Study Shows How Local Businesses Can Get A Quick Boost From Google

Appearing in local search engine results has become more important to brick and mortar businesses than ever, as many consumers have shifted shopping behavior from strolling through crowded indoor malls to shopping and ordering online. This shift has increased the difficulty of ranking in already competitive search results, typically containing three map listings and up to ten organic (standard) listings.    

UCSD and CSUF Adjunct Professor Steve Wiideman and his team studied over 200 web pages of multi-location brands, each attributed to a single business location. The results revealed some astonishingly easy updates businesses can make that may give them a boost in keyword rankings within Google’s blended Map and organic search engine results.

Highlighted Results From The Study

As a business owner with more than one business location, the key takeaways from this study to discuss with your marketing team include:

1. Knowing what elements of your local page will benefit keyword rankings the most.
2. Having a point of reference when building a high-performing local page.
3. Understanding local ranking factors for a single or multi-location business.

Google and Bing are very transparent about technology and basic keyword ranking signals, but neither provide detailed information about their algorithms, so much of what we do as marketers performing search engine optimization (SEO) is based on trial and error. The study was intended to provide clues and insights about high-ranking web pages, but there’s no guarantee that any of these factors will have a direct impact on keyword rankings.

Key Takeaways For Local Businesses

Wiideman’s study shows that performing a search in Google for local businesses (e.g., “breakfast restaurant near me”) will typically return two types of listings in the blended local results, where Google attempts to provide ideas that are, indeed, near to your location. Those two types are Google’s Map “3-Pack” listings and Standard Organic Listings (just below the map area).

This means that businesses have at least two places to appear in results without paying for search engine advertising (Google Ads, Bing Ads, etc), an opportunity for businesses on a budget or in a competitive industry.

The 3-Pack listings are generally ranked based on 5 distinct factors:

1. Proximity to the searcher (obvious, but not optimizable).
2. Accuracy and helpfulness of business data, sort of a spam-prevention filter.
3. Local page focal points, discussed herein.
4. Growing mentions and business listings (citations) off the website
5. Reputation, such as ratings and reviews.

The organic listings below the map area have slightly different attributes that may contribute to higher rankings. Those factors include the following:

1. Offering a page relevant to the query performed and the location of the searcher.
2. A growing pattern of visibility off of the website, such as links and mentions.
3. An improving pattern of user behavior signals indicating users are selecting your listing more so than the competing listings.

For the study, Wiideman analyzed the pages typically appearing in both the map and organic search results, notating attributes that were unique to each page and then measuring the keyword rankings of the pages based on their attributes.

The pages that performed the best in terms of rankings included the following unique attributes, in order of those that stood out the most among higher-performing pages:

• Hyperlocal Content
  Content unique to the page that informs the user, and possibly the search engine, that the business serves a specific area, region, or city, can give you up to a 107% advantage in ranking in organic search engine results. Examples include neighboring businesses, specific driving directions, or anything that might be unique to a specific business location.
  
• Location Photos
  While it may seem trivial to understand why a webpage with images of the location would rank higher than a page without them, the research showed an 84% higher likelihood of a local page appearing at the top of organic search results
  
• Embedding a Google Map
  Adding a Google Map to a local page helps the visitor know exactly where to find you, but might also send signals to Google reconfirming the validity of your business data and physical location of the business. Having a Google Map on the page intended to rank could provide a 71% advantage of pages without one.
  
• Featuring a 360 Virtual Tour
  Users apparently value the appearance of a location as a criterion of whether or not they will visit a business. Offering a 360 Virtual Tour by a Google Certified Photographer may be just what your potential customers need to see the outside and inside of your business, helping them feel safe and to expect a delightful experience when they visit. It may also give you a 57% advantage over the competition if you embed the tour on your local page.
  

Other Attributes

In addition to the features above, the study also uncovered other factors that may contribute to higher rankings, including icons and links to social profiles respective to the location, offering a directions button or link to Google Maps, highlighting “Open Now” status in addition to the operating hours, and lastly, promoting first-party native reviews. These findings all had a variable impact and may be worth testing.  For more information on this, see https://www.wiideman.com/location-pages-for-seo.

Paying attention to the areas above could be a good starting point down the path toward achieving greater visibility in local search results. However, local pages only account for ¼ of the equation for improving rankings in Google Maps and only ⅓ of the equation for organic rankings.

Examples and Case Studies

For the sake of the study, Wiideman and his team focused on three examples of local businesses using several different search engine optimization points (described in each example below) to use as a point of reference when discussing local SEO with each business’s marketing team:

1. Applebees: name, address, phone number, supportive content, hours of operation and open now status, Google Map embed.
2. Skechers: name, address, phone number, hyperlocal content, local store image, hours of operation and open now status, Google Map embed. Note the dual placement in 3-Pack and organic listings.
3. Public Storage, Portland, OR: example of hyperlocal content

The results of these examples in Wiideman’s study show that single-location businesses have an advantage over multi-location businesses, with specific regard towards content creation. This is due to the fact that all of the information on a business’s website is likely going to be about the same location. Since there’s typically one owner who manages one location, this also gives owners plenty of time to work on content both on and off of the website.

As the number of a business’s locations grows beyond 50, adding unique content and images for each page of a website becomes increasingly difficult. In many cases, this is because all of the locations’ marketing efforts are managed by one person or one small team responsible for hundreds (or thousands) of local pages. As a result, Wiideman offers the following advice for businesses and their owners to scale content creation for franchises and multiple locations:

“Start with a survey to each location/manager,” says Wiideman, “including their store ID, the nearest freeway to the store, local sports teams and distances from their stadium(s), local landmarks and the business’s distance from it/them, upcoming local events, location photos combined into a single Dropbox link, and even location videos or a virtual 360-degree tour of the business. From there, import the data to a database and then output to a template local page that uses the data intermittently through the content. For example: “This location at {address} can be reached anytime by calling {phone}. We are conveniently located {# miles} from {stadium} where the {team} plays’,” Wiideman adds.

Wiideman also stresses the importance of creativity and outsourcing. Running a contest throughout all of a business’s locations to acquire assets, such as employee interaction, employees practicing safety during the recent pandemic, group photos, and more can help business owners and managers better understand their business and public reception of it. For businesses that are unable to hyperfocus on content creation, “offshore resources in the Philippines, India, and Ukraine can provide the research and draft pages, but ultimately a member of the in-house team will want to review and approve each page prior to deployment,” says Wiideman.