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The content you publish on your website, business listings and social media all impact search placement. While local SEO software has simplified many processes necessary for online visibility, there is no substitute for high-quality, accurate content. Every word you publish, from your homepage to your Google Business Profile (GBP) description, serves as a signal to search engines, helping them understand the business and determine its ranking in local search results.
The Importance of Website Content in Local Search
The three pillars of local SEO are proximity, prominence and relevance. Publishing quality, location-specific content helps satisfy these factors, contributing to improved organic search placement.
- Proximity refers to the distance between the searcher and the business.
- Prominence identifies how established and reputable a business is within its local area.
- Relevance indicates how well a page satisfies the user’s search intent.
An example of this in action could be a city page you create for a business client. Within the main text, title, URLs and meta tags, you can incorporate geographically relevant locations and tightly clustered thematic keywords to help Google contextualize the page’s content. Including these keywords within accurate, high-quality content will enhance visibility across many search terms.
Accurate Content Increases Business Listing Visibility
Building and maintaining local citations also offers many opportunities for effective content strategies. Product descriptions (for example) can include relevant keywords that contribute to a listing appearing prominently in the Local Pack and Maps. Content signals across GBP posts, the business description, reviews and the Q&A section all offer the potential to demonstrate relevance to a user’s search query.
How Traffic Impacts Search Visibility
Within website and GBP content you will inevitably include calls-to-action (CTAs) that direct individuals to service pages, blog posts and other locations. While a CTA is often viewed as a conversion element, don’t discount its value as a content feature that leads to increased search visibility.
User interactions from your GBP listing (such as clicks, calls and direction requests) send positive signals to Google about a business’ relevance and popularity. Similarly, social media engagement and direct traffic from these platforms can help with local SEO by demonstrating authority and relevance.
Maintaining Content Accuracy Across All Platforms
Understand that a surefire way to limit your clients’ search visibility is through a lack of content accuracy. When Google finds discrepancies between the information on the website and other listings like the GBP, it’s highly likely to limit the potential search placement. To ensure the pages they promote to searchers are accurate, Google cross-references website data with GBP listings, ensuring consistent name, address, phone number, opening hours and so on.
This requirement for accuracy extends across all platforms – directories, data aggregators, mapping apps and more. To see why this matters, let’s consider the case of an Advice Local partner. This partner was having trouble getting Google to accept a new website URL change on the GBP for one of their clients.
We investigated and found that the partner had not submitted the business for listing management, nor had they updated the data on Bing, Yelp or the Google Search Console. Google was reluctant to accept the new URL on the GBP because it was actively finding the old address on directories and other sites across the web. By managing the business data centrally via our dashboard solution, the partner was able to ensure consistent information across all platforms and get their client back on-track.
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Advice Local is the premier provider of local SEO software and agency tools. We develop leading listing management products and other solutions for digital agencies and marketers. Call (214) 310-1356 or request a demo.