Learn how to properly optimize a website.
Website optimization is vital for GBP rankings. Google now uses the website to see what the keywords the GBP is relevant for.
The three main points of optimization are the URL, Page Titles, and Headings of a page. Tools like Screaming Frog allow you to crawl a website and see every page URL, title and Heading.
The other important thing to check on a website is duplicate content. Google penalizes websites that repeat a keyword, city, zip code, etc. too many times. It is considered duplicate content and spam. If a website has the same keyword repeated in the URL, Title and Headings of several pages their rankings will start to get suppressed.
These methods of optimization are not just for maps, they work well for organic rankings as well. A business does not need to sacrifice organic rankings for maps.
Here is how to optimize a website for a keyword and how to clean up duplicate content to remove any penalties.
Table of Contents:
Home Page
URL
Page Title
Page Headings
Linking
Putting It All Together
Blog Posts
City and Zip Codes
Home Page
This should match the name of the GBP. This helps with brand entity strength. This also means the home page will match their social profiles and citations exactly as covered in the GBP optimization section.
We do not recommend adding text after the brand name, but if you must then do it after a - to separate it from the brand name.
URL
This is the most important part of keyword optimization and holds the most value on what a page is about. Each unique, important keyword you want to target should have its own page and URL.
Examples:
Roof-repair
Roof-installation
Roof-inspection
It is best to make sure these exactly match the keyword you want to target. Bad examples would be:
roof-repairs-and-installation
roofing-repairs (if targeting roof repair)
roofer-inspections (if targeting roof inspections)
Page Title
The second most important point of optimization is the page title. You want to match whatever the URL is in the the title followed by - BRAND NAME.
Examples:
Roof repair - New View Roofing
Roof installation - New View Roofing
Etc.
This associates the keyword with the brand name of the company.
You do not want to stuff titles with tons of other keywords or locations because of duplicate content penalties. Bad examples:
Roof Repairs and Roof Installation- New View Roofing
Roof repairs - Best Roof Repairs in Dallas - New View Roofing
Etc.
This is why we recommend 1 page per major keyword and just matching the URL in the title as explained above.
A good way to prevent duplicate content is in how you capitalize page titles. If you capitalize the first word and lower case the rest to helps to combine all the words into "one word".
Roof repair: This is only about "roof repair".
Roof Repair: This is about "roof" and "repair" and "roof repair".
If there are multiple pages that contain "roof" it will not be over optimized.
Brand Names
Brand names that contain a main keyword can create duplicate content penalties. In the current example "Roofing" is a main term and is used in various pages. To avoid duplicate content instead of the brand name being used in the title of pages, use the "domain.com":
Roof repair - NewViewRoofing.com
Roof installation - NewViewRoofing.com
As you can see, when done like this "roof" is no longer used twice in the title.
Page Headings
Page headings are the last main point of optimization. Since we don't want to create duplicate content, but still want to be able to target a wide range of keywords, use H2 and H3 tags for variations of the main term.
If the page is about "roof repair" you can use H tags to target terms like:
Roof repair near me
Roof repair quote
Roof repair contractor
Etc.
Please note, we also use the capitalization method here as well to avoid duplicate content.
You are now able to target many more keywords without making new pages on the same main term.
Linking
Now that you have a target keyword page properly optimized it is important to link to it from the home page. The home page is the strongest page on the website, and where it links to helps power up that page.
The best text to use when linking to a page is with it's URL.
Example:
link to the .com/roof-repair page with "roof repair"
Use at least the main menu to link from. But whenever possible, and especially with the most important terms, link from the text of the home page.
Putting It All Together
URL: Main keyword as the page url.
Page Title: Main keyword - Site Brand Name (Match GBP Name)
H2/H3 Tags: Use for long tails versions of that main keyword (prefixes and modifiers).
Content: Add other text and images around this this keyword and headings.
Homepage Link: Link from the homepages of the site to this page with the main keyword.
Example 1:
URL: www.sitebrandname.com/chiropractor
Page Title: Chiropractor - Site Brand Name (Match GBP Name)
H2/H3 Tags:
Chiropractor near me
Local chiropractor
Family chiropractor
Homepage Link: Anchor text "chiropractor" to: www.sitebrandname.com/chiropractor
Example 2:
URL: www.sitebrandname.com/plumber
Page title: Plumber - Site Brand Name (Match GBP Name)
H2/H3 Tags:
Emergency plumber
Local plumber
Plumber near me
Homepage Link: Anchor text "plumber" to: www.sitebrandname.com/plumber
Example 3:
URL: www.abcdentist.com/root-canal
Page title: Root canal - AbcDentist.com (Keyword in brand name)
H2/H3 Tags:
Emergency root canal
Best root canal dentist
Root canal near me
Homepage Link: Anchor text "root canal" with url: www.abcdentist.com/root-canal
Blog Posts
It is common for a business to have a blog to try rank for more keywords. This is the biggest and easiest source of over optimization and duplicate content on a website. You need to check the URLs, Titles and Headings of blog posts and compare it to the service keyword pages. Tools like Screaming Frog make this easy.
We recommend removing blog content that would cause a penalty, moving any valuable headings and content to their service page, and setting that URL to redirect to the service page. If the site owner does not want to remove the blog post you can update the Title and Headings with the capitalization trick explained above and/or set the page to no-index.
City and Zip Codes
City names and zip codes can be over optimized for.
If the city name is repeated in various URLs, Titles and Headings they will rank worse and worse in that city.
Common issues we see:
One city repeated many times:
.com/roof-repair-dallas-tx
.com/roof-installation-dallas-tx
.com/roof-inspection-dallas-tx
Or on keyword repeated many times to target different cities:
.com/plumber-dallas-tx
.com/plumber-austin-tx
.com/plumber-houston-tx
If a site is only targeting the city the GBP is in you can just list the city in a home page Heading. Or if they have one city page you can do it in the title like:
Plumber - Dallas, TX - Brand Name.
If the site is targeting multiple cities, it is better to create a page for each city:
Dallas
Austin
Houston
Then link to each service page with the URL keyword:
Dallas links to .com/roof-repair with "roof repair". Link to .com/roof-inspection with "roof inspection", etc.
Austin links to .com/roof-repair with "roof repair". Link to .com/roof-inspection with "roof inspection", etc.
Houston links to .com/roof-repair with "roof repair". Link to .com/roof-inspection with "roof inspection", etc.