issues. This keyword averages 2400 searches per month according to AdWords which should be enough volume to allow Google to recognize the correct spellingI posted this issue in the Google product forums, where I was advised to submit feedback directly on the search results page via Google's "feedback" link. I have submitted this feedback to Google, but I thought I would bring this to the MOZ community as well to see if anyone has experienced a similar issue, or has any ideas as to what could be causing this issue.
Algorithm Updates | | RyanKent0 -
Best practice for someone wanting to repost / translate some of your blog posts?
I've been contacted by several sites (a few in other countries) who would like to repost some of our articles on their site. A few of these are in other countries and they would like to translate them in their language. (we have a site about raising a child with Down syndrome so they are wanting to use our info to help people...not "beat us" in rankings, or anything like that.) I didn't know what the best practice on this was. I don't want to get dinged for duplicate content or have someone rank higher than me for my own article, etc. Just curious what the best way to go about this was. I'm also assuming the articles that are translated wouldn't be an issue at all since the content will be in another language. Is this right? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | NoahsDad0 -
Is this the best way to get rid of low quality content?
Hi there, after getting hit by the Panda bear (30% loss in traffic) I've been researching ways to get rid of low quality content. From what I could find the best advise seemed to be a recommendation to use google analytics to find your worst performing pages (go to traffic sources - google organic - view by landing page). Any page that hasn't been viewed more than 100 times in 18 months should be a candidate for a deletion. Out of over 5000 pages and using this report we identified over 3000 low quality pages which I've begun exporting to excel for further examination. However, starting with the worst pages (according to analytics) I'm noticing some of our most popular pages are showing up here. For example: /countries/Panama is showing up as zero views but the correct version (with the end slash) countries/Panama/ is showing up as having over 600 views. I'm not sure how google even found the former version of the link but I'm even less sure how to proceed now (the webmaster was going to put a no-follow on any crap pages but this is now making him nervous about the whole process). Some advise on how to proceed from here would be fantastico and danke <colgroup><col width="493"></colgroup>
Algorithm Updates | | BrianYork-AIM0