Ranking Factors For Google My Business

Google has lately made a change in its document on ranking in the local search results and included factors like directories, articles and links.

The help page of Google which was titled “Improve Your Local Ranking on Google” has recently been updated. Earlier, the page just had five paragraphs of text and was speaking about relevance, distance and prominence for ranking in local results. Presently, this document was expanded vastly by Google.

The new document extends over the local three pack and now talks about how one can get included in the pack, how Google does their ranking in the local pack and more.

The document takes pains to explain you should be aiming to have plenty of data as is possible about your local business in Google My Business and makes it clear that the verification of your business is necessary, the requirement accurate hours, manage your reviews with responses and definitely add photographs whenever required. This is helpful for people to find your business in the local results.

Relevance

Relevance is a reference, which provides information about how well our local listing is matching up to a search. Providing complete and detailed business information assists Google to understand your business better and to match your listing with relevant searches.

Distance

This is just as it sounds: the location term used during the search is calculated to understand how far the potential search result is. Where the user does not specify a location within their search, Google will use its calculations based upon the information they have about the location.

Prominence

The definition of prominence is mentioned as to how well a particular business is known in the area. A number of places have better prominence in the off-line world and search results often try to reflect this information in local ranking. Local search results will have famous museums, landmark hotels or well-known store brands because they are familiar with many people and are therefore, likely to receive prominence in local search results.

Google also ranks information about a business from across the web considering links, articles and directories when looking at prominence of a business. The review count and score of will are factored into the local search ranking. Higher reviews and positive ratings will certainly improve the local ranking of a business. The position of the business in web results is also a factor and therefore, SEO best practices will also apply for local search optimization.

In order to get a better local ranking on Google one cannot find a method to request or pay for the same. Google does its best to keep the details of the search algorithm absolutely confidential to ensure that the ranking system is fair for everyone.

Other Google My Business Local Ranking Factors

NAP (Name, Address and Phone Number) consistency has always played a role in getting the best rankings.  You would be surprised at how many businesses don’t know what directories they are listed in and if the information is consistent or not.

This is one reason it is important to have someone monitoring your listings and making sure they are consistent.  If you don’t, they could get out of hand and cost more time and money in the future to fix.

Inbound one-way links are also still important.  Finding local businesses that will link to you is always helpful.  Also, your local Chamber of Commerce or other organizations that may be similar are excellent places to get links that are beneficial to you.

All in all, navigating Google for better search rankings is not automatic and requires time, money and lots of effort to do.  Factors change regularly as Google tries to improve the results it returns to searchers.

If we can help you with your Google Rankings, then give us a call at 337-789-2150.