Google Business Profile and Local SEO

Big decisions in small moments.

When people seek location information, their intent to buy is high. To succeed in business today, businesses need to be able to deliver in these moments that really do matter.

What does ‘Local’ mean in a digital marketing sense?

‘Local’ can be a shop with a store front or a business that delivers services to a specific area. By optimising your online listing, if someone is searching for a product or service by location, or, are physically in the area, you have a huge opportunity to get in front of them online.

An example of how local search marketing could work:

Scenario: A lady has rented an apartment in Glasgow to attend a wedding and is looking to get her hair put up.

She goes online and does a search on her mobile for ‘Hairdresser Glasgow’.

Next, she will get a list of hairdressers including the name, address and working hours. If she’s on a mobile she can call direct or can use the map to get directions.

We, as consumers carry mobile phones wherever we go and we expect to get an immediate answer to whatever we are searching for. It is so important for businesses today to create a local online presence to avoid missing out on the decision making that literally happens in a moment.

How Google Determines Local Ranking

Google would like to give you one answer in the shortest of time that is so relevant you don’t need to spend anymore time searching whether it be on a desktop, a mobile or using your voice. Voice search is huge now and what never ceases to amaze me is that we ask our phones the most complicated of questions and actually expect an answer! What amazes me even more, is that we get the answer in less than a second and more often than not it will be the right one!

During the time it takes from you asking the question to receiving the answer, Google has combined three factors to decide what this result is going to look like.

Relevance – How well does a local listing match the search query?

Distance – Exactly what it says on the tin. How far away is the storefront or service that best fits the searchers needs?

Whether we are aware of it not, most mobile phone users allow Google to know their location. That is of course if they haven’t already used it in their query. However, if the Google algorithms decide that actually a business that is a little further away from the searcher would be more beneficial to their needs, they will push that business higher up in the search results.

Prominence – In a nutshell, how well known is your local business online? To be honest there isn’t much you can do to compete againt established businesses that have been around for many years or famous landmarks when it comes to prominence. However, by optmising links, getting articles published and being listed in directories you will 100% increase your prominence within the search engines.

In a nutshell though, Google really doesn’t want anyone to know how the local search algorithm works. All any good SEO can do is give Google what we know it wants and do it really well. There is no way to pay Google to organically push your results up in search however… by targeting your adverts to a local geographical area is a really good way of doing that!

By creating a Google Business Profile listing, your business information can show up in Maps, Search and other Google Profiles. If you would like help to claiming your listing, optimising your page, local citations or, if you’re looking for a small mobile friendly website to be built for you, please get in touch and let’s talk about how we can help.