Businesses today will usually be able to thrive better if they expand their reach on the web. This is one of the main reasons why Search Engine Optimization (SEO) exists. But make no mistake, SEO today is not a one-shot-end-all move to have your business flying. An SEO campaign can be made up of a number of different moving parts, tailored according to how a specific website is made or what it’s about.
One of these essential parts is Google My Business. An important element that makes Local SEO possible.
If you want your business to be found online locally at the exact time your target audience is looking for you, then this is one of the things that you need to focus on.
Let’s go back in exploring Google My Business. This is a tool that allows you to manage how a business will look like and how it performs on search. With GMB, you can fix how your business can be seen on Google Maps as well. Moz published a survey showing which factors were essential for local SEO to work well – having and optimizing Google My Business listing is 19.01% of all the other factors. It’s also the highest aspect next to having quality back links. Almost a year later and this is still the case. Don’t believe me? Boom! Check it out for yourself.
See? We don’t just write fake percentages here, we actually look for credible sources.
Having a listing on GMB and being able to manage it by yourself (or by your SEO agency if you’re working with one) lets you specify working hours, photos of your store or business plus the very important reviews from customers. And if you’re familiar on how SEO works, you would know that having positive reactions from your customers (or other people that don’t work with your business in the POV of new customers) is a very powerful boost in trust factor, which then makes you and your business look good on the eyes of lord Google.
Once you’ve got your business listing verified there on GMB, you’ll now be able to fill in all the necessary details that we mentioned above. Except the reviews of course. As much as possible, give your customers options to leave different reviews. Don’t make forced good reviews. (It’s like you posting a Facebook status and then liking it) You will also be able to see regular insights, impressions, and clicks. This then gives you a picture of how your business is being perceived by Google and your audience.
Beware though that only having GMB (Google My Business) alone, won’t help you with local SEO. You will also need localized content of course, and all the necessary onsite Optimizations.
And what those last 2 sentences mean is that you should always take care of all the little things before it’s too late and something happens……. It’s one thing to focus on SEO, but again, SEO is a number of things working together.
Which brings us to the second part of our topic: the most recent Google update last February.
Before you all storm out of your offices and call for help, calm down and keep reading.
Firstly, you should know by now that Google does these updates every time so you can stop acting all surprised. But we get it, there were a number of times that Google did something and all hell broke loose. But the truth is, that isn’t always the case.
Google admitted that they ran a “broad core algorithm update” last February. This caused every ranking out there to be disrupted. They also said that you can’t “fix” anything on your website if in case your website was affected greatly by this update.
But what that actually meant was that there is literally nothing to fix. A page or website that’s got a bad drop in rankings this February doesn’t mean that they had bad SEO going on, it’s just that Google is trying to display or rank under-rewarded pages and websites.
Before, what would happen is that you may have all the right onsite gimiks, quality content, local SEO strategies and all but no matter what you do, you can never get past that high authority competitor of yours. But now if you’re the underdog and you’ve got all the bells and whistles just like your high authority competitor, this could be your chance to shine.
And all of these can’t be possible (or would even last long) if until now, you haven’t set up all the little things. Which, in this new perspective, are really important giant reasons for you to help you start ranking past your competitors. The combination of being easily found online, through the use of Google my business and yes, that good old updated, relevant content today, can help you get ready for the next possible update in the future. Or any sort of new update. If your goal online is to reach out to people, help them to find you easier, share information and not to manipulate and twist people’s arms to buy into your motives.
Google will always shine that holy light on you and help you transcend past those pesky high authority enemies.
