The 2021 Local Search Ranking Factors
Darren Shaw
Last Updated: November 29, 2021
Google Business Profile Conversion Factors
Rankings are important, but you also need to think about how your Google Business Profile looks to potential customers. Is your message resonating? Have you given them a reason to choose your business over the dozens of other options? Google has added so many features to the business profile in recent years that there is a significant opportunity to make your listing stand out from the competition by using all of these features to the fullest.
Which individual factors do you think have the biggest impact on conversions from GMB?
Here are the top 20 GMB conversion factors, as ranked by the local search experts:
What the Local Search Experts are Saying….
“When I tell clients to ask their customers for GMB reviews, I tell them it’s a good idea to give them “prompts” so they’re able to get natural keywords in the reviews that customers leave. For example, “We very happy to put a new roof on your home for you and appreciate you selecting us to do the work for you. Would you mind giving us feedback on how you like your new roof by leaving us a review on our Google My Business listing and tell us how you like your new roof? Here’s the link“.”
“New reviews each week. Adding photos to GMB. GMB Posting Monday to Friday. Adding photos 3 times a week at least. New relevant content every week.”
“The two recommendations coming out of our analyses as most impactful are consistently: Review/rating acquisition – both quality and quantity, Category optimization – ensuring proper + complete use of categories”
“Images! Most digital marketers only consider images from a design/conversion perspective, but we’ve seen some compelling evidence that Google is analyzing the contents of the photos and factoring it into rankings. For example, a dentist might have a photo on their homepage of a happy family with white teeth smiles, and Google interprets that as a photo of a “family”. That’s not really contributing much to what you want this page to rank for. Instead, use a photo that Google sees a “dentist” in. You can upload your images to Google’s Vision AI (google it) to see the keywords and entities that Google is extracting from your images.”
“We have focused more on getting keywords into our Google posts, not because it impacts ranking, but because it gets you justifications in the local search results which can make the listing look very relevant.”
“Treat Posts as free advertising. You can get a lot of eyeballs on your listing or at the very least, your business name. Compelling posts drive decent engagement, especially when there is an offer. Posts were shiny and cool when they were new, but seemed slow to take off so folks de-prioritized them. If you haven’t jumped into utilizing Posts, you may be pleasantly surprised.”
“Monitoring what attributes help, and which suppress other features – IE “onsite services” suppressing review/website justifications.”
“Activity on the GMB listing appears to be the number 1 strategy that works to improve conversion rate right now.”
