- Published: Feb 16, 2023
- 14 min. read
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David ReaganContent Writer
- David is an Internet Marketing Consultant at WebFX with a B.S.B.A in Marketing from Shippensburg University. He specializes in local SEO and loves to keep up with the industry and explore new strategies for the local SEO team. In his spare time, you can often find him working out, completing a Sudoku puzzle, or watching football, wrestling, or hockey.
Most small- to mid-sized businesses know how crucial it is to optimize their locations on Google Business Profile (GBP) — formerly known as Google My Business — to improve rankings for local searches and get more leads on Google Maps. However, with numerous items to edit and Google’s rapid rate of changes, it may be hard to determine what local ranking factors to focus on in 2023.
In this post, we look at the items on GBP that impact rankings — help you show up for more searches — and the items that don’t impact rankings but are still useful. Keep reading to find out more, and call 888-601-5359 to speak with an expert today!
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Overview of Google Business Profile ranking factors
Here how different items on Google Business Profile impact your Google position:
- High impact on rankings: Business name, categories, landing page, address, and reviews.
- Low to moderate impact on rankings: Photos, hours of operation, services, images and alt text on the landing page, review responses, and identity attributes.
- No impact on rankings, some impact on engagement: Posts, products, messaging, booking, opening date, service areas, a local area phone number, FAQs or a Q&A section, answers in the Q&A section, and an optimized business description.
- No impact: Keywords in reviews, keywords in review responses, keywords in posts, geotagging images, and keywords in the business description.
9 local ranking factors on Google Business Profile
We have found that the following eight items impact local keyword rankings. If you want to know how to optimize your Google Business Profile, these are what you should focus on. Some factors directly and dramatically influence rankings, while others have more of an indirect impact.
Local rankings are about more than being first in a rank tracker or for one search at a specific location or time. Local rankings vary based on location, time of day, past search history, and more, so we apply a broader definition of rankings.
We look at the items that impact how high you rank in the results as well as how often you’ll show up in the maps results, local finder results, and local packs.
1. Business Name
Your business name is one of the most important factors in determining local rankings. Adding keywords to your business name can even impact your local keyword rankings. However, you should not stuff your name with keywords — keyword stuffing goes against Google’s guidelines and could result in suspension.
Google’s Vicinity update in December 2021 lowered the impact of keyword stuffing your business name. However, the business name still affects rankings significantly, especially after the March 2022 local algorithm update, which was considered a correction to the Vicinity update and lessened its impact.
2. Categories
Both primary and secondary categories have a significant impact on rankings, so it is crucial that you choose them wisely.
Does the primary category impact rankings?
The primary category holds more weight in terms of rankings than secondary categories. This segnment is one of the most impactful items that you can directly control on your profile. So, if you’re looking to rank well for relevant searches, you must use the best possible primary category.
Do secondary categories impact rankings?
While not as impactful as the primary category, secondary categories can still have a significant and immediate impact on local rankings. Adding additional categories will help you to show up for more searches, so monitoring competitors’ categories and adding additional relevant secondary categories is an effective strategy for 2024.
3. Landing Page
Like categories and your business name, your landing pages also affect your local rankings. Google looks at the content of the landing page as well as the link authority of the URL you choose. Often, your homepage will be the best option, even if it doesn’t have the best content for your primary products/services.
Rather than using a landing page from your site, you can also create a website through GBP. We’ve found that GBP websites do not get better rankings — and have limited functionality — so we recommend sticking to your site.
4. Address
Whether you’re running a storefront, service-area business, or hybrid, the address has a big impact on rankings.
Google ranks your business based on the location you use to verify the listing, and you’ll rank best close to that location and rank worse as you get further away. It is also much harder to rank for keywords that mention a specific city if the address is not considered part of the city.
There is another way in which the address can impact rankings. If there are two or more businesses at the same or neighboring addresses, then one of them can get filtered out of the local search results entirely.
It isn’t simple to update your business address, so only consider this factor if you’re moving your business or opening up a new location. To choose the best address for local rankings, ensure:
- The address is in the city you want to rank
- There is significant search volume in a small radius around the address
- You’re not right next door to another business with the same primary and secondary categories
5. Photos
There is a bit of debate on whether GBP photos impact rankings. While some studies have found that adding photos does not impact rankings, Google states that adding photos to your Business Profile can help improve your local ranking.
The true answer is likely more complicated. There’s likely a ranking benefit in adding some photos to your listing over having none, but that does not mean there’s a continued benefit of adding additional or better photos.
No matter the impact on rankings, GBP images are still one of the most crucial optimizations in terms of increasing engagement, sales, or leads. Images are showing up more often for local searches. High-quality images are critical to gaining customer trust, and replacing stock photos with ones of your team or completed projects can help increase conversions.
Does Geotagging Images Impact Rankings?
Despite this being a commonly mentioned and utilized strategy, geotagging images has no impact on rankings. At WebFX, we recommend against adding latitude and longitude information to your photos and instead using that time to focus on optimizations that will have an impact.
6. Reviews
Reviews are one of the most important local SEO ranking factors, and they help consumers choose you over other businesses. However, there are many misconceptions about which parts of reviews impact rankings and which don’t.
Does review count impact rankings?
This study found that a listing tends to rank higher once it hits 10 reviews. Increasing review quantity behind the first 10 still influences rankings to a lesser extent. Getting higher review counts also increases trust and credibility while beating the competition.
Does star rating impact rankings?
Review rating also has a significant impact on local rankings. Star rating may not impact the organic results, but Google has stated that positive ratings can improve your business’s local ranking.
Having a higher star rating also ensures you show up more often as you’re less likely to get filtered out of the map’s results should users filter out results that don’t meet certain star rating thresholds.
There is also a conversion rate benefit to having higher rankings, as 54% of U.S. shoppers pay attention to the star rating, and 97% of consumers read reviews for local businesses.
Does responding to reviews impact rankings?
Responding to reviews can have a minor impact on rankings. This Google support document on improving your local rankings states: “respond to reviews that users leave about your business. When you reply to reviews, it shows that you value your customers and their feedback.”
Responding to reviews also has additional benefits, such as improving trust, showing that you care about feedback, and proving that you look to address issues, all of which can improve conversion rates!
Does having keywords in reviews or responses impact rankings?
Contrary to popular belief, including keywords in reviews or review responses does not impact local rankings. Too many keywords can also make reviews read weirdly and sound spammy.
Like reviews themselves, there is no ranking benefit to adding keywords in review responses. So instead of using keywords in your review responses, make them sincere, personal, and concise.
Additional review factors and whether they influence rankings or not
The following local search ranking factors can help you understand and optimize reviews:
- Review recency: Having recent reviews can help to improve rankings! The timeline depends on how competitive the industry is. Getting new reviews can improve rankings, and not having any new reviews can hurt rankings, so make sure you’re getting fresh reviews when possible.
- Review length: Although this factor does not have an impact on rankings, review length does impact how long a review stays in the top 10 positions.
- Reviews written by local guides: Getting reviews from local guides has no impact on rankings, but these reviews also stay in the top positions for longer.
- Reviews with images: Like the two factors above, reviews with photos will not influence rankings, but it will help the reviews show up more prominently and stay in the top positions for longer.
7. Hours of operation
Hours of operation play a minor role in rankings — being open for more hours will help your listing show up more often. When a business is closed, its rankings decrease. A business can also get completely filtered out of the results if a user selects the open now or open 24 hours options.
8. Services
GBP services have begun affecting your rankings, and doesn’t matter how they were added — predefined options based on the category, custom-added services, or Google-added services.
Services don’t have as much visibility as other GBP items, such as posts and products, so they might not have as big an impact on engagement. To improve your rankings and GBP, you should watch what Google automatically adds, as they may not accurately represent your business.
9. Identity attributes
Surprisingly, identity attributes play a minor role in rankings, and it can help you show up for some more searches. Adding identity attributes, such as black-owned or veteran-owned, won’t help improve your rankings for general searches such as “home goods store near me.” However, it will help for searches directly related to the attribute, such as “black-owned home goods store near me.”
9 items that don’t influence local rankings
Many misconceptions exist about the items below, but we have found that they do not influence local rankings.
That doesn’t mean that optimizing these items is useless. In fact, many of these items are great for getting more calls or clicks to your website, so they should still absolutely be a part of your local SEO strategy.
1. Posts
GBP posts — now known as updates — do not have any influence on rankings, nor does stuffing the posts with keywords. Posts are still a very valuable tool in increasing engagement and increasing leads, but they don’t impact rankings as much.
Adding keywords to your posts also does not impact rankings, and it can make your business look spammy, so we advise against this practice. Instead, you should use non-keyword stuffed posts to promote your team, deals, awards, announcements, and FAQs to potential customers actively searching for your products and services in their area.
2. Products
GBP products provide a great opportunity to prominently display your products, services, and product categories on your search and maps listings. Utilizing GBP products can be a great way to increase engagement and conversions.
3. Messaging
Messaging is an instant message feature available in Google Business Profile. Enabling messaging on your profile does not impact your rankings, but it makes it easier to communicate with customers and get them to inquire about your products or services.
Does promptly responding to messaging improve rankings?
Promptly responding to messaging also does not impact local rankings, but it is a must if you decide to enable messaging. Google may deactivate messaging if you’re not responding fast enough. Plus, responding quickly gives potential customers less time to look elsewhere.
4. Bookings
Like messaging, the GBP bookings feature also does not have any impact on rankings. The booking feature, also known as Reserve with Google, can be a good way to increase leads. This tool gives customers the ability to make appointments right from your profile.
5. Opening date
Adding an opening date does not impact local rankings, but it can be a good differentiator and help improve your conversion rate. By adding your opening date, your years in business can show up in the local pack or local finder results, and that can help show your expertise and experience compared to the competition.
6. Service areas
Service areas do not have any impact on your rankings in those areas, but still have some benefits as they allow customers to quickly see whether you can help them or not. Whether you’re displaying an address or not, your listing will rank based on the address used to verify the listing.
7. Phone number
There is a myth that using a local business phone number can help to improve rankings. This claim is inaccurate, but there is a different benefit to using a local number. If a potential customer wants a local business, they may prefer to see a local phone number over a toll-free number. Thus, utilizing a local number can help to improve trustworthiness in some cases.
8. Business description
Another common local SEO misconception is that adding keywords to your business description will improve keyword rankings. Our research on optimization has found this to be untrue, as neither the business description nor adding keywords into the description impacts rankings.
Instead of focusing on keywords, you should write captivating descriptions that explain your business, why you do what you do, and why people should choose you over the competition.
9. Q&As
Utilizing the question-and-answer feature on GBP does not influence rankings, but you should still utilize the feature. Responding to questions from users ensures there is a trustworthy and well-written, accurate answer. If you don’t respond, someone else can, and there’s no guarantee that the answer will be accurate.
You can also plant Q&As to address common questions people have about your company, products, or services. This can help you to get more qualified customers and reduce difficulties for potential customers in trying to find the answers to their questions.
How to optimize your Google Business Profile
While it may be tempting to focus mainly on the items that boost rankings, this may not be the best strategy. Often, it is best to have a well-rounded strategy that improves rankings, gets more people to view your profile, and encourages more of those viewers to become customers.
260%
increase in organic revenue
198%
increase in organic transactions
150%
increase in organic traffic
3872%
increase in sessions from SEO
Partner with WebFX to target Google Business Profile ranking factors
Utilizing all these local search ranking factors effectively and keeping up with GBP’s fast-paced changes may seem a bit overwhelming, but that’s why we are here to help!
WebFX has a team of 500 local SEO subject matter experts ready to help you navigate all the changes and get more leads. We’ll put together a comprehensive local SEO strategy that helps you get the most out of your GBP.
Ready to get started? Request a quote online, or browse our local SEO services today!
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David is an Internet Marketing Consultant at WebFX with a B.S.B.A in Marketing from Shippensburg University. He specializes in local SEO and loves to keep up with the industry and explore new strategies for the local SEO team. In his spare time, you can often find him working out, completing a Sudoku puzzle, or watching football, wrestling, or hockey.
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WebFX is a full-service marketing agency with 1,100+ client reviews and a 4.9-star rating on Clutch! Find out how our expert team and revenue-accelerating tech can drive results for you! Learn more
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