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Local Search Ranking Factors (and Why They Matter to Dentists)

May 23, 2017

Filed under: Uncategorized — sunrise @ 4:05 pm

Every day, people make billions of searches in the Google search engine as they look for cat pictures, political news, places to eat, new community events, and even dentists. Digital marketing has replaced phone books and newspaper ads, and what inquiring minds want to know is how do I make my practice rank higher in Google local search results?

Before we get into the nuts and bolts of what happens underneath the hood of the Google engine, let’s take a moment to see how Google became so ubiquitous that it became a verb (i.e. “Google it”).

How Google Won the Search Engine Wars

When Google first launched, it was already better than existing search engines such as Yahoo or Excite. It beat everyone else by doing two things: finding relevant information better and providing a better user experience.

When users visited other search engines, they were assaulted by dozens of ads, all vying for their attention. Google, recognizing that users didn’t particularly enjoy that experience, went the other direction with a completely clean, blank home page. Just their logo and a search bar are all you will see there to this very day.

They also aimed to deliver the best, most relevant websites to users. Crazy as it might sound, not all search engines aimed to provide the best search. Most websites try to keep viewers on the site for as long as possible in order to expose them to more ads. So search engines like Excite didn’t think it was in their best interest to help users find what they were looking for quickly.

Google’s search algorithms were (and still are) significantly better than those of their competitors, meaning you find what you’re looking for a lot faster and more easily. Search engines look at a lot of data from various websites such as domain names, word usage, images, and traffic and then evaluate that data to try to predict what sites are most useful to the searcher.

Google got ahead of the competition by creating a more refined algorithm that was better at sorting the wheat from the chaff. If lots of people link to a particular web page, then it must contain relevant information. When users search for content that is related to that web page, it’s likely that the person searching will value the information there more than information on a website that no one else is linking to. Google’s algorithm was the first to take advantage of this logic.

There are a lot of things that go into Google’s algorithms, and the programmers make as many as three changes every day to the algorithm, constantly tweaking factors to improve the search.

Think of it as a digital arms race. As people catch on to what Google is looking for, everyone changes their site to reflect the new information, helping them to rank higher. However, once spammers and garbage sites start manipulating the algorithm, Google has to make changes to maintain or increase the quality of the search engine. It’s a cycle that requires constant vigilance.

In order to consistently rank well on Google, you need to stay on top of the regular developments. Even though the algorithm is top secret, by looking at how rankings change over time we can get a pretty good idea of what factors Google takes into consideration and how they are weighted.

Local Search Ranking Factors

One important tool is the Local Search Ranking Factors Survey, which is conducted annually as marketers attempt to understand where we should be putting our efforts. Based on the 2017 study, here are the most important factors that Google considers in your local search results.

Google My Business – 19 Percent

One of the first things I do with any new client is get their Google My Business page claimed and up to date as fast as possible. It should be no surprise to anyone that Google looks at what is essentially its own phone book first when looking at local search results.

The most important categories are information such as your practice’s name, address, and phone number, which is the number-one thing people are looking for when they conduct a local search.

The search engine also takes a peek at your images, descriptions, and anything else on your Google page. It’s vital that you keep your Google profile as fleshed out, optimized, and as accurate as possible.

When conducting a local search, Google weights the proximity of your business to the user’s location very heavily. Most SEO experts agree that this is the top factor in local search right now, but we also think it’s going to go down in importance, somewhat. Most people want the best dentist in their area, not simply the closest one. You might not be able to do a whole lot about this factor, so you need to pay close attention to everything else.

Link Signals – 17 Percent

As mentioned above, Google loves links. If people link to your website, that must mean that you did something right and you have relevant information, so your website gains favor and importance in the algorithms.

Google isn’t just looking at the number of links to your site. It considers many other factors, such as the domain authority or the quality of links to the site. For example, a link to your site from the Washington Post would carry more weight than one from your local news outlet.

You should strive to obtain a high quantity of quality links to your site. This can be hard to do and will usually take a fair amount of work—or you can get an agency that specializes in this task to do it for you.

On-Page Signals – 14 Percent

Even in the maps, Google thinks your website is important. The domain your Google page links to needs to pass inspection if Google is going to recommend it. If your site is just a landing page with no meat behind it, Google won’t favor it over a site with fleshed-out content.

On-page factors include must-have basics such as the name, address, and phone number of your practice. Google is going to look for relevant keywords that include your location, specialties, and content that tells them you’re relevant. Your contact page should also include the location name in the URL.

On-site optimization is one factor that you have complete control over. By producing a quality website for your practice, you help convince Google that you are trustworthy and reliable and that they should tell their users about you. You just need to know what they are looking for.

Citation Signals – 13 Percent

Google might prefer their own “phone book,” but they recognize that there are dozens of other places on the web that catalog businesses. Examples include online yellow pages, local chamber of commerce pages, and business association pages.

Even if they aren’t linking to your website, these indexes include your practice’s name, address, and phone number (at a minimum). These citations increase Google’s confidence in your site, and the algorithm relies heavily on them.

You should, at a minimum, identify the top 20 citations your practice needs and make sure they are perfect. All the information about your practice needs to be accurate and exact; there is no room for variation.

This is a task that most practitioners aren’t even aware of, but you can see it heavily impacts your rankings. Fair warning: citation building can be tedious and time-consuming. Any time your practice updates basic information, you need to update all these listings as well.

Reviews – 13 Percent

Reviews are (by far) the fastest-growing factor. Year over year they have become more important to local search rankings. By 2018, it is expected that reviews will be the third-most-important factor for Google. They are looking at both the number of reviews and your practice’s overall rating.

I would point out that users also place great weight on reviews—88 percent of consumers and patients trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Most people use them, and as review sites get better and better at verifying the authenticity of reviews, that trend will continue to grow.

You’ll notice when you conduct a branded search that Google isn’t just displaying their own reviews. They also include two other review sites in the location card. Dentists who want to compete online need to actively obtain more reviews, from Google and from two or three of the other most important review sites as well.

Behavior and Mobile Signals – 10 Percent

It’s important to understand the way we use technology now. We have reached a point where more local searches happen on a phone than on a computer. Thus, Google assesses how well your site works on smartphones and related mobile devices.

Your website needs to have a responsive design. The algorithm will weigh users’ behavior when they click through to your site. Have you ever been on your phone and instantly hit the back button because the site was clearly not designed with mobile users in mind? Have you ever left a site immediately because of a full-page ad that covered the entirety of your phone’s screen?

Google also wants to know how users interact with your site online. What do they search for before clicking on you? Where are they searching from?  If they click on the “Call Business” or “Get Directions” links in the Google pages, that says you are relevant.

Personalization – 10 Percent

It should come as no surprise to anyone that a search engine keeps track of users’ search history. Google assesses each user’s preferences, frequented sites, keyword usage, and unique behavior to try to personalize search results (and ads) to that behavior.

Social Signals – 4 Percent

At 4 percent, social signals may not seem like a big factor, but as there are in reality hundreds of things that factor into Google local search rankings, this is still a significant piece of the pie. Social signals are growing in importance as Google gets better at analyzing them.

When you search for your practice, you’ll see that Google is well aware of your social media activity (or lack thereof). Google uses this activity—your reviews, your shares, your Twitter followers—as social proof for your practice.

If you haven’t even claimed your Facebook business page, you might not be for real. Whereas if you are popular on social media, you’re doing something right.

Dentistry Is Now a Hyper-Local Competitive Market

The latest changes within Google indicate that the local competition is more fierce than ever. As dentists compete for eyeballs and clicks, only those who take their digital presence seriously will be able to stay at the top.

~Brodie Tyler

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