Get your space found with organic search — faster Pt. 2
In Part 1 of our Local Search Marketing series, we talked about the importance of high-quality, consistent reviews, and frequently updated photos and videos on your various online business profiles. It’s essential to take advantage of key features and functions to improve your relevancy and rankings on Search and Map views.
There are two other areas for us to dive into that will rely much more heavily on understanding how search engine algorithms evaluate your profile to maximize their potential. Once again, we’ll primarily be focusing on your Google Business profile, but these same principles will apply to listings on other search engines and databases such as Bing Places, Apple Maps, or Yelp.
How to Choose the Right Keyphrases
In many ways, search engine algorithms index your business profiles in much the same way they would rank your website. The content and copy on the profile have a substantial impact on your ranking, and factor into what search queries your profile is eligible to show up for. In plain terms, if you have the phrase “coworking space” used multiple times throughout a website page, then it’s more likely that this page will show up in search results for someone who has searched for “coworking space” and related phrases.
Your business profiles work the same way, so wherever you have an opportunity to fill in your own verbiage is also an opportunity to directly tell search engines what queries your profile is relevant for. So, if you’d like your business profile to show up on Map searches for “coworking space” or “office rentals,” you should insert those ‘keyphrases’ around your profile where sensible.
Looking for some more specific ideas of what keyphrases to go after? There are many free and paid resources available to help you research exactly that! Zapier recently published their own comparison of some popular keyphrase research tools here: The 4 best free keyword research tools in 2023. Look for keyphrases that are both high-volume (i.e. receive at least 10 estimated daily searches) and a good fit for your business. A succinct query like “office space for rent” may be worth targeting, but a long-tail keyphrase like “single small office rental near me” may be too niche to consider going after.
With that in mind, here’s where to apply that knowledge to your Google Business profile:
Share Your Updates and Offers
Much like a social media feed, regularly using the Update and Offer functions on your Google Business profile are great for showing your workspace is lively, both to prospects researching your location and for ranking algorithms evaluating your profile.
Use the Update function to promote events happening at your workspace, highlight new members, push people to other content you may be creating, or to provide time-sensitive information like holiday closures or observances. Don’t worry as much about promoting your services – instead think of your Updates as a way of giving prospects a glimpse into life inside your coworking space.
You should have an Offer active on your Google Business profile at all times! These act like ‘priority updates’ that stay sticky at the top of your feed. These are a great place to directly promote your services, and you should update these at least once per month with seasonal verbiage and create urgency for expiring deals and discounts.
These are both great places to showcase recent, updated photography of your space, and are an easy way of demonstrating regular activity for ranking algorithms. If you’re able, use your targeted keyphrases where it makes sense in your Updates and Offers.
Keep in mind:
Aim for at least one new Updates per week, and one new Offer each month.
Your Updates feed is a key part of your online branding — avoid just making it a sales pitch.
Be Consistent With Your Business Info
Odds are that your business’ name, address, phone number, hours of operation, and other such information aren’t changing on a regular basis. While it’s always good to regularly audit these parts of your profiles, what’s more important is making sure this information is consistent across different profiles. Search engine crawlers are cross-referencing your business profile with corresponding listings they find on other search engines and databases and will give preferential ranking to profiles they consider ‘trustworthy’.
For that reason, it’s crucial that you have Name – Address – Phone Number (NAP) consistency across all of your online profiles. Even minor formatting differences like area codes or subtitles in parentheses can affect this. For example, if your name is ‘Coworking Space – Main Street' on your Google Business profile, but ‘Coworking Space (Main Street)’ on Yelp, that can potentially raise flags.
Beyond that, it’s best practice to always fill out any fields that are empty. The most commonly missed by many are business descriptions, categories, services, and products. Beyond that, new features are constantly being added to business profiles, so you should check regularly to make sure you’re using them when relevant.
Keep in mind:
Regularly audit your basic business info and maintain NAP consistency across your local business profiles.
Fill in every field and use every feature available, as relevant. These are all opportunities to show search algorithms what your business is about, and that you’re engaging with their platform.
For open text fields like your business description or products, these are great places to use high-volume keyphrases that are most relevant to your business!
Tracking Success
You’ve made a slew of changes and now have weekly and monthly tasks you fulfill with your business profiles. How do you know it’s working?
The first place to look is your profiles built in analytics. Google Business Insights can show you your profiles daily and monthly interactions and impressions. You can even see which keyphrases are serving your profile in Search and Maps results. See if your top-driving keyphrases are relevant to you, and not just direct searches for your business or brand name.
You could test these search results for yourself by looking up ‘coworking space near me’ on Google Maps to see if you’re getting close to that #1 position. While this can work as a simple check, it’s slow and inefficient for trying to simulate multiple searches and keyphrases, not to mention search engines may be tailoring your search results based on any tracking history they have. This method is also limited in that you cannot reliably simulate how search results may appear to someone in a different location, whether that’s down the street or several miles away from your business.
To most effectively monitor your Google Business profile consider using external monitoring tools that can simulate dozens of searches on a specific keyphrase in a radius around your location, to give you a clear picture of how people in your market are seeing your business profile.
Geo-grid ranking tools such as BrightLocal, Localo, Grid My Business, or LocalFalcon make it easy to monitor your profiles performance on targeted keyphrases, in your market, over time to see if your local search marketing efforts are yielding higher rankings. These examples and others have free trials or are even entirely free to use in limited amounts.
Last, you should work with your web developer or admin to ensure that your website is tracking traffic originating from your local business profiles, and correctly capturing their conversion source! It’s important to be able to separate the activity originating from your business profiles vs. other common channels like organic search, direct traffic, paid advertising, or email, among others.
Keep in mind:
Look for key indicators like increased interactions, growing impressions, and wider diversity of keyphrases triggering your profile.
Use free monitoring tools to see how prospects from all over your market are seeing your business.
We hope these recommendations will help you take your local profiles to the top of your area rankings, and we’d love to hear your results! To read Part 1 of this article, Click Here.
You’ve taken the steps to improve your local web presence with these free, accessible resources. If you’re trying to get more national visibility for your location, consider listing your address with iPostal1.com!
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