The Power of Google Business Profile

First, it’s important to emphasize why GBP matters. It’s often the first point of contact for potential customers, providing essential information about a local business, including location, hours, reviews, and photos. A well-optimized GBP can significantly impact local search visibility and customer trust.

The Importance of Google Business Profile

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A study found it’s the top factor for ranking in the local pack on Google. Our research in 2020 also showed that 82% of local marketing experts agree that tweaking a GBP is a super effective way to improve your local search rankings. 

So, how can BrightLocal help you supercharge your or your client’s GBP? Let’s dive into the strategies and tools available:

1. Auditing for Optimization

As well as being aware of what a critical tool Google Business Profile is, you’re probably also aware that Google doesn’t give away any competitor insights. 

For example, let’s imagine that you’ve just started work on local SEO for a dental practice in New York. You want to know why a specific competitor ranks above them in local search and what they need to do to outrank them. You head over to Google and search, but this is all you see:

Without an intelligent tool, figuring out how to beat the competition and get into the top local results is challenging. That’s why we made our Google Business Profile Audit tool and Local Search Grid. They do all the checking and analysis you need.

Once you’ve set up a Google Business Profile Audit report, you can ensure the accuracy of your listing and understand your performance. 

Ensuring Accuracy and Health of Your Listing

Once set up, the ‘Summary’ page of a Google Business Profile Audit serves as your primary dashboard for evaluating the overall health and accuracy of your GBP listing.

Here, you can identify and eliminate any duplicate GBP listings associated with your business, scrutinize the consistency of Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) information, and identify and address essential local ranking factors. 

Embarking on these steps within the GBP Audit report not only ensures the accuracy of your listing but also lays the foundation for a robust and trustworthy online representation of your business.

Understand Your GBP Performance

You can thoroughly understand your GBP performance by incorporating Insights into the GBP Audit’s report. 

Unlike Google Business Profile Insights, which only offers six months of data, GBP Audit extends its horizon to 18 months, providing a comprehensive and extended view of your listing’s performance.

You can:

• Analyze the discovery points on Google through search or Google Maps to strategically optimize your online presence.

• Extract valuable data on customer actions, unraveling users’ common behaviors on your GBP, from visiting your website to requesting directions or making calls.

• Delve into phone call trends, pinpointing peak days and times and aiding in meticulous staff availability planning.

By utilizing the Google Business Profile Audit tool, you ensure the accuracy of your listing and gain in-depth insights into your GBP’s performance, enabling informed decisions for optimization and growth.

4 Ways GBP Audit Can Help You Optimize Your Listing and Outrank the Competition

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Competitor Insights 

Local Search Grid provides essential data from Google Local Finder, offering insights into your competitors’ performance. 

For example, once you’ve set up a Local Search Grid report , you can see what primary and secondary categories your competitors are using. This allows you to ensure that you select categories that align with high-performing keywords and match those used by successful competitors.

2. Taking Action

Customer reviews and GBP posts are crucial elements that significantly contribute to the credibility and utility of your GBP. Two BrightLocal tools can help you with these. 

Manage Your Reviews

Reputation Manager enables you to monitor reviews, gather feedback, and address negative comments promptly. Helping you to cultivate a positive online reputation and attract more customers.

Once you’ve created a Reputation Manager report, you’ll be able to keep tabs on all reviews from essential review sites, allowing you to observe the growth of reviews over time.

If you also link your business’s Google Business Profile and Facebook accounts to the report, BrightLocal will automatically check for new reviews daily and notify you of any arrivals. With your report connected to your GBP and Facebook, you can conveniently respond to reviews directly from this report, streamlining the process and helping you stay on top of your reputation more efficiently.

Managing your reviews is just the start. If you need help getting them in the first place, a tool like BrightLocal’s Get Reviews is key. It will help you grow your reviews and increase your star ratings.

Schedule Google Posts

GBP Post Scheduler makes managing your GBP much easier and simpler. It offers effortless scheduling, multi-location distribution, and AI content generation. 

Effortless Scheduling

You can set the perfect time for each post and decide when it should expire, ensuring a steady flow of content for potential customers. You can also monitor everything from one dashboard to keep an eye on what’s live, what’s scheduled, and what’s expired.

Multi-location Distribution

When dealing with a multi-location brand, there might be times when you want to share the latest national promotions with all locations at once. Instead of doing it individually, you can publish a post to multiple locations simultaneously, saving you hours of effort. It’s a quick and easy way to ensure consistent content across your entire network of locations.

Craft Posts with AI-Powered Content Generation

Input a brief description of the message you want to convey, and within seconds, our AI writing assistant will provide you with creative content ideas to work with and enhance.

Our Help Center has more information on how our GBP AI works.

3. Active Sync

Active Sync helps you care for your GBP and other vital listings like Facebook, Apple Maps, and Bing, ensuring they’re accurate and up-to-date. 

Once you’ve connected your GBP to your BrightLocal account, you can set up additional categories, opening hours, the business description, and additional data, such as Google Business Profile Attributes, from your BrightLocal account and push them out to those listings. 

Once you’ve set Active Sync up, it will send you alerts when external changes are published to a listing. For example, if Google publishes a suggested edit, you’ll be notified rather than having to log in.

You can accept or reject the changes suggested within the BrightLocal platform, which allows you to shield the listings from external edits and ensure their accuracy.

Your Google Business Profile is a powerful tool for local business success, and when combined with the comprehensive suite of BrightLocal tools, it becomes an unstoppable force. By conducting regular audits, managing your reputation, and optimizing your online presence, you can stand out in local searches, attract more customers, and drive business growth.

This post will provide some foundational understanding of the ad type and how to think of it in your marketing plan. We will be doing a more advanced companion piece that will dive into more specific questions folks face when running these campaigns, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled!

What are LSAs?

First and foremost, LSAs are ads. This means they require a budget to serve. While they benefit quite a bit from local SEO, they are still, first and foremost, an ad. They are charged based on recorded phone calls that last at least two minutes or messages that get sent through (if you opt-in to that feature) that come via the ad.

Think of LSAs as business cards, allowing your customers to identify and communicate with you directly. They allow white and blue-collar professionals to appear at the top of the Google search engine result page (SERP) for queries relating to the specific type of business they offer. 

An LSA placement can appear on a mobile or desktop device and can include: 

• A photo of the professional
• How long the business has been in business 
• Ratings 
• Link to the website (if provided)

LSAs require you to choose whether you are open to more “general” inquiries or if you require the leads to be more specific. If you opt not to go for the volume of general leads, you retain the right to dispute calls/messages that do not align with the categories you select.

Where do LSAs appear?

LSAs can appear on all types of SERPS (and have been spotted in Google’s AI Search Generative Experience). That said, they are predisposed to have a higher mobile focus. This is because the main call-to-action is “call”.

The user is presented with three ads on both desktop and mobile. At the bottom of the ad unit, the user can click or tap to view additional ads for businesses.

The number of ads in a market and within specific categories can vary considerably. You might see only a few, or you might see dozens. It just depends on how many businesses are in that market category. The most ads I’ve seen after clicking through to view the entire list for a specific search is 100, so that may be the maximum.

This is what you’ll be presented with if you choose to expand the ad unit on desktop:

Which countries are LSAs available in?

Currently, LSAs are only available in a small number of countries. These are:

• Austria
• Belgium
• Canada
• France
• Germany
• Ireland
• Italy
• Spain
• Switzerland
• United Kingdom
• United States

Benefits of LSAs for Local Businesses

There are many benefits to LSAs, though depending on your business model, you may be predisposed to value some more than others.

They’re cheaper than traditional paid search

First and foremost, LSAs are typically cheaper than traditional paid search. This is due to their ad format. It’s not bound by the same auction as paid search is. As such, you might pay anywhere from 10-40% less per call/message lead than you would otherwise. 

However, before you fully commit budget to LSAs, it’s important to remember they don’t always show and can be subject to far more volume volatility than traditional search. This is why it’s typically a good idea to include them as part of a holistic marketing strategy.

Your local SEO efforts benefit them

The second big benefit is that they draw directly from solid local SEO practices. You’re golden if you’ve set the foundations well for your Google Business Profile, structured your site well (i.e., easily crawlable), and are active in your review responses/acquisitions. If those things aren’t true, you will likely take longer to ramp up your LSA profile.

You only pay per lead

Finally, LSAs charge based on recorded phone calls or messages. This is a huge benefit over most other marketing channels because you can pay per lead. However, if your intake/sales team isn’t able to respond to the leads promptly or you’re not able to service the volume, you won’t just lose money; you’ll begin to lose rankings for your profile. 

What types of businesses are eligible for Local Service Ads?

When LSAs first hit the market in 2016, there was a huge waiting list to get onboarded. Now, it’s fairly straightforward, and most local verticals are accepted. So long as you’re a local business that accepts clients through lead gen (as opposed to software that would let a person sign up on the site or buy a product directly), you’re likely eligible.

The main distinction is between white collar vs blue collar work (i.e., is this a professional service where the customer will likely come to the business or vice versa). 

However, eligibility varies greatly from region to region, as seen in the examples below.

The list for the UK, while made up of many similar verticals, is much shorter.

If you’re in a region that doesn’t yet support LSAs for your industry, don’t despair. Google (and Microsoft) see the need and desire for this ad product and are constantly adding new regions and verticals. The full Google list can be found here. 

How LSAs Work

LSAs behave slightly differently from traditional paid search campaigns. Rather than bidding on keywords or audiences, brands designate services you are interested in. In doing this, you gain a far simpler targeting method but lose the ability to “outsmart” the algorithm through more manual intervention.

Unlike Local Search Ads (the map pack), you do not appear automatically just for connecting your Google Business Profile. These ads don’t require keywords, audiences, or ad creation (like traditional search ads or Performance Max). 

They require you to either set up a separate account or allow your LSAs to share the same client ID (CID) as your existing Google Ads account. You’ll rank better or worse based on the information you provide, the bids and budgets you set, and how well you respond to leads.

Getting Google Guaranteed

Setting up LSAs is much simpler than it used to be; however, it still requires careful planning. You’ll still need to verify your ad account and go through a background check to get the Google Guaranteed component.

What is Google Guaranteed? 

The Google Guarantee is a badge displayed whenever your LSA is shown. It sends a trust signal to customers.

What You Need to Get Google Guaranteed

The background check component used to take as much as two weeks to complete. Now, it’s usually a matter of a few business days. 

You’ll need the following information to set up your LSA profile:

• Name of business (and any DBA)
• Your legal name
• Phone number (this can be a call recording number—but can only be changed through a Google rep)
• Website (if any)
• Photos of your business 
• Photos of you
• Business Insurance
• Year your business opened/years of experience.
• Professional License  

I find it’s best to collect the info you’ll need before you begin rather than trying to fix it once launched. This means setting up call recording numbers beforehand (use a non-dynamic number).

LSA Best Practice

As we discussed, you cannot do much to manage LSAs. However, the things you can do have a big impact.

Consider your budget and bid aggressively early on

First and foremost, your budget and bid will greatly impact how often your ad serves and where it serves in the LSA bracket. As a general rule, budgets should be set more aggressively than you intend actually to spend. This will give Google the room to ramp up while also ensuring you are competitive in the auction. 

For example, if you intend to spend $10K per month, the budget should be set closer to $30K-$50K per month during the first 60 days of the profile. Once your account is running, you can experiment with dialing the budget back.

Experiment with manual bids

If you’re struggling to get traction, you can experiment with manual bids, which will let you set more or less aggressive bids by the services you’ve opted into. While this usually isn’t ideal once an account is running and bringing in steady leads, it can be a useful tactic to help get the campaign going/improve performance during a slump.

Be disciplined about the services and locations you target

On the subject of services, it’s important to apply a disciplined approach to the number of services and locations you opt into. Profiles can’t really support all eligible services and markets—you’ll want to create multiple profiles to support multiple markets. As a general rule of thumb, you’ll want to focus on no more than three main services and locations. This way, your budget can do the job you want it to do, rather than being spread too thin. 

While the three maximum is a good rule to live by, it’s also important to be practical. If you’ve historically valued leads the same and/or there isn’t enough volume for a service/location to get its own profile, it can be ok to include it. Just be aware that LSAs do factor proximity into ranking.

Make sure your images include elbows (yes, really.)

Finally, here’s a note about the images you use for your team members. Google has been known to disapprove of images that don’t show the elbow of the person in them. So make sure your headshot highlights at least that much of you. 

Monitoring the Performance of Your LSAs

The lead volume and cost are the main things to keep an eye on with LSAs.

Lead volume is tracked based on calls and messages received. Reports will show you how many leads you received and how many you were charged for. You can also see a breakdown of new, active, and archived leads. 

Archiving a lead means it didn’t work out, so you couldn’t get the business. Disputing a lead means the lead flat out isn’t right. Disputing is a way to potentially get money back and teach Google that they need to amend the kind of traffic they’re sending you. 

Cost and cost per lead are shown in the reports section. It’s normal for lulls in the middle of the month and spikes at the end/beginning. This is due to Google doing its best to spend your budget. 

We also gained impression share in 2023. This means we can get useful insights into whether the volume we’re getting (or not) is due to competitiveness or lack of market.

Get Started with LSAs

Local Service Ads are a powerful channel and are absolutely worth testing if you’re a local business. They have a “first person mover advantage” mechanic, so if you haven’t set them up yet, you may find main metros to be competitive. Consider targeting slightly outside the main metro, and don’t be afraid to restart a profile if it seems to be stuck. 

Don’t forget about Microsoft’s Bing. Microsoft launched a professional service ad offering that harnesses the same functionality as traditional campaigns. If Google is crowded, that’s a way to bypass the competition. 

Don’t worry, you’re not alone. That was one of the reasons I created a Looker Studio report to help break down and visualize the data in easy-to-understand chunks.

The search data in GSC can be overwhelming, especially for many business owners venturing into GSC for the first time. But after following the steps in our first GSC post, we can now show you how to take a slightly deeper look at the search data from a more local perspective. (Not read the first post but eager to get advanced with GSC? No problem! Let’s dive in.)

In this guide, I’ll show you how you can filter through the search data in Google Search Console to help you with:

• Understanding your visitor’s local intent
• Using GSC to create ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ content on your site
• Gathering ideas for Google Business Profile posts 
• Posting your own GBP Q&A from questions asked by users
• Using the data to build additional content or expand on what the user may want to know more about
• Tracking your UTM tagging from your GBP (Google Business Profile)

Filtering the Search Data Using Regex

We’re mostly going to use something called ‘Regular Expressions’ (or ‘regex’) to filter the search data.

When you apply a regex pattern, Search Console goes through your data and only shows you the parts that match your instructions. It’s like filtering out the clutter and zooming in on the important stuff.

For example, if we want to find all queries that contain the word “local” or “near me”, it would look something like this:

(?i)\b(?:local|near me)\b

What does it mean?

• (?i): Case-insensitive flag, ensuring matches regardless of capitalization
• \b: Word boundary, ensuring the words are whole words, not parts of other words
• (?:...): Non-capturing group, grouping the words without creating a capture group
• local|near me: Alternatives within the group, matching any of the specified words
• \b: Another word boundary to complete the word match

Example Matches

If we looked at the search console data for a local restaurant we might see queries such as:

• “find local restaurants”
• “restaurant near me”

We are going to use the example above later in this post but let’s start with something a little easier.

Let’s start with your local town/city and state

It’s time to roll up your sleeves and dive into the search data. We’ll start easy and then increase the complexity of our regex filters. We’ll start by looking at how to filter the results just to show queries that contain just your town or city.

The regex would look like this:

(?i)\b cityname \b

Just copy the above example and replace ‘cityname’ with the name of your town or city, but first, let me show you how and where we’re going to add it.

Log into your GSC dashboard, and under ‘Performance’ choose ‘Search results’.

Now, above the main table of search data, we’re going to edit the settings and apply our first filter.

Select ‘+ New’ and then ‘Query…’

Select ‘Custom (regex)’

We now want to copy the regex example:

(?i)\b cityname \b

And paste it as follows:

You will have replaced cityname with the name of your town or city. Now just click “APPLY”.

Your ‘Queries’ table should now only contain the top queries containing the name of your town/city.  Look at the search data and see what your customers are searching for that includes the name of your town. It can be very revealing.

Well done, you’ve done your first filter using regex! Now let’s build on this.

We’re now going to filter the search data by town/city and state.  For example, my next example is going to use Atlanta, which is in the state of Georgia, which may also be written as ‘GA’.

My regex would look something like this:

(?i)\b(?: atlanta|georgia|ga )\b

Note the use of the pipe ( | ) – the OR operator. Using this means that any of the three options, ‘atlanta’, ‘georgia’, or ‘ga’, can be matched.

Now my search data will list any query containing the words ‘Atlanta’, ‘Georgia’, or ‘GA’.

Local Intent

In our very first regex example, we used this example:

(?i)\b(?:local|near me)\b

Now let’s expand on this just a little and include a couple more variations:

(?i)\b(?: local|nearby|near me|best in )\b

Example matches:

• “Find local restaurants”
• “Best pizza nearby”
• “Grocery stores near me”
• “Best coffee shops in Atlanta”

Context matters. Analyze queries within your specific industry and location. Intent can be implicit or explicit. Not all local queries contain obvious location terms.

Tip: Increase the date range from 3 months to at least 12 months. This will increase the amount of query search data you are filtering and give you more insights.

What questions are your users asking?

Have you ever wanted to know what questions your potential customers are asking to find your product or service? Well, you can do so by using the simple regex snippet below. Just copy and paste the following, as we have done before.

(?i)\b( what|where|when|why|do|who|how|can|which|will )\b

You can now use the results from your search data on your website and GBP to:

• Create Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) content on your site
• Discover ideas for Google Business Profile posts 
• Post your own GBP Q&A from questions asked by users
• Build additional content or expand on what the user may want to know about

Tip: You can always just trim down the regex and start with the what, where, when, and why.

(?i)\b( what|where|when|why )\b

You can adapt any of these patterns to include additional words beyond common question words. For example:

Commercial Intent:

(?i)\b( best|top|vs|review )\b

Transactional Intent:

(?i)\b( buy|cheap|price|purchase|order )\b

Question and Keyword

What if I wanted to know what questions were being asked that contained a particular keyword?

For example, I have a personal injury lawyer and I want to know what questions are being asked concerning trucks.

The regex for this would be:

(?i)\b( what|where|when|why|do|who|how|can|which|will )\b *\b truck \b

Example Questions:

• what personality traits do truck drivers have
• can truck drivers sleep on the side of the road
• why truck accidents are not like car accidents

Just change the word ‘truck’ for the service or product that relates to your business.

Company Name Tracking

With this regex snippet, you can gain valuable insights into your company’s online presence. By tracking trends in brand awareness, identifying top-performing pages, and even uncovering potential issues, you can use this information to improve your content, SEO strategies, and overall brand visibility.

Pinpoint your company name variations. List all possible ways people might search for your company:

• Full company name, e.g. “Amazing Products Inc”
• Common abbreviations, e.g. “Amazing Products”
• Potential misspellings, e.g. “Amazing Products”
• Variations with modifiers, e.g. “Amazing Products reviews,” “Amazing Products near me”

(?i)(\b Amazing Products Inc \b|\b Amazing Products \b|\b Amazing Products \b|\b Amazing Products near me \b)

Replace placeholders with your actual company name variations.

(?i)(\b YOUR_COMPANY_NAME \b|\b ABBREVIATION \b|\b MISSPELLING \b|\b COMPANY_NAME modifier \b)

Remember to monitor the results and adjust the pattern as needed, based on your specific needs and search trends.

UTM Tagging

If you’ve been being a good local SEO, then you’ve been using UTM tagging within your GBP for many years now, for everything from your website links to GBP posts. If you haven’t, then read Claire’s guide on UTM Tagging for Google Business Profiles and fix that right away!

How to Use UTM Tagging with Google Business Profile

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You can see your UTM data quite easily within your GSC search data. However, because UTMs are associated with the page URL, we have to apply the regex to ‘Page…’ and not ‘Query…’.

…and paste, as before:

\?(?:utm_source|utm_medium|utm_campaign|utm_term|utm_content)=[^&]+

Then, switch between the ‘Pages’ tab to see the top pages that are performing, and then switch to the  ‘Queries’ tab to see which queries are producing clicks from your GBP.

Conclusion

For local businesses, mastering regex can unlock a hidden vault of Google search data about your customers. But like any powerful tool, precision and ongoing adjustments are key to keeping up with evolving marketing goals and staying ahead of the game.

I hope these regex examples prove valuable. Should you have any questions, please reach out to me on X (formerly Twitter).

At last count, more than 80 million people head to the site each month in search of somewhere to eat, someone to fix an issue at home, or someone to get them on the road. With dozens of categories and a vast directory of local business information, it’s an indispensable tool for local consumers.

It’s also a great way to grow your online presence, generate leads, and boost your sales figures. From takeout joints to locksmiths and home cleaners to body shops, Yelp is a great way to put your business in front of local consumers.

While you may not see it as such, Yelp is kind of like a search engine. As with any other search engine, the more time and effort you pour into search engine optimization (SEO), the better your results will be. So we’re going to talk to you about Yelp SEO.

The good news is that there are plenty of steps you can take to increase the prominence of your Yelp listing, no matter how competitive or overcrowded your particular category may be.

Why does Yelp SEO matter?  

Yelp isn’t just a key review platform or a place to claim a free business listing. It’s also a business discovery tool in its own right. It ties these three elements together, and that makes it particularly useful for local business owners.

What makes SEO for Yelp especially important is the proactive nature of the directory’s user base. According to its own figures, 83% of Yelp users hire or buy from a business they find on the platform.

What’s more, 57% of users contact the business directly within 24 hours. Those are powerful incentives to make your business as visible as possible. Get that right and you can realistically expect your foot traffic, reservations, and bookings to increase by a notable margin.

Claiming your Yelp listing is also free. As with any other business directory, it’s a useful way to boost your local citation count. Plus it provides a wealth of useful information to consumers. Information such as opening hours, street address, and services offered along with reviews and images are all contained within your Yelp listing. This information makes it that much easier for consumers to match your local business with their immediate needs.

How to Claim a Yelp Business Listing

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You also won’t be charged for any user interaction with your business. That means calls, emails, and website visitors are all free. You just have to make sure your listing is visible and receiving traffic. That’s where knowing how to optimize Yelp business listing information comes in.

Not only this, but users themselves go to Yelp to perform searches. And, as with other platforms, Yelp has its own algorithm for ranking the businesses it returns.

7 Ways to Optimize Your Yelp Listing

The internet is full of information and tips, but much of it is outdated, confusing, and time-consuming to wade through. Yelp doesn’t tend to share as much insight or best practice advice as Google or Bing, which can make it even harder to know where to start.

The tips below will guide you through optimizing your Yelp business listing. These essentials include category selection, review responses, and the importance of regular updates.

Ready to tap into the enormous potential that Yelp offers? Read on.  

1. Choose a Relevant Business Category

If you’ve been responsible for your business’s local listing management for a while now, you may be familiar with the importance of business categories. It’s a vital part of Google Business Profile optimization and similarly important when it comes to acing SEO for Yelp.

Yelp allows you to select up to three categories when claiming or updating your business listing (more on that later). But that’s not to say you should select three if only one or two are actually a good fit.

How to Choose the Right Google Business Profile Categories

Read more

One of the easiest ways to optimize a Yelp listing is to only select the most relevant business category or categories. There are 1500 categories available in total, so you’ll need to be as specific as possible to ensure you’re getting seen by the right kinds of consumers. 

If you’re a home automation expert, for example, you may be tempted to also select electrician as a secondary category. But, unless you’re also an electrical contractor offering services such as appliance repair or rewiring, you could be undermining your listing’s effectiveness. 

2. Add Relevant Services 

While a category is a broad definition of your business offerings, services allow you to be much more specific. Here, you can select as many services as you offer. And, you can do so for each category you select.

This gives both Yelp and local consumers a much clearer idea of what you can offer. It provides both Yelp and local consumers with a much clearer idea of what your business does, helping to boost your listing’s relevance within search results. 

Make sure you select every service that your business offers. Again, don’t add irrelevant services in the hope of attracting more traffic. Focus instead on what you do offer so that your efforts to optimize Yelp listing information deliver meaningful traffic which could boost your sales figures. 

3. Carefully Craft Your ‘From This Business’ Text

Yelp research suggests that as many as 90% of Yelp users use the platform to compare local businesses. Your ‘From This Business’ text is your opportunity to connect with Yelp users and introduce some keyword-rich content to your listing at the same time.

The ‘From This Business’ area of your listing is split into three sections:

• An introduction
• Business history
• Specialties

Each of these components provides a space to connect with local consumers, highlight how your business can meet their needs, and feed the Yelp algorithm with more intel about your local business.

Try and include keywords, such as products or service names, within the text. The specialties section in particular will naturally be keyword-rich, but you can also add other useful information in the intro and history sections.

4. Ensure Your Opening Hours Are Correct

Getting your opening hours right is a basic but necessary Yelp optimization task to tick off. Having incorrect hours can be frustrating at best and at worst, could actively cost you custom. BrightLocal’s Local Business Discovery & Trust Report found that 53% of consumers saw opening hours as the most important information for a business to get right on their listings.

A consumer who sees that you’re open on Yelp and travels to your location isn’t likely to have a great impression of your business if they arrive to find you closed. Chances are, they won’t risk it a second time and will go to a competitor instead.

One of the nice things about Yelp—and key to managing your Yelp business listing effectively—is the option to add special hours. If you’re closed on Thanksgiving for example but open 24 hours on Black Friday, you can add special hours to your listing. You can add as many special hours or extended closure details as needed, so be sure to keep this area updated.

How to Get Your Google Business Profile Holiday-ready

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To add special hours, just navigate to the business information section of your listing and hit edit.

5. Take a Proactive Approach to Photos and Videos

Visual content is a very powerful asset for any local business. Images and videos allow consumers to build a detailed picture of your business without ever having visited or tried your services.

They help in decision-making and allow you to showcase the quality of your offering, the ambiance of your venue, and the professionalism of your staff. What’s more, when you head to the Yelp home page, it’s impossible not to notice that the top spots are invariably occupied by listings that have plentiful visual assets.

Images and videos are also an easy way to build trust. This is especially true if your Yelp SEO activity leads to more consumers uploading images alongside their reviews.

Yelp’s official advice states ‘Upload multiple photos to look your best’. That’s frustratingly ambiguous, so as a good rule of thumb, we’d suggest mirroring Google Business Profile photos best practice and uploading a well-rounded selection of images.

How to Upload and Manage Google Business Profile Photos

Read more

Aim to include shots of the interior and exterior of any location open to consumers, team photos, and product and service offerings. For bars, restaurants, and other hospitality venues, you’ll also want to include shots of your best dishes and most striking spaces.

It’s very simple to upload images.

1. Log into your Yelp business listing.
2. Select ‘Photos and videos’ from the left-hand menu.
3. Then upload from your device.

6. Respond to Reviews (Good and Bad)

Review management is a critical part of any local SEO activity. Yelp users are known to be very engaged, are prolific reviewers, and often call, message, and visit local businesses. We already know that reviews are a primary Google Business Profile ranking factor. They’re also vitally important to consumers, with 88% citing business owner responses as a top influencing factor when deciding which local business to choose.

Responding to reviews doesn’t only show Yelp users that your business is active, engaged, and values customer feedback; it also sends those same messages to Yelp, which could help you stand out from less responsive, less active competitors. 

It’s worth noting that how you respond to reviews matters too. We’ve shared lots of tips here to help you navigate responses to feedback both good and bad.

Responding to Online Reviews

Read more

7. Encourage a Regular Influx of New Reviews

A regular influx of good reviews is also important. Many consumers will only browse the most recent reviews. New reviews also help Yelp to understand more about your business, its popularity, and its relevance for consumers searching for specific products and services.

Yelp discourages local businesses from soliciting reviews. Suspected requested reviews are tagged as ‘not recommended’, with Yelp saying they can be more biased. However, there are ways that you can nurture a steady stream of incoming reviews to keep your business listing current.

One easy way is to link to your Yelp listing on your site. The platform also suggests using a ‘Find us on Yelp’ sticker at your physical location. You can take this a stage further by adding a link to your Yelp listing within your email signature, adding a Yelp logo to your business card, or including it within your physical marketing material.

Remember, you’ll need a plan to respond to your incoming reviews as quickly as possible. 

It’s Time to Work on Your Yelp Listing

Knowing how to optimize a Yelp business listing is easier than you may think. With many similarities to Google Business Profile optimization, it shouldn’t take too long to get to grips with.

Even better, growing your visibility on Yelp can directly impact the success of your business. With an engaged user base and the ability to share useful business information, it’s well worth adding Yelp SEO to your local SEO to-do list.

Not only will it help you be easier to find within Yelp itself, but optimizing your business listings is beneficial for your local SEO too. Making sure that each of your listings is accurate and working harder for you, rather than just building and forgetting, is a good move for any business.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore how multi-location businesses can effectively leverage BrightLocal to understand location performance, deliver on rankings and key performance indicators (KPIs), and showcase their value to stakeholders.

Understanding Location Performance

To ensure that each location is thriving, it’s vital to start with a top-level overview and identify weak spots. BrightLocal’s Horizon is an excellent starting point. Horizon is the only rank-tracking solution that’s purpose-built for multi-location SEO. It enables you to consolidate and visualize ranking performance across hundreds or thousands of locations into a single, intuitive dashboard.

Here’s how you can make the most of it.

Identify Weak Spots

Utilize Horizon to pinpoint locations that may not be performing as well as others. The visual representation helps you identify areas that require attention.

Anything marked in green is in a good position. Anything marked in red needs some attention. For instance, the business in the image below is ranking well in Idaho—3.3. But not so well in Massachusetts—10.1.

To get a better idea of what’s holding these states back, we can click on the square—let’s click on Massachusettes—and we can see which specific locations in that state are struggling to rank well. 

In order to dig deeper, we can simply click the locations on the map and we’ll be taken to their individual Local Search Grid reports. Here we can find out what we might be able to do to outrank them. 

Identify Top Competitors

Identifying who your main search competitors are becomes complex for businesses with multiple locations. Fortunately, Horizon streamlines this process by pinpointing top competitors for each of your locations, as well as the top one in each state. This allows you to gain insights into your competition nationwide, analyze their strengths, and strategically plan to outperform them, ensuring you stay at the forefront of the game.

What to Do With Local Search Grid Data

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Drill Down for Details

Once you’ve identified locations that need improvement, use the single location tools within BrightLocal to dig deeper. Analyze the specific factors affecting performance and make necessary adjustments.

For example, you could check out their individual Local Search Grid report as mentioned above or run a Local Search Audit report to quickly see what’s holding a location back. With this information, you can work out the best course of action.

You can see here that the Location in the image above needs to work on their local listings. Their next steps could be to run a Citation Tracker report in BrightLocal to help them find and fix current listings and uncover new citation opportunities. 

Delivering on Rankings and KPIs

If you’re going to deliver on rankings and KPIs, as a multi-location business, you need to use a combination of strategies, tools, and techniques to enhance your online visibility, attract more local customers, and ultimately drive revenue. This often includes optimizing websites, managing online listings, maintaining an active and positive online reputation, and implementing effective marketing campaigns.

BrightLocal offers a range of tools and features to assist you in this area.

Review Generation and Responses

Review Inbox allows you to streamline your multi-location reputation management. You can view, sort, and filter every customer review by status or rating, for every location you manage in BrightLocal, via a single feed. If you have integrated your GBP or Facebook Pages to your reports, you’ll also be able to respond to reviews from these sources directly from Review Inbox.

Learn how to set up and understand Review Inbox here. 

Listing Management

Active Sync is a tool that helps you to keep your most important listings accurate and push out updates when you need to. 

Listings have changed over the last decade. Searchers used to use hundreds of different sites to discover local businesses. However, now just a few key listings dominate: Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business), Facebook, Apple Maps and Bing. 

These listings have become the key sites that consumers actually use to discover, evaluate and engage with a brand. They also supply your information to other sites and voice-control devices such as:

• Google Business Profile – Google Maps, Waze, Google Home
• Facebook – Instagram
• Bing – Amazon Alexa

Consumers rarely use other listings sites, but they can help businesses to build authority with search engines. Which is where our Citation Builder service comes in. You may be using expensive listing management solutions that hold your data hostage for minimal output; Citation Builder is a managed service where we build out listings for your brand at scale and give you true ownership of your data moving forwards. 

Get your business listed where it matters

Start Building

Active Sync helps you to take care of those important listings—Google Business Profile, Facebook, Apple Maps, and Bing—all in one place, making sure they are accurate and up-to-date. 

Once you have connected to the listings from your BrightLocal account, you can set up additional categories, opening hours, the business description, and additional data such as Google Business Profile Attributes, from your BrightLocal account and push them out to those listings. 

What are Google Business Profile Attributes?

Read more

Once you’ve set Active Sync up it will then send you alerts when external changes are published to a listing. For example, if a suggested edit is published by Google, you’ll be notified rather than having to log in.

You can either accept or reject the changes suggested within the BrightLocal platform, allowing you to shield the listings from external edits and ensure their accuracy.

Bulk Google Business Profile Posts

GBP Post Scheduler is a true game-changer when it comes to scaling up your Google Posts. It offers effortless scheduling, multi-location distribution, and AI content generation.

As a multi-location business, there could be instances where you need to push the latest national promotions to every location at once. Rather than have to do this one location at a time, you can publish a post to multiple locations simultaneously, saving you potentially hours of tedium. This ensures consistent content across your entire network of locations (or just a select few) in just a few clicks. 

You can schedule posts to go out at the exact right time and set the relevant expiry dates to ensure a consistent stream of content for potential customers to engage with. You’ll get full visibility of what’s live, what’s scheduled, and what’s expired from a single dashboard. It’s as easy as setting it and forgetting it! But if you need to make changes, then it’s just a case of editing anything that’s already scheduled or deleting anything that’s live.

You can also say goodbye to writer’s block with our AI-powered content generation. Our integration with ChatGPT ensures that you always have engaging and captivating content at your fingertips. Simply add a description of the message you want to put out, and in seconds, our AI writing assistant will give you content ideas to run with and optimize. 

Learn how to bulk post with GBP Post Scheduler here. 

Showcasing Value to Stakeholders

Demonstrating the value of your efforts to stakeholders is crucial. BrightLocal offers a range of reporting and auditing tools to help you showcase progress and results.

Rank Tracker Rollup Reports

Keep stakeholders informed about your MLB’s local search rankings with Rank Tracker Rollup Reports. The Rollup Reports feature allows you to present comprehensive ranking data in an easily digestible format.

They can be accessed by clicking the ‘Rank Tracker Rollup Reports’ tab on the Rank Tracker overview page.

Google Business Profile Audit Insights

Let’s imagine you had a location that was being held back by their Google Business Profile. You picked up on this issue using the BrightLocal GBP Audit tool and made the necessary changes which have improved the number of calls and clicks the location is getting via their GBP. Now, you can demonstrate this by sharing the Insights tab in the GBP Audit report.

For example, the business below optimized their GBP at the end of October and you can see that this has increased the number of website clicks and views on mobile and maps they’ve got since then. 

BrightLocal Horizon

Continue to utilize BrightLocal Horizon to visualize progress across your MLB. This tool helps you monitor overall performance and determine where additional focus may be needed.

BrightLocal for Multi-location Businesses

BrightLocal can equip your multi-location business with the tools you need to thrive in the competitive world of local search optimization. By understanding location performance, delivering on rankings and KPIs, and showcasing value to stakeholders, you can your own local SEO efforts to the next level. 

To get started and see how BrightLocal can benefit your business, we invite you to speak to our sales team. Start using BrightLocal’s tools and features strategically, and watch as your multi-location business reaps the rewards of enhanced visibility and success.

Too many articles about local SEO focus solely on ranking.

You can rank for irrelevant queries and it won’t help you grow your firm. You can rank for relevant queries, but if you don’t have a competitive number of reviews, potential clients won’t call. It’s not that ranking isn’t important, but it’s a means to an end. In the context of law firms, one of those ends is earning new clients.

Your Local SEO Checklist for Lawyers

1. Local SEO Research and Analysis
2. Website Optimization
3. Google Business Profile (GBP) Optimization
4. Reviews
5. Citations and Directories
6. Link-building
7. Content Marketing
8. Performance Measurement and Management

Why Local SEO is Important for Law Firms

At AttorneySync, we surveyed 5,000 Google Consumer Survey respondents. We asked:

“If you thought you needed a lawyer, how would you find one?”

The top two responses?

• Google (17.2%)
• Internet (11.7%)

Most recent legal profession research that I’ve come across reports similar results.

Clio’s Legal Trends Report 2019 found that 57% of respondents searched for a lawyer on their own, as opposed to a referral, with leading sources:

• Search Engine (17%)

Martindale-Avvo’s Hiring An Attorney 2019 survey respondents were asked:

“What resources did you use to find an attorney?”

If you hadn’t guessed by now, search came out right near the top:

• Google (43%)

Further, online review sites, like Yelp, Avvo.com, Lawyers.com, Google and online directories came in at 46.53%. And how do many people access sites like these? Yes, a Google search.

Search engines (organic search), particularly Google, are a leading destination on a legal services consumer’s journey to hiring a lawyer. Local SEO is how you attract and convert clients from organic search.

Understanding the Local Legal Services Searcher

Perhaps the most important aspect of successful local law firm SEO is understanding the local legal services searcher. Too many lawyers and legal SEO consultants fail to prioritize audience research.

While most focus on bottom-of-the-funnel lawyer searches (i.e. chicago personal injury lawyers), few focus on potential clients that are at an earlier stage in their hiring journey. The overwhelming majority of local legal searches relate to research on a life-legal issue.

For example, many people are searching for answers to questions about getting arrested, well before they search for a criminal defense lawyer near them.

Another common local legal services searcher oversight relates to geographic modifiers. Many legal queries lack geo modification altogether (i.e. lawyers near me). In the U.S., others are modified by state, county, and city. In fact, in major metropolitan areas, these searches may also be modified by neighborhoods and other local community districts.

While you should conduct research for your own firm, here are a couple of additional observations from my experience:

• Proximity matters a lot to local legal services consumers.
• In many contexts, people tend to perform legal searches outside working hours.
• Many legal services consumers will contact firms without clicking through to websites.
• Legal services consumers prioritize reviews over rankings. Ranking is necessary, but not sufficient on its own.

Understanding the interplay between how legal services consumers search and how Google localizes results is essential to maximizing local SEO results.

Local Law Firm SEO Basics

First, it’s worth distinguishing between Local Services Ads, the Local Pack, and localized organic results.

Here is a Google SERP for the query “lawyers near chicago”:

Local Service Ads for Lawyers

Notice the first two results. These are Local Services Ads listings (denoted by red x and Ad). With this advertising product, lawyers pay Google per lead. The third result (also denoted by red x and Ad) is also an advertising listing. This time from Google Ads, their pay-per-click auction platform.

Lawyers are eligible to run Local Services Ads where available. Lawyers participating in Local Services Ads are also eligible to apply for Google Screened designation. At the time of writing, Google Screened is currently only available in select verticals in the US and the UK. 

On Local Services Ads listings, lawyers who meet the eligibility criteria receive the Google Screened icon:

At the risk of stating the obvious, advertising is not SEO. While I won’t go deeper into Local Services Ads here, I encourage you to learn more from Tom Waddington’s guide for BrightLocal.

What Are Google Local Services Ads? A Guide to LSAs

Read More

The fourth result of that SERP starts the organic Local Pack results (denoted by green check and Organic SEO):

Local Pack for Lawyers

Local Pack listings come from a business’s Google Business Profile (GBP) listings. If you’re new to Google Business Profiles, check out BrightLocal’s GBP Guide.

Generally speaking, according to Google, these results are generated based on the relevance, distance, and prominence ranking factors.

In my experience, the lawyers and law firms that tend to have the most local pack visibility share the following three characteristics:

• Distance (proximity) – They are very close to what Google believes is the searchers location or to the location term used in a search.
• Prominence: Reviews – They tend to have the most reviews and positive ratings.
• Prominence: Links – They tend to have robust back link profiles (in terms of number of linking root domains), particularly with respect to geographic relevance (i.e. local links).

Whether you’re hanging your shingle for the first time, moving, or opening new office locations, you ought to consider the importance of proximity to your law office’s physical location in the context of local SEO. In my experience, you should be weighing the following factors:

• Proximity to target audience.
• Relative competition level near and at location.

Andy Simpson provides an excellent personal injury attorney example in How to Choose the Next Location for Your Business Using Local SEO.

How to Choose the Next Location for Your Business Using Local SEO

Read More

In my experience, you ought to try to avoid being at the same location as other law firms, and in particular, those with the same GBP categories as yours.

Beyond distance, prominence is the factor to spend most of your resources. Law firms that are able to earn a competitive number of reviews on GBP and around the web, tend to enjoy the highest local pack visibility.

Lawyers should focus on earning a competitive number of reviews on GBP first. These are essential both for visibility, as well as converting local pack visibility into potential clients.

After reviews on your own GBP, I recommend focusing on legal services review sites, review sites that rank for searches on your name, and then the general review sites.

Of course, you should also build citations. Start with the top citation sites for attorneys. As with links, make sure you prioritize citation sites that rank for your target queries. Google is already telling you these sites are relevant since they are surfacing them for your queries.

Finally, despite recent reports of their demise, in my experience, links still matter a lot. But, not all links have equal value. Instead of trying to scale links from high DA sites, find ways to earn topically and locally relevant links.

Here are a few ways to do effective local link-building:

• Go hyper-local. Begin your prospecting research with Google Maps. Start with your business location and radiate outward to uncover more local link-building opportunities (i.e., neighborhoods, blocks, and other hyper-local language).
• Use crawlers to identify link opportunities. Many local sites have a variety of issues that present great opportunities for local link-building (i.e., broken links, linking to outdated content, etc). Crawlers can also make it much easier to identify the path of least resistance for earning a link (for example they already link to pages like yours). 
• Use competition-informed prospecting. Look for sites linking to your competitors but not to you… but don’t obsess over copying competitor link profiles. Most of the links you’ll find there probably aren’t helping much. You’ll waste a lot of time and money trying to build links that won’t move the dial.

I know there are many other local search ranking factors. I’m well aware of the impact of changing your firm’s name to include keywords, adding services, and the impact of behavioral signals (engagement with your GBP profile). But, if I had to narrow it to three, I’d take distance, reviews, and links.

GBP Guidelines for Individual Lawyer Practitioners

Google Business Profile Help provides guidelines for individual practitioners:

An individual practitioner is a public-facing professional, typically with their own customer base. Doctors, dentists, lawyers, financial planners, and insurance or real estate agents are all individual practitioners. Business Profiles for practitioners may include title or degree certification (for example Dr., MD, JD, Esq., CFA).

An individual practitioner should create their own dedicated Business Profile if:

• They operate in a public-facing role. Support staff should not create their own Business Profiles.
• They can be contacted directly at the verified location during stated hours.

A practitioner shouldn’t have multiple Business Profiles to cover all of their specializations. Sales associates or lead generation agents for corporations aren’t individual practitioners and aren’t eligible for a Business Profile.

Multiple practitioners at one location

If the practitioner is one of several public-facing practitioners at this location:

• The organization should create a Business Profile for this location, separate from that of the practitioner.
• The title of the Business Profile for the practitioner should include only the name of the practitioner, and shouldn’t include the name of the organization.

There are several issues to be solved when deciding whether to create individual practitioner profiles.

First, note that the guidelines only permit one listing per practitioner. Per the guidelines, lawyers ought not create GBP listings for every practice area they serve. Multiple practice areas should be addressed through categories.

Second, Google may prefer one business listing over another for the same business. For example, a physical office location listing may compete with an individual practitioner listing for the same query. Sometimes, individual practitioner listings with fewer reviews may appear instead of an office listing with many more reviews. This may be undesirable from a branding and conversion perspective.

Third, law firm owners should have clear policies relating to ownership of individual GBP listings. Keep in mind that reviews are attached to listings. Therefore, if an individual lawyer earns reviews on their individual practitioner listing, those reviews travel with that listing and may travel with the lawyer to a competitor firm.

How to Effectively Manage Practitioner Listings with BrightLocal

Read More

Generally speaking, solo and small firms that aren’t serving a high volume of clients should consider consolidating their “GBP equity” in fewer profiles. Creating profiles for several locations and practitioners, without earning a competitive quantity of reviews, is unlikely to deliver value in terms of new clients from those profiles. On the other hand, larger firms with high volumes of clients ought to be strategic in terms of maximizing their visibility across locations and practice areas.

Tactical Google Business Profile Optimizations for Lawyers

Business Name

If you perform any bottom-of-the-funnel “lawyer lookup” search for a competitive location and practice area, you’ll likely see at least one firm that has keywords in their business name. In fact, in many competitive legal SERPs, you will likely find all three listings taking advantage of this tactic. Like it or not, at the time of writing, this works really well.

Before you go updating your GBP’s business name field, there are a few things you ought to consider.

First, what are the potential consequences for your brand? By adding keywords, you may actually dilute or harm your brand equity.

Second, you should be sure that your jurisdiction allows for the use of trade names.

Third, if you’re inclined to change your firm name, be sure to officially change it with both your state bar and your state’s business registry. Failing to officially change your name may lead to issues with your GBP listing including suspension.

Business Category

Selecting business categories can have significant consequences on both your firm’s local pack visibility and conversion. Ideally, you will be able to select a primary category that is most relevant to your practice. You should also add as many additional relevant categories as are available.

While some local SEO consultants have suggested that adding several additional categories may “dilute” a listing’s visibility, that has not been my experience.

Keep in mind that those categories are displayed in local pack listings. While Google will generally match the most relevant category with the query, the machine doesn’t always get it right. Conduct your own tests and experiments to see what impact various category settings have on your visibility and ability to convert searchers into potential clients.

Photos & Videos

People tend to hire lawyers, not logos. Using photos and videos on your GBP is one of the most effective ways to motivate a searcher to engage with your listing and convert them from a searcher to a potential client. Here are some examples of photos and videos that tend to be effective for lawyers:

• Client testimonials: You can convert testimonials into graphics and record happy clients singing your praises.
• Community service: Highlight local community service involvement.
• Leadership: Highlight professional recognition and leadership positions.
• Explainer videos: Create videos that share your knowledge, skill, and experience in a particular field.
• USP videos: Create videos that position you as an expert in your niche. Describe why you are uniquely qualified to serve your clients’ needs

Products & Services

Lawyers tend to think in terms of services, not products. However, in the context of GBP, lawyers should consider adding Products to their profiles.

GBP Products get a lot of real estate in SERPs. They’re also highly visual.

In addition to this, GBP Services seem to disproportionately impact visibility. Put simply, adding as many relevant services as possible seems to impact local pack visibility more than it ought to.

Services also enjoy prominent visibility in local pack and map finder results.

Consider the impact of various Services on your firm’s ability to convert searchers into potential clients.

Check out Claire Carlile’s Add and Manage Google Business Profile Products and Services.

Add and Manage Google Business Profile Products and Services

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Updates

GBP updates are effective for driving engagement and conversion. Law firms ought to test updates for various stages of the legal services consumer journey. Use UTM tagging with Google Business Profile Update links. That way, you can test which Updates are driving the most engagement and even clients!

Localized Organic for Lawyers

Now let’s turn to localized organic results. Here are some of the localized organic results for the same example query “lawyers near chicago”:

Bear in mind that for most bottom-of-the-funnel legal queries (i.e. include lawyer or law firm), localized organic results appear below Local Services Ads, Ads, and Local Packs.

Instead of prioritizing ranking for these queries, your localized organic search strategy should focus on top-of-the-funnel research queries (i.e. how do I file…). These types of queries tend not to show LSAs and Local Packs. Therefore, the traditional localized organic results appear much more prominently.

Notice that this query is not geomodified but Google is still showing localized results based on what they know about the location of the searcher (in this case me, in Michigan).

When planning your local content strategy, be sure to research and analyze localized organic SERPs to understand what Google is showing for both geographically modified and unmodified queries. While these queries might not convert to clients at the same rate as bottom-of-the-funnel searches, based on their volume, they can be quite valuable.

In my experience, localized organic search success depends even more heavily on links than the local pack. These results tend to be dominated by large sites with many links. These typically include:

• Legal Directories
• General Directories
• Legal Review Sites
• Law Firms

If you have a newer site with limited content or a site that has struggled to earn links, it will be difficult to rank in competitive localized organic search. However, you may find success in the long tail if you go hyper-local and practice niche. There tends to be much less competition in these SERPs and there can still be a lot of value even without much volume.

Final Thoughts

Local law firm SEO can be extremely competitive. If you’re in any major metropolitan area with a direct-to-consumer practice (i.e. personal injury, criminal defense, divorce, etc), it can be very difficult to command the most local pack market share. Nonetheless, you should commit to making a long-term investment in improving your local pack visibility. It is among the most valuable online attention you can earn.

Begin by developing excellent systems for potential client and client experiences

This must include empathetic and professional intake. Too many firms focus on ranking only to end up with negative reviews due to poor intake experiences. Reviews are the most valuable aspect of local law firm SEO.

Next, get active in your local community

Ideally, find local organizations and events that overlap with the clients you serve. For example, personal injury lawyers might co-sponsor an event with a physical therapy or rehabilitation company or organization.

These investments can have a remarkable impact on your business. Plus, they can drive valuable local links. These local links are among the most competitive difference-makers in local SEO.

Finally, get social

The impact of social media on local SEO is undeniable. Social tends to be one of the most effective distribution channels for content marketing. Not to mention that video content from YouTube and other social platforms regularly surfaces on local legal queries.

Further, Google’s announcement of Perspectives is likely to increase the importance of publishing on social and forum sites in the context of local SEO. Publish video content on these platforms regularly.

Follow this plan and regularly execute and you will begin to see meaningful results. Local law firm SEO lends itself to measurement. Measure the value of new clients all the way back to a local search. You will likely find that it remains one of the most valuable online legal marketing channels.

The ‘activities’ module has been spotted on a range of business profiles including hotels.

Google Business Profiles now shows the Add "Acitivies" option for Hotel Category businesses. #GBPupdate #LocalSEO #SEO #googlebusinessprofiles@googlemybiz@rustybrick pic.twitter.com/qEBK9Byhnv

— Sohan Jain (@sohanjain) November 3, 2023

Though, personally, I have not yet seen this rolled out to hotels or accommodation categories.

If you have these buttons, lucky you! By adding your tickets or your activities, you’ll be able to secure a presence in any of the free ‘Things to do’ units that Google might be adding to your local knowledge panel. We’ll talk you through what this means below.

What is Google’s ‘Things to do’?

Google’s ‘Things to do’ program is part of Google Travel. It aims to make it easier for searchers to find and book tours, activities, and tickets based around Points of Interest (POIs).

A ‘Point of Interest’ is a place that someone might find interesting. For example, if you are on holiday you’ll find restaurants and places to stay of interest. If you’re looking to relocate to a new geographic area you’ll find schools, libraries, and hospitals of interest. 

Google Maps (as well as other platforms like travel apps, event apps, food and drink apps) uses POIs to help searchers find places that they are interested in. Your business on Google Maps (and indeed any of those other platforms) is a POI.

Since ‘Things to do’ is part of Google Travel, the POIs will consist of the types of business locations that have relevance—attractions, experience providers, restaurants, and hotels. If you’re involved with the Google Business Profile listing of any businesses like this, Google’s ‘Things to do’ program could very likely be making an appearance in your SERPs of interest.

There are both ‘free’ and ‘paid ad’ elements to ‘Things to do’.  This is how Google describes it:

“With Things to do, partners can surface their inventory via free listings and through a dynamic ad format. We encourage attractions, tour operators, and activity providers to work directly with their restech provider to take part.”

‘Things to do’ products are displayed in various formats across several surfaces. To simplify requirements they can generally be split into four different modules, 

• the Ads module, 
• booking module, 
• experiences module and 
• the operator booking module

It’s the ‘booking module’ (‘tickets’ in the NMX) and the ‘operator booking module’ (‘activities’ in the NMX) that we’ll focus on in this post. Both are free and can be populated by the business using the NMX.

‘Things to do’ and Third-party Listings

If you’ve been involved in digital marketing for hospitality businesses like restaurants and hotels you’ll be aware that OTAs (online travel agencies) and third-party platforms (such as DoorDash) can make paid or organic appearances in our business’s local knowledge panels:

Below: Ads in a hotel’s local knowledge panel

Below: Third-party providers making an appearance in Alinea’s local knowledge panel

It’s worth noting that there isn’t much we can do about the ads—if you have a third-party partnership and Google chooses to show third-party provider ads then beyond no longer working with third parties you don’t have much of a choice (check out the work of Tim Capper for more details on how hotels pull the short straw when it comes to free and flexible functionality).

Google My Business for Hotels: How to Set Up and Optimize Google Hotel Listings

Read More

At the time of writing, there is something that a business can do when Google includes an OTA or a third party in one of the ‘not paid for’ units. 

Businesses need to proactively monitor what is appearing in their local knowledge panel and make sure that they make the most of all opportunities to add their own content. In many cases, adding their own content will push those third-party listings further down and reduce the number of eyeballs and clicks that those third-parties can earn. The same can be said when they add their tickets or activities. Moreover, Google will add an ‘official site’ badge to the activities or tickets that you add:

Ticketing/Admissions: The ‘Booking Module’

The local knowledge panel for many attraction-type businesses will include a ‘ticketing’ section.

On a desktop it can look like this:

Click on the tickets link to see all of the ticketing options:

Note that if you have added your own activities, you’ll appear right at the top of the list, above the third-party listings that can populate this section.

Be aware that this module in Google search allows potential customers to quickly and easily compare entry ticket prices between the official ticket provider (you, as a business) and the OTAs. So, if you’re offering discounted rates to OTAs this won’t look appealing to potential customers, who are likely to click on a third-party listing if it appears to offer a cheaper rate.

This is what Google tells us about how these results are displayed:

“Tickets are ranked based on several factors, but mainly by price. Official tickets are given preference in the ranking. Ticket suppliers don’t pay Google to appear in these search results and can’t pay to influence their ranking.

Prices are based on standard adult entry and may vary depending on the specific ticket types, dates or eligibility for other discounts. Displayed currencies may differ from the currencies used to purchase tickets.”

All attraction businesses are eligible for ‘tickets’. If you are an attraction and you don’t have the option to add tickets you should contact Google Business Profile help. You’ll need to make sure that you’re following Google’s ‘Things to do’ general policies and price policies.

How do I add my own tickets?

Click on ‘tickets’ in the NMX. 

From here you can add your ticket options in these fields:

All of the data here must match what is on your product landing page—so make sure that the ticket name and the price are correct.

At this point only the ‘Adult’ visitor type is supported:

You’ll need to add a link to the relevant product landing page. Make sure that you add UTM tagging so that you can use Google Analytics to track visitors to your website from your ticketing links and any conversions that they go on to make.

Activities and Bookings: The ‘Operator Booking’ Module

The ‘Things to do’ operator booking module provides a way for tour operators to display their products on their own Google Business Profile entry. Alongside the tour operator products, tours provided by this operator via different OTAs are also displayed.

If you have activities showing in your local knowledge panel they’ll look like this:

Note that if you have added your own ticketing you’ll appear right at the top of the list, above the third-party listings that can populate this section. You’ll need to monitor your local knowledge panel to see which third-party listings are being pulled in. Click on ‘view more’ to see any additional options:

If you see the ‘activities’ button in your NMX or in your local knowledge panel, you can go ahead and add your own activities:

Just click on the ‘activities’ label and you’ll see this:

Click ‘get started’ to go to the first of 2 screens:

Complete all of the fields according to your product. Remember to UTM tag up your Booking URL link so that you can monitor visits and conversions in GA.

On the second screen:

You can upload a photo according to these guidelines (see full image guidelines here):

• Format: JPG or PNG. No animation.
• Recommended dimension: 2048 x 1366 px (or 1024 x 683 px)
• Minimum dimension: 300 x 300 px
• Maximum file size: 16MB
• Recommended ratio: 1:1 or 4:3
• Quality: Make the attraction or activity the focus of the photo. Use images that are sharp, well-lit, and true to life.

And, at this stage, you’ll also add the activity duration and language.

An Essential for Hotels and Attractions

Adding these ‘Things to do’ is a quick way to show both Google and potential visitors the options they’ll have. Not only that, but it gives you a chance to own the whole booking journey for your customer, helping skip those pesky third-party resellers and allowing you to drive more website visitors from your GBP.

For POI businesses in the relevant categories, it’s now a ‘not to be overlooked’ part of the Google Business Profile optimization.

1. Adjust Your Google Business Profile Categories

Adapting your Google Business Profile category can significantly impact your local search visibility and rankings. If your business category isn’t performing well in Local Search Grid it’s worth taking a look at the Overall Top Ranking Competitors table and seeing what your competitors have selected as their category. If your category is different then changing it could help to improve your rankings.

If the category you have selected is the most appropriate for your business and you don’t want to change it, then you can use the Overall Top Ranking Competitors table to check what secondary categories you and your competitors have selected and make changes there.

2. Increase Your Reviews and Star Ratings

If you notice that your reviews or star ratings are lower than competitors within the Overall Top Ranking Competitors table, it’s time to take action. Try implementing a review generation campaign to encourage more positive reviews. Positive reviews can boost your online reputation and attract more customers.

You can use our Reputation Manager tool to dig deeper and learn which platforms you need to gather more reviews on and easily create a review generation campaign. Find out how, here.

3. Boost Your Links

Links are a critical factor in SEO. If you notice in the Overall Top Ranking Competitors table that your website has fewer links than your competitors, invest in link-generation strategies to improve your online presence. Quality backlinks can help increase your authority and search rankings.

4. Address Location-Based Filtering

If your business isn’t ranking at its actual location on the geogrid (indicated by a blue pin), it may be subject to filtering by Google. This could be due to various reasons, including issues with your Google Business Profile.

Sterling Sky has written a great article about how to tell if your Google Business Profile is being filtered and what to do about it.

5. Address Google Business Profile Conflicts

Suppose you notice that your business isn’t ranking at its address because other entities within your organization, like individual practitioners or service providers, are ranking higher. In that case, this could be due to sharing the same Google Business Profile category.

To resolve this, optimize the individual practitioners’ Google Business Profiles for different keywords or specialties. This can help reduce conflicts and improve your overall visibility.

6. Report Keyword Stuffing

Lastly, keep an eye out for keyword stuffing. If you notice any suspicious businesses using unfair tactics, utilize the ‘Flag’ button which takes you straight to Google’s Redressal Form to report them. This will help maintain fair competition and ensure that search results are more accurate and reliable.

BrightLocal’s Local Search Grid is a valuable tool if you’re looking to enhance your local SEO efforts. By analyzing the data and taking these actions, you can improve your online visibility, reputation, and overall search rankings, ultimately driving more success for your business in the local market.

Let’s think about the types of businesses that would want to do this: businesses that are located in one city but trying to expand their reach into another area, and service-area businesses. Unfortunately for both groups, ranking outside of your area is a bit of a unicorn… a magical thing of myth and legend, not likely to be found in your backyard. 

That being said, there are certain things you can do to help. Like with our beloved unicorn, it just takes a bit of imagination. Let’s run through the ins and outs of ranking in areas beyond your physical location.

Well, I want to, so why can’t I?

It does make sense that Google would want to keep their local results, well, local. We can’t fault them for that. They presume that a local query ought to return the most local results, and that does make sense.

What they fail to realize is that, at times, businesses are more than happy to operate 30 minutes (or more, depending on the geography of that area) from their address.

For example, a Service-Area Business (SAB) could be forced to use its home address. Or a catering business can provide top-tier desserts to parties across the Southeastern quarter of the state.

As per usual, all we can do is learn how to work within the framework that they’ve defined. So, in this case, that requires getting creative and, sometimes, being happy with ranking in the organic results versus in the local pack.

So, what can you do?

Optimize the Google Business Profile (GBP) You Do Have

You can’t expect to rank in a new area if you’re not even ranking in your own immediate geographic area. As such, it’s important to make sure your Google Business Profile is optimized and that you’re following all the best practices to ensure that you keep it that way. Prove to Google that your business is worth showing in the first place, and take it from there.

SABs, Take Extra Care

Just like any other business, SABs need to make sure that their Google Business Profile is fully optimized. However, that may take a slightly different form.

One element that SABs need to take special care to stay on top of is their service areas. Once upon a time, SABs had to define an address and then had the option of setting a radius of service around that address.

Now, Google allows SABs to enter specific service areas by city or postal code. SABs can have up to 20 service areas, with the main caveat being that the boundaries of the areas they defined must not be more than a 2-hour drive from where the business is based. You can read Google’s guidance here.

The service areas you add won’t affect how you rank, but they might encourage your potential customers to click on your listings as they’ll see that you have said that you serve their area.

Double Down on Prominence and Relevance

There are two main reasons that a customer would be willing to patronize a business that’s outside their area: they know exactly what they want and only want the best of it, and/or the proximity doesn’t really matter, because the business comes to them. 

Either way, to make an impression on both customers and the algorithm, it’s important to make sure that your business is showing high relevance and high prominence. Both speak to a worthwhile business that knows what they’re doing and is worth exploring.

After all, if you’ve just found a bee’s nest in your home, are you more likely to hire a pest control specialist who is known for safe, ethical, and effective bee hive removal, or the general pest control company down the street with little to no online presence? 

Put in the work to prove your expertise and history of happy customers. This will paint you kindly in the eyes of both patrons and Google. 

Rack Up Those Reviews

This goes back to prominence. The better and more reviews a business has, the higher its prominence. To prove that your business is worth the trip to customers and worth ranking to Google, make sure that you’re regularly collecting good reviews from across all the geographic areas that your business services.

Reputation management tools can come in handy as you’re trying to get more reviews and stay on top of the ones you do have.

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Create Geo Pages (but Be Careful)

Geo pages, sometimes known as city pages, are pages on your website that detail an area that you work in but do not have a physical address in. It can be difficult to create unique value on these pages given the lack of a physical address and the associated elements to accompany it (think hyperlocal content like parking instructions, location staff bios, etc…) 

It’s important to remember that ranking geo pages is difficult. Don’t jump in with dozens of new geo pages and hope that some will rank. Start with a few, 3-5, and test the waters.

Get a (Real) Address There

Say you’ve been keeping a close eye on search terms in an area, know that the need isn’t being met, and your other attempts just aren’t enough. Consider cutting out the middle person and opening a physical address there. While it is a big step, if you have the data and confidence to back up the fact that your business will thrive there, the best way to make sure that you’re seen—both by local customers and by Google—is to put yourself forward in a big way. 

Notice, however, that I say real address. I’m talking about a brick-and-mortar office space that you can staff and sign. Unfortunately, for many, a PO box or coworking space won’t cut it. More on that in a moment. 

Myths

We’ve got some more unicorns to talk about. While these all may seem like very real, whimsical ways to get yourself ranking outside your area, once we take a closer look… we’re talking about a horse with an ice cream cone on its head. Maybe not quite as magical as it seemed at first glance.

Myth: Geo Pages Will Make You Rank

I know, I know. “Didn’t you just say that this is one of the few things I can do?” Yes, yes I did. But, as ever, it depends… 

A plumber operating in a metropolitan area with 2 competitors on their block alone may not have the best success with this, so it is a myth in the sense that city pages are the sure-fire solution to ranking across areas. For many businesses, this will be the case.

However, a small business with a niche offering might do very well to make city-specific pages. A florist who offers gothic-style wedding bouquets across Northern Utah could find themselves ranking for the query by creating city pages for Tremonton, Brigham City, and Logan, with examples of weddings that they’ve serviced in each city… bulk those pages out with reviews from happy newlyweds, and it makes a case for Google to show them in the organic results at the very least, and the local pack at best! 

Myth: A PO Box Will Do

Not only will a PO box not do, you’ll likely be penalized for the effort. Google explicitly prohibits the use of PO boxes or “mailboxes located at remote locations.” While it may seem like a clever way to get your hands on a new GBP, assume that Google is way ahead of you and say NO to PO! 

Myth: Virtual Offices Are The Way

Many companies offering virtual office spaces will claim that the practice is Google-approved, but no matter how many times they promise you low-cost access to ranking in a new area, resist the temptation.

Google has expressly said that “if your business rents a physical mailing address but doesn’t operate out of that location, also known as a virtual office, that location isn’t eligible for a Business Profile.” 

The same goes for coworking spaces—even though they may seem like a quick fix to the problem unless you can prove that you keep the coworking space fully staffed during your opening hours, are actively meeting clients there, and have clear, permanent, and fixed signage for your business displayed, then a coworking space is out of the question.

Expert Opinions

As we all know, SEO is ever-changing. So, to check up on the latest thinking, we went ahead and reached out to the experts. Here are some of their top tips and tricks on ranking outside your area—or, at least, trying to.

Claudia Tomina

Chief Executive Officer at Reputation ARM

Showing up at the top of search results for areas far from your actual location is challenging and requires a mix of strategies. Search results prioritize businesses based on how close they are to the searcher. This is especially true for the local pack. A business may never be able to show up in the local packs outside their city address, but they can put forth efforts into achieving top rankings in local organic results and in paid ads. 

Prior to jumping into your strategy, ask yourself these questions: How competitive is my product/service/industry? How many local businesses am I trying to outrank? How difficult will it be to rank outside of the target area and is it worth the time/energy/dollars? Paid ads are one quick and easy way to rank outside the service area and if your competitors are doing it then you may need to also. If you are looking for an ongoing SEO strategy to help in local organic results then these strategies should be implemented: 

1. Local Listings – By adding your business details to online directories specific to the city you’re targeting, you’re telling search engines, “Hey, I’m here too!” 
2. City-Specific Web Pages – Create special pages on your website for each city you want to target. Make sure to add the city in the title tag, meta description and URL structure. Ensure your content is unique on each city page and is helpful. 
3. Blogging – Share stories or articles about the work you’re doing in these other cities. 
4. Linking Strategies – On your website, connect your blog to the city-specific pages and city specific pages should be connected to service pages. 
5. Local References – Whenever possible, mention city events you may be sponsoring, landmarks or other city specific details on your city pages. Essentially, you need to tell your neighborhood and the neighboring ones, “I’m here, and I have something valuable to offer!”

Claire Carlile

Local SEO Expert at BrightLocal

If you’re looking to gain organic visibility for locations beyond the reach of your physical location (and the ability of your Google Business Listing to secure three-pack and map pack visibility) then the organic local results are your best bet. Assess which listings or niche sites have visibility for your important search queries. If you can get a listing on them you’ll be able to piggyback on their rankings.

If the SERP features competitors ‘city’ or ‘regional’ landing pages then it might be time to invest in your own unique, compelling, and useful content. Make sure that you understand both the opportunity and the level of competition, so you can pour your efforts into producing excellent content that can gain authority and that might (immediately or eventually) give you a chance of outranking those sites.

Phil Rozek

Owner at Local Visibility System

1.  Make your service area explicit on every single page you hope to rank. Describe it in the footer and in the main body of the page, linking to any “city” pages when applicable along the way. 
2. Un-silo your site. In many cases your “city” pages will be less likely to rank than your “service” pages or your homepage. The city pages should go heavy on service content, the service pages should go heavy on “service area” content, all should interlink generously, and all should get links from the homepage. 
3. Do what you need to do to get backlinks from sites geared to the farther-away reaches of your service area, or create (and optimize and embed generously) YouTube videos tailored to customers in those farther-away areas, or both.

Andrew Prince

Senior SEO Manager at Rocket Mortgage

1. If you want to rank outside of your service area, consider the scale of a topic. If your service area is a city, but you want to rank outside of it, consider widening your content’s scope to the county or state to start including a wider audience.
2. Avoid using LocalBusiness schema on pages you want to rank for outside of your service area. That may send mixed signals if you want your targeting to be in a different area.
3. If you want a Google Business Profile to rank outside of a service area, ensure your profile’s website link goes to something generic like a service page rather than a city page.

Bonus Tip: Consider if you should even rank outside of your service area at all. Traffic and leads from outside of a service area tend to be less engaged and be lower-quality leads.

Rachel Tinker

Manager of SEO at Blue Corona

I always advise taking a closer look at who is ranking in that area first. What categories are they using, do they have well-built out services, do they have their products listed? Optimizing your profile definitely gives you the best chance at improving your visibility. 

When it comes to ranking truly outside your service area, you have to first come to terms with the fact that the local pack isn’t really where you’re looking to rank, because you’re up against businesses in that service area that are much more likely to occupy the local pack. In those instances, I recommend creating location-specific pages about your services and creating locally targeted blog posts to build relevance on a local level.

Summary

Ultimately, your course of action will be based on a variety of factors, including competition density, specialization, and business model. A family-owned HVAC company will have a different course of action than a small-chain catering business. While there’s no sure-fire way to ensure ranking outside of your area, there are small steps that you can take. No matter what, analyze the situation and the needs and capabilities of your business before diving in, and let what you find inform your course of action.

The following article is an introduction to Google Search Console to help businesses understand what they’re doing when setting up and integrating the platform. If you’re after something a little more senior, take a look at our Advanced Guide to Google Search Console for Local Search.

Google Search Console. The ubiquitous beast felt by all. Menacing, looming…

Okay, maybe I’m being dramatic, but to the unindoctrinated, that thing is scary! A dashboard of figures and foreign lingo, it can be a lot to get your head around. But, not to fear, that’s what I’m here for: let’s run through (in the simplest terms possible…) what it is, why it’s important, and how to get it integrated with your website and GA4. 

What is Google Search Console?

Google Search Console (GSC), also referred to simply as Search Console, is Google’s tool to help you measure your site’s traffic and performance in Google’s search results. It’s free to use for anyone with a website and can be used to not only keep an eye on your rankings but figure out ways to improve them.

Okay, so… why should I care?

The information GSC provides offers a solid foundation for you to continue to build your strategy upon. Some of its insights are invaluable when it comes to your local SEO—and that’s before you consider some of its other handy features like managing sitemaps. 

With Google Search Console, you can identify your highest-ranking pages, identify your lowest-ranking pages, see how many total backlinks your site has, identify increases and decreases in ranking, and more. 

Essentially, to know where you’re going and how to get there, you first need to know where you’re at. 

How to get started with Google Search Console

The only requirement to use Google Search Console is having a Google account. In that account, you can have up to 1,000 sites—referred to by Google as properties. 

From Google: “A property is Search Console’s term for a discrete thing that you can examine or manage in Search Console. A website property represents a website: that is, all pages that share the common domain or URL prefix that you specify. You can manage multiple properties, and choose which one to see or manage using the property selector in Search Console.”

That being said, to actually view the information on a particular site, you must be able to prove that you’re that site’s owner. There are a few ways to do this.

First, it’s important to know which type of property you’re looking to add: a URL-prefix property, which will only include URLs with a specific prefix, or a domain property, which will include all subdomains underneath a particular site.

If you’re looking to verify a domain property, the only way to verify is through DNS record verification. On the other hand, a URL-prefix property can be verified in a variety of ways, including HTML file upload; HTML tag; Google Analytics; tracking code; Google Tag Manager; Google Sites, Blogger, or Domains account; or domain name provider. 

If you are unable to do any of the above, it’s also possible to have a property owner grant you access. 

You can read more about each method as well as common verification errors on Google’s Search Console Help. 

Once you’re verified, you’re ready to start exploring GSC and its many features!

Navigating a Search Console Report

Before you dive in completely, it’s good to have an idea of what you’re jumping into. In terms of general navigation, Google’s got you covered with this handy article on the different parts of a Search Console report.

The main thing you’ll be focusing on is the Performance Report—it is the bread and butter of your GSC experience. It shows you a variety of insights on how a particular site is performing in search. 

Locating the Performance Report

To find the Performance Report, ensure that you are on the correct property by checking the navigation bar. 

Once you have confirmed that you are where you need to be, find the Performance section and then click on ‘Search results.’

Search Types

There are 4 search types that you can view in the Performance Report; web, image, video, and news, with the additional option to compare any of the prior. Merely toggle between the options with the search type button. 

This allows you to see where your site is ranking beyond just the standard results page. 

Performance Report Metrics

In any of these search types, four main metrics are being measured: total clicks, total impressions, average click-through rate (CTR), and average position. You can have any of these four metrics displayed visually on a graph. Total clicks and total impressions are selected by default, but you can also view the average CTR and average position on the graph. 

Total Clicks

Clicks are the amount of, well, clicks you’ve gotten on your website from the search results. Ideally, you’re aiming for high clicks and high impressions. 

Total Impressions

Impressions account for any time a website has appeared in the search results for a query. When a website appears on the search results page of a user’s search, then it counts as an impression. The user does not have to click the link for it to count, and even if the link is at the bottom of the page and the user did not technically scroll to that point, it still counts. 

Average CTR

The average CTR is a percentage representation of how often users clicked through to the site from the search results. The higher the CTR, the better. 

Average Position

Average position accounts for… the average position of a website in search results. Generally speaking, any average position 1 through 10 is a good place to be. 20 through 29 means that your site could use a little more work, and anything lower than 30 means that your website needs some serious updates. 

Generally, all of these metrics need to be taken into account and looked at holistically when considering the status of your website.

How to Do Effective Local SEO Reporting

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Performance Report Dimensions

Once you’re past the primary graph and metrics, you reach the additional Performance Report dimensions: queries, pages, countries, devices, search appearance, and dates. These give you an even more granular view of where and how you’re appearing in the search results.

Queries

This shows the top queries associated with a keyword phrase alongside the corresponding clicks and impressions. This part of the report shows the top 1,000 queries that encouraged traffic to your website. 

Pages

This shows your top-performing pages alongside the number of clicks and impressions that they garnered. 

Countries

This shows the top countries that your website is performing in, alongside clicks and impressions (perhaps not the most helpful dimension for our sector…) 

Devices

This section shows the top devices that are accessing your site. It is split into mobile, desktop, and tablet, and can help give an idea of which formats you need to pay special attention to optimizing for. 

Search Appearance

This takes a look at search statistics for rich results, meaning how much traffic is coming through from results enhanced with rich data. 

Dates

This section orders all of the clicks and impressions by date and can be set to descending or ascending order. 

It’s additionally possible to add all of the above aside from dates (which is a default marker) to the graph. You do this by clicking ‘new’ next to the Search Type and Date buttons and selecting the dimension you would like to add.

Just the Beginning

While you may have found a whole new foundation to work from just from the Performance Report, GSC doesn’t stop there, and you shouldn’t either. A quick look at the navigation panel shows just how much you can do with GSC, from viewing your various enhancements to to taking a look at your page experience to seeing a list of your internal and external links. 

GSC is a treasure trove of potential insights, so take your time and familiarize yourself with the possibilities.

How to Get the Most Out of GSC

If you’re what Google calls a ‘light user’ of Google Search Console, meaning that you use your website to promote your business, but your website isn’t your entire business, then GSC can be viewed as more of a monthly endeavor than a daily one. Google will email you if anything unusual happens in terms of crawling or indexing, or anything regarding search guideline violation or hacking. 

Other than this, Google encourages you to keep an eye on your dashboard to ensure that you’re not having any unusual dips in clicks or increases in errors. They also note that you need to keep an extra close eye on things when new content is uploaded to the site, as this is a common time for fluctuation in the search results. 

For the more hardcore users among us, GSC offers a variety of possible uses, from monitoring the total number of indexed pages and indexing errors to finding and fixing AMP errors. 

Integrating with GA4

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is a powerful tool in its own right. Google describes GA4 as “an analytics service that enables you to measure traffic and engagement across your websites and apps.” 

And, unbeknownst to many, it can be combined with GSC to give you an even more comprehensive look at how your website is performing. 

Getting Started with Google Analytics 4 for Local SEO

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In order to integrate the two, you must link a GA4 data stream with a Search Console property—something that can be done in either GA4 or GSC. Then, you’ll be able to view your Organic Search Query Reports and Organic Search Traffic Reports from within the GA4 platform. 

Ultimately, this simple integration will allow you to view more of your site’s data from one platform and ensure that your various profiles stay linked. 

Conclusion

Google Search Console is a tool that you don’t want to miss out on. Free and easy to use (once you get the hang of it!), it can offer invaluable insights as to how your page is ranking and why it’s ranking that way. 

While you may not be able to directly change those rankings with the platform, it gives you a solid foundation of data on which to base your local SEO strategy.