Businesses from all around the world often serve customers in a small vicinity of their business location.

This means local search engine optimisation is sometimes not just something that’s considered a “bolt-on” form of marketing- sometimes it’s core to the business’s success and survival. This means that, for companies to flourish in a local area, they often need to partner with one of the best agencies in that area to better optimise the companies Google Business profile.

In this guide, we are going to help you understand how some local SEO practices might actually be damaging your business’s search engine optimisation and holding you back.

Therefore, if you want to increase the number of sales you generate locally, you’ve most definitely come to the right place.

Quick-fixes

It’s often said in search engine optimisation that there are no quick fixes. With that said, when you pull several levers, and everything has been completed correctly, this can make a dramatic difference and sometimes quick fixes can be obtained.

For example, imagine, for a second, a local business that is heavily invested in local SEO services. However what can sometimes be overlooked is the Google Business Profile settings, where the business is mistakenly added to with the wrong business category.
This is actually, this is one of the more common mistakes businesses make.

Google Business Profile mistakes

Not claiming or optimising your Google Business Profile.

From our extensive experience working with local businesses, we have seen many common Google Business Profile optimisation mistakes.

One that most definitely stands out in the memory is when a business came to us; is that they had a Google Business profile, yet Google had automatically created by Google and it was unclaimed.

This means a business can sometimes choose to set up a Google Business account manually, which is the approach we recommend. However, sometimes Google creates its own Google Business account by scraping the relevant details, such as the NAP information required directly from the company’s website.

It’s essential to claim an account because we can recall a time when a customer’s Google Business account appeared to be sabotaged by a direct competitor.

This can happen if the Google Business account is not claimed, this leaves the door wide open for a business or someone to suggest edits to the profile. In our own personal experience, it meant that someone tried to close the company on specific days so it wouldn’t appear as often in Google Business results on those days.

Therefore do make sure that you claim and verify your businesses Google Business account.

Add as much detail as you possibly can to your Google Business account

When you add as much detail as you can to your Google Business account, you’re helping to optimise the Google Business profile better.

Here are just some of the ways that you can better optimise your GMB listing:

Custom business description

Ensure you write a comprehensive, detailed business description. Make sure it’s not copied and pasted from another page, such as the about us page. Instead, require a new unique block of text.

Make sure you say as much about your business as possible in the limited space you are given.

Add pictures

Why not add a picture of your team?

Perhaps instead, you have a lovely shop in Cardiff, why not take a picture of the shop front?

Maybe you sell a unique product, why not picture that?

What this does is help the customer better understand the products or services you sell.

However, it also does a lot more than that; it helps Google (Google’s algorithm) to better understand your business and that you’re committed to keeping your profile up to date. For example, if you run a local coffee shop, the team have Christmas outfits in front of the shop to perhaps wish your customers a Happy Christmas. This signifies that you’re keeping your Google Business account more up to date and adding routinely new updates about your business to your businesses Google Business account.

Incomplete Google Business details

There are some things in life we can rush, such as the weekly shop; however, as business owners, we shouldn’t rush setting up and creating our Google Business account. The reason is that the “map pack”, the amount of Google Business results that are shown for any given query, is often limited now to just three local businesses.

This means that for a business to be shown here, well, it’s hyper competitive, and you have to give Google a reason why your company should be displayed in those three results.

Take, for example, the wonderful city of Cardiff; imagine how web design agencies operate here. There are likely to be over 70 local businesses, so to get regularly featured in those top 3 results, you really need a compete with so many Google Business profile’s.

And therefore, that’s a widespread problem many businesses face: they rush to setting up the account.

The account can sometimes be created in a rush with incomplete business information.

Therefore its much better to take your time, and to add more detailed information about your business to your Google Business profile.
It therefore boils down to this: how much effort have you put into creating your Google Business profile?

 

Be active

Sure, it does take more time to keep your Google Business up to date and add new information and pictures, but it’s worth it.
Just consider how important your Google Business profile is to your company, and how a well-optimised profile could help to draw in, well, potentially thousands of new shoppers.

Therefore, as any top agency will tell you, Google tends to display businesses which keep their account more up to date. Thus, regularly log in to your Google Business account and make the necessary changes, such as updating opening hours, adding pictures of new products, and perhaps also changing key information, such as the company’s NAP information if this changes.

 

Respond to the positive and negative reviews.

It’s essential to respond to both positive and negative business reviews. This shows new customers that you’re proactive in caring about what customers say and the feedback the company receives.

However, it also tells Google that you’re much more active in managing your business’s Google Business account if you regularly log in and respond to customer reviews.

 

Inconsistent NAP information is such a common problem

A widespread problem that our agency sees is this: inconsistent NAP information.

Now, if you were to ask us what we think the reason is that so many businesses aren’t showing up in Google Business results, it’s simple: they have conflicting business citations.

This happens when a company changes address; for example, the business may update its website. They might, for example, send a quick e-mail to web designers, saying, “Please change the company address in the footer and the contact us page to the new shop address.”

You might think that is the end of the matter; however, what can sometimes happen is that the business has in excess of 100 business citations, which could be on Yell, Companies House, or perhaps, let’s say, Thomson Local.

Now if the business doesn’t log in to update its address on all of their NAP citations; this causes conflicting business citations.

Now, this causes confusion for customers as well as for Google.

For example, if you were to voice search “take me to ABC hairdressers,” the Google Business account may list one business address, the company website may state another, and 80+ business citations all list a different address. That’s often because the business has moved address, perhaps multiple times.

Unless the business or the appointed SEO agency stays on top of managing the business’s NAP information, it can become conflicting.

This means the business has conflicting business citations, and Google and customers may well be confused about where the business is actually based. Therefore, this often means the business has little to no chance of appearing in Google Business results, because many companies will have much better and clearer NAP information. The businesses that don’t have conflicting business citations will therefore be chosen over businesses that do have conflicting business citations.

 

Not enough business citations

As we mentioned earlier, if you have conflicting business citations, this can be an issue unless they are resolved.

However, another common issue is that the business doesn’t have enough citations.

Therefore, there’s not enough business NAP information for Googlebot to crawl, index, and cross-check.

For example, even a small local business should have the following:
– An ample amount of business citations on websites such as Thomson Local
– Business pages created on social media websites such as Facebook Business Pages
– Relevant Business directories for your business sector

Therefore, if you don’t have enough business citations, say on a Facebook Business page, Yell, or on a dedicated business directory for dentists (if you own a dental practice). Then sometimes there’s not enough information for Googlebot and Google’s algorithm to cross-check the accuracy. Therefore, Google often selects businesses with ample business citations.

 

Poor mobile experience (U.X)

If you have a mobile version of your company website that’s slow to load, difficult to use, or perhaps the website has an extremely high bounce rate, then it might not be served as a business result on Google Business.

Google’s algorithm, whether it’s for national or for local SEO, wants to serve the very best, the most likely answer and the business that is going to help the customer find the product or service they want to buy.

If the website, for example, is poorly designed and offers a poor UX, it’s unlikely to rank high organically or to be shown in the Google Business results too often.

Therefore, there’s also the factor of user experience, how a business can improve and design a website that’s simple to use and ultra-fast.
If the website doesn’t offer a good UX, then this will damage the company’s local and organic SEO.

 

How we can help:

Here at Walsh & Partners we can help your business to improve its local search engine optimisation. We can help improve both the organic as well as your businesses visibility in Google Business results.

Call us today for a free quote: