Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Google My Business Updates “Improve your local ranking on Google” Page
Google My Business updated their help file page: “Improve your local ranking on Google” Page. And surprisingly, after a slow start, actually added some real ranking information (this does not appear to be a April 1 Joke):
Prominence is also based on information that Google has about a business from across the web (like links, articles, and directories). Google review count and score are factored into local search ranking: more reviews and positive ratings will probably improve a business’s local ranking.
Your position in web results is also a factor, so SEO best practices also apply to local search optimization.
I am archiving the page as a PDF for future reference.
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Comments
9 Comments
When referring to “your position in web results”, is that to mean the business’ domain linked to the GMB page? If so this is an interesting admission indeed.
@kevin Yea something like that
Thanks for sharing this Mike 🙂
Since Google 3 pack seems to be a hot topic this new info will become useful. I see more and local clients are NOW asking about this. Great info!
Do you have the old content for comparison? The Prominence portion sounds pretty similar to what I can remember.
This change has sparked a thought I struggle with for my client.
IMO, prominence speaks more to offline brand advertising initiatives and/or campaigns that enhance a business’s online reputation. Focusing on the positive, if you’re awesome, people are going to talk about how awesome you are and even share your awesomeness with their friends on social, write reviews, write articles, etc. etc. If you’re “known” in your local community as “the business that’s awesome” that usually means you DID something more than offering a good experience online or having good customer services, although those can also part of it. My challenge for my client is, yes they have good user experience, and yes they have good customer service, product, etc. etc…they even have growing website traffic but are they truly “awesome” in their local community to warrant prominence? And if not, what can I do, as their lead gen digital marketer, to “help” with this. I’ve tried educating them, I’ve suggested super good branding ideas (of course 🙂 but ultimately their lack of brand marketing could hurt/is hurting their online prominence.
How does a business increase their local online prominence without any offline marketing campaigns or partnerships?
@Sarah
Doing it just online with no offline activities is hard in local markets…. I usually suggest activities that provide both off and on line visibility like a dentist doing pro bono work for vets getting an article in both the local newspaper and the online and blogging outlets… even if you did just an online activity its hard for me to think of one that wouldn’t be enhanced with comparable simultaneous off line activity to really make it successful and get people talking.
Obviously email and social media with attendant follow up with the online press are the mediums that come to mind to do what you want to do.
Hi Mike,
There are a number of articles since this came out saying that this is a change in local ranking factors. I interpreted this as a confirmation of what many in the local industry already understood. Do you think the addition of language to the Google page reflects a change in the algorithm or just a more detailed description of what has already been in place?
Here is the SEJ article for reference: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-local-ranking-signals/160809
Thank you!
@Austin
I did not publish the whole thing nor discuss the whole thing because I do think most of it was evident and previously known. I chose to publish the above because it was news in the admission only.
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