Google launched Local Search to help people find businesses and places near their geographical locations. The results are shown in a number of places across maps and search. For example, when we search for “SEO agency” from a desktop or mobile, Google will prioritize showing you nearby SEO agencies that you might like to visit or contact.
In this article, you will find the best local search practices to list your business, improve your local search rankings and google knowledge graph, and finally how to measure your results.
First, you need to create Google My Business account. The next step is preparing a list of all your business locations and start listing your locations one by one, by creating a profile for each one separately (if you have more than 10 locations you can extract them from excel file).
Make sure while you are adding your locations to add the following data:
Then you need to verify your account, and the verification process is different from one location to another. If you request your verification code by post mail and didn’t receive it within 14 to 25 days, you can verify your locations by phone; all you need to do is calling Google My Business help center and they will take care of the rest. Once your profile is verified your business will be listed on Google local search.
Google local search has its own ranking algorithm, but as with other google algorithms, no one knows exactly the importance of each ranking factor.
For Local search, the main things you need to look at are:
There are also additional factors like customer reviews, social media popularity, and followers number.
Knowledge graph is a box that displays information about businesses, locations or even public figures, and it’s presented at the top of search results.
Knowledge graph however, is much more than just an information box, as it enables internet users to engage with your brand without landing on your websites, like phone calls, social profiles, or getting directions to your offices or shops.
It’s so easy now to have a knowledge Graph, you don’t need to implement any scripts or add any tags to your HTML as Google will generate automatically a knowledge graph once you verify your profile on Google My Business, and it will import the data from the profile as well. You have a full control on the information that you want the internet users to see on this graph.
To have your official social media platforms listed on the Google’s Knowledge graph you just need to verify them, then Google will directly display them on it.
Google My Business insights provides a couple of reports that cover the last 90 days of activity. You can also add a tracking code to the website URL that you’ve added, and you will be able to track your users’ behavior after they land on your website. That way you are able to know the traffic size, engagement, and conversions that comes from local search.
As a performance and data-driven agency, we have been helping business rank for google local search since its implementation, and it’s fast becoming one of the important tools that any business can use to boost their presence online and drive conversion rates upwards. For Further help, please contact us or leave us a comment and we will be glad to help you make the best of this tool to grow your business.
Ammar joined RBBI in 2013 as an Arabic SEO expert. He is currently managing projects for highly competitive industries. He recently contributed to the successful site launch for multiple brands in various sectors targeting international markets.(Airline, Real estate, Hospitality, Health, and Banking). As Ammar is a native Arabic speaker, he is managing the optimisation process for the Arabic websites for RBBI SEO clients.
