SEO PLans
Pre-Labeled Business Categories
In Google’s Local Business Center you have a section to complete called Categories and you can select up to five categories to help Google position your listing correctly.
There are a few interesting nuances here to be mindful of but we’ll cover each one in separate articles. It’s important to mention that these nuances require a little testing; trial & error development it order for you develop a "best match" for your local search traffic.
Google has many pre-labeled category names like Internet Marketing Service that also appears when you start typing in aliases or synonyms like search engine marketing, online marketing, SEO, or search engine optimization. This suggests that if you are any of the latter using the former ensure you list for all such aliases or synonyms.
Prelabled Categories
It would be best to attempt selecting as many pre-labeled categories that define your business "first"… to determine all the aliases or synonyms Google has assign to your targeted industry. Using the previous noted example (revolving around SEO) I selected:
- Internet Marketing Service
- Marketing Consultant
- Marketing Agency
- Advertising Agency
- Consultant
These are not necessarily directly targeted to an "SEO gist" but the idea is to understand the competitive landscape and what Google has defined as your aliases and/or synonyms.
It’s also noteworthy to mention the category "words" are interchangeable. Using the previous category words it is equally plausible to be listed (and ranked) for Internet Consultant, Advertising Consultant, Advertising Service, etc.
This means you don’t necessarily want to just define a set of categories – you want to test a marketing mix of terms and see how they perform in both ranks and traffic.