Why You Should Care About Google Local
By Danie Teshaveli; SEO Professional
There are two reasons to care about Google Local.
1) Unbranded Traffic: What does that mean Danie?
Over the past 6 months or so Google has become incredibly aggressive with displaying local results in the main listings. Why not mix things up? Google changes things so often it’s hard to keep sometimes. These local results almost always come in the form of a 10-result one-box (kind of like a 10-box, see below). It used to be the case that you had to refine your search with a specific location before you saw any Google Local results, such as Hotels in Leeds (took a class there once):
Notice how this 10-box is the very first result that users see – even appearing 3rd or 4th in the 10-box can generate more clicks than a #1 ranking in the organic results just below. That’s pretty staggering. That means that for these super competitive travel queries, if you want traffic you need to be optimizing for the 10-box before you think about optimising for the regular organic listings. And it’s pretty easy!!! Check out my post How To Get Listed On Google Maps.
But hold the horses, trouble is on the horizon because Google is becoming even more aggressive with its 10-boxing and it’s starting to display 10-boxes on regular search results without a geographical modifier if Google knows where you’re searching from. Google knows everything, they’re probably watching you read this right now. Take, for example, a search for ‘IT support‘ which generates the following result for me:
Notice that handy 10-box slipping into the results without me specifying my geographical location? Scary, huh. So in short, generic competitive queries are generating 10-boxes. If you want to grab that head traffic then you’d best go about some Google Local optimization pretty quick.
2) Branded Traffic: What does that mean Danie?
Ok sure, generic queries are generating 10-boxes so that gives me some potential to aim for (aim for the moon Danie, aim for the moon), but surely my navigational branded search queries are safe, right? Right?! Nope, gotcha; take a look at this search for “napoleons casino leeds” (good looking guys there), which generates a local listing above the regular organic result, hmmmmmm:
So that’s all I have for now. Why this listing shows up the way it does is food for thought, and a challenge for me to research. So have a great weekend, party hard and keep SEOing those sites. I think it’s time Danie took a nap and got ready for tonight.
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