Every home health care business owner with a website wants to get noticed in the local search results. But saying and doing are two different things! There are many ways to boost your rankings in local search results, and one of those is to optimize your Google My Business listing. But it’s really a combined effort with many aspects of online marketing, especially SEO, coming into play. Google My Business is a critical component of local SEO. Here’s why and how Google uses Google My Business to rank businesses in local search results.
Factors
Google My Business uses three main factors to determine rankings:
- Relevance: This is how well your business matches with the intent of the searcher. Your services may be identical to what the searcher wants, or it could be a bit off or misleading. If you’re vague in your listing, it won’t rank well. Instead, be as clear as you can and stay focused. Take this example.
- Distance: It’s impossible to rank well for local search if you’re a home health care provider in one city if your business is actually located in another one many miles away. It’s hard to rank in any given area, and Google’s methods are still quite mysterious, but ranking for the town you provide business in will be easier if you’re upfront about your listings and locations, and backing it up with local-oriented content. Google will pull from information about what’s known about the searcher’s location to give them the most relevant local business listings.
- Prominence: This involves the activity surrounding your listing, from how many reviews you have to any events taking place around you to localized content. And if you have lots of quality links to your website, you’ll fare even better. No business will benefit from a dead profile. Keep it updated, maintain it, and add new photos and content. Check it often to make sure it’s still relevant to what’s going on around you. If it’s important to the searcher, it’s important to you. Stay on top of your reviews and manage them well. Because Google My Business works in conjunction with your website, both listings have to line up.
Above all, your local SEO efforts have to be on point. To achieve high rankings and squeeze the most out of your listings, your website has to be optimized as well. Creating local content for your keywords and locations, coupled with snagging quality local backlinks and customer reviews, will ensure your listing is attractive and active.
Importance of an Optimized Local Listing
Google wants you to optimize your local business listings. It even rewards you for doing so. It’s a no-brainer why you should do it. Yet many businesses neglect this aspect of their online presence. Using Google My Business to rank in local search results will help you:
Improve engagement
It’s no secret that people are hitting up Google to get the immediate info they need, and then leaving without ever visiting a website. Think about your own search habits. If you need to know what’s near you, you just Google it and you get the name of the company and all basic information such as a phone number. You call the business that appears first, and the rest is history. If your business doesn’t show up in those first three, you may never be considered by searchers.
More and more searches are considered “zero-click searches,” as the quick information in search results pages has already fully answered the user’s questions. This means more and more people are interacting with your home care business through your Google Business Profile — even more so than your own website. It makes sense that you want that profile to be optimized to ensure quality conversions and engagement.
Boost local rank
Google’s algorithms consider much more than proximity and relevance, extending into activity and information quality. When you make the most of your Google My Business Profile, Google gets the signal to rank you higher up in the local results. The higher your rank, the better your visibility.
Convert more customers
A regular Google Business Profile alone won’t necessarily get you more customers. However, an optimized Business Profile via your Google My Business account can help users find you in keyword searches, research your services, give you a call, visit your website, make an appointment, book a tour of your facility, etc.
In the end, you need a powerful,
Contact A Servant’s Heart Web Design and Marketing
As a busy business owner in the home healthcare field, you may not have the time or resources to ensure consistent high rankings for local search. That’s where we come in. Just call us at 760-227-2720 for more information on our online marketing services.
