It’s about local search ranking. Marketers have to ask the question, what will get my store placed at the top of the Google SERP page in a local search? There are several factors to consider in this problem, according to Search Engine Land. A recent study looked at 100 of them as they applied to 30,000 businesses. A few of the important items are detailed here.
Proximity to the searcher is a big one, which really makes sense; however, closeness is not the end-all and be-all that decides it. Relevance comes into play as does the prominence of the searched item, then the proximity to the searcher is factored in.
Another important factor to remember is that the Google search algorithms react differently between implicit search parameters as opposed to explicit searches. Explicit searches included a specific geographical area, such as the name of a city. In these cases, keywords in the business name was extremely important to the result, but proximity was less important. With implicit searches (geographic area was not included) it was the opposite effect. The business’ proximity to the searcher was very relevant, whereas the keywords were less.
Even so, keywords still have great value in the search rankings according to the study’s findings. Business names containing the keywords tended to rank higher. The number of words and pics on the GMB landing page was a big factor as well. Also, having city names and keywords in the anchor texts for attached links was very favorable.
Business that had location pages and locator pages received more positive results than those companies which had only one of either – a clue to the marketing directors who have put off producing both types.
