Optimize for the algorithm that matters most to you

Greg says: “Pay attention to which algorithm you’re optimizing for. Most people don’t even realise that Google has multiple algorithms.

If you’re a business that serves people in a particular geographic area (at a brick-and-mortar location or as a service, like a plumber or an electrician), Google’s going to use its local algorithm to return search results related to your business. You need to optimize differently for that algorithm.

You need to have a handle on which algorithm you are going to optimize for, at a basic level. Local SEO is my thing and, if you’re doing local SEO, you really have to pay attention to Google Business Profiles. It’s the cornerstone.”

Is it all about Google Business Profile or are there other aspects to the local algorithm?

“A lot of people think that they just need to do regular SEO and add on Google Business Profiles to show up in local SEO. That’s not really the case. The local algorithm does evaluate a lot of the same signals, like content and links, but they’re weighted and evaluated differently.

You have to write content and optimize content differently. You need to get different kinds of links. You need to do the Google Business Profile stuff and include reputation management – because reviews are a big part of that algorithm as well.

It’s about expanding your knowledge base and understanding that you have to optimize differently if you’re targeting the local algorithm.”

Have successful Google Business Profile strategies changed much in the last year?

“Not really. I’m doing a Pubcon in Austin and one of the things that I’m talking about is how to do local SEO, and it’s the same things I’ve been talking about for over a decade. 80% of it hasn’t really changed. The algorithm has updated elements, but the basics haven’t changed that much.

The bits that have changed the most are related to Google Business Profile (or Google My Business, as we’re all going to keep slipping up and calling it for another 5 years).”

What’s changed with Google Business Profile this year?

“The biggest change is that you don’t go to the Google Business Profile dashboard like you used to. You used to go to google.com/business, log in, and it would pull up the list of the business/businesses that you were going to optimize or edit. Then, it would take you to a standard dashboard that had a backend interface.

Now, it’s almost like you’re doing live edits to your profile in the search results. You search for the name of your business (while logged in as either an owner or manager of that Google Business Profile account), and a little row of icons will pop up at the top of the results in the main column. You just click the icon to go to what you want to do.

In the old backend, you used to have one line item for reviews. You’d click reviews, and then you’d have to go to the reviews and work on it there. Now, there’s a little icon for reviews. They also put a little red badge on it if new reviews have come in since you last logged on. From an ease-of-use standpoint, it’s a bit easier.

A lot of agency people are complaining about it because you used to have a dashboard that listed everything and now you just go to each individual business. You can still go to the dashboard, but it goes to the individual search result for that business, and then you’ve got those editing icons up at the top. A lot of people freaked out and thought it was difficult when it first happened, but they’ve eased into it and gotten used to it now.

All in all, I think it’s a beneficial change. You don’t have to dig around and it’s organised a little bit better. You can complain all you want but they’re not going to switch it back, so you might as well get used to it.”

Can you edit the wrong Google Business Profile by mistake?

“It was actually easier to mess up and edit the wrong business before. You had your list of businesses and, if you clicked the wrong one and started editing your hours or phone number without looking at what you were doing, you could potentially edit the wrong business.

Now, it’s pretty much impossible to edit the wrong business. When you click that icon, you’re editing the business that you were just looking at in the search results. It’s really straightforward and easy.”

Is it easier to violate Google’s policies nowadays, and how do you avoid doing that?

“It’s not that it’s easier; Google has become stricter on enforcing those policies. There are a lot of spammers and bad seeds out there who are trying to cheat and create fake listings, so Google has really cracked down. They’re trying to fight those spam listings to make sure that only legitimate businesses show up. Unfortunately, they turned the dial a bit too far and a lot of false positives are happening now.

I spend a lot of time helping out on the Google Business Profile Community Forum as a Platinum Product Expert. Over the last year, we’ve seen a lot more suspensions. Sometimes Google tells you when you’re suspended, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes every profile you're attached to gets suspended and sometimes it's only a specific business, and they won’t tell you why.

It’s frustrating. They tell you that you’re violating policy, but you don’t know what part of the policy you violated. You have to apply for reinstatement and hope that you fixed the right thing.

On the forum, I’ve been working with a car dealership in the south of Texas, and they’ve been there for 20-25 years. Google keeps suspending their listing and, when they try to get reinstated, Google tells them, ‘We can’t prove that you exist in the real world.’ They’ve sent videos and photos, and you can see the dealership on Street View, yet they keep getting suspended and Google keeps saying the same thing. I think it’s a problem with the script that Google support is following rather than a problem with the detection algorithm.

I know that they are working on an updated solution for reinstatement requests. For now, unfortunately, it is difficult. Sometimes you can just change your phone number, update your URL, or even change a category. Sometimes you just breathe on your keyboard, and you’ll get suspended.

The best route is usually to check the Google Business Profile guidelines. There are some really basic things. If you’re a brick-and-mortar with your address displayed, you have to have permanent signage, your own separate entrance, and your own staff present at the hours listed on your profile. Those are the three things that people usually mess up on: there’s no signage, there’s no entrance, or it’s a co-working space and they say they’re open 24/7 but they’re never there.

Beyond that, try to fix it yourself, but the easiest thing to do is go to the Google Business Profile Community Forum and get help from the Product Experts. We spend a lot of time helping people with verification issues and suspensions. You will usually get more clear advice than you would from Google support.”

Is there any form of content that will help you stand out from your competition on Google Business Profile?

“Questions and answers and Google Posts are a really great way to stand out. There are all the standard things like business name, categories, hours, reviews, and all those main visibility/ranking factors. Then, there are the conversion factors, like the Q&A and the posts, that don’t affect how you rank but do affect the conversions you’re going to get.

I love the Q&A section. A potential customer is not going to go to your website, find an FAQ page, and read through 50 questions hoping their question will be there. It’s too time-consuming. However, they will click ‘Ask a question’ on your business profile because they think it’s a chat and someone’s waiting to answer it. Nobody is, because it’s a community discussion, but you can preload it with common questions.

They can type in their question and, if a similar question has been asked and answered in the past, Google pops up an answer as they’re typing. It will auto-complete the question and supply an answer. You don’t even need a live chat because most of the questions people ask should already be there and be answered. That’s an extremely awesome experience for someone who has a question about your business. They get an answer before they’re even done typing the question.

I also like Google Posts. A lot of people don’t do much with Google Posts because they’re at the bottom of the profile on desktop, but they’re a lot more visible on mobile. It’s a conversion factor, not a ranking factor. It will help you stand out from the competition if you do it the right way and treat it like the ad that it is. Don’t treat it like social media, treat it like an ad. Put something compelling there (and don’t use stock images), then you will stand out and get more conversions.”

Is the search generative experience likely to have an impact on local businesses?

“There’s no way to answer that question yet because the search generative experience is still so early in beta. If you have access to it and play around with it, you’ll see that it changes daily. Nobody knows how it’s going to change search – or if Google’s even going to roll it out.

Everybody thought Bing was going to steal market share from Google because they rolled out an AI chat interface first. It didn’t change anything. People played with it, but nobody started using Bing instead of Google.

I don’t think it’s going to have much of an effect. I think it will be more like when you had ‘Dates of the World’ and ‘What Time is it in X Country?’ websites. You don’t need to go to a website to get that; you can get that from Google. From a user standpoint, you don’t need to go to a website to see what holiday is happening in Zimbabwe today. You can ask Google, and Google will tell you.

There will be some queries where it will be beneficial to use generative search answers, but for e-commerce and YMYL, SGE can’t handle them in its current state. Maybe 2-3 years from now that might be different but, in its current state, I just don’t think it works.”

If an SEO is struggling for time, what should they stop doing right now so they can spend more time doing what you suggest in 2024?

“It’s all about your process. Track your time. Track how much time you’re spending on things to see where your time’s being used, and make sure you’re using it effectively. You might have spent 10 hours on link building this month and you didn’t even get a link. If you cut that in half, can you still be effective with 5 hours?

The most important things are the content on your site and how it’s optimized, the links pointing to your site, your Google Business Profile, and your reviews. You don’t have to do a whole lot with reviews, so you don’t have to worry about that.

To spend more time on Google Business Profile, look at the time you spend on tech SEO, content optimization, and link building. Figure out whether you are efficiently using that time to get the best outcome. You don’t have to spend a lot of ongoing time on your Google Business Profile. Once you have everything set up, you update your photos every once in a while and update the questions as you think of new ones.

The main time suck is doing Google Posts, and most people do them once a week. That means you need to find, at most, an hour of time a month. Track what you’re doing, figure out where you’re not being effective, and be better at time management.

You need to understand how to operate in a business. All SEOs and digital marketers know how to do SEO at a basic level, but they often don’t think about the customer service side, the process side, the time management side, or the business side. Often, we just do SEO the way we’ve always done it.

It really helps to take a step back and look at the process of what you’re doing. Anybody could do SEO. It’s the people who can effectively manage their time and deal well with their clients that win in the long run.”

Greg Gifford is Chief Operating Officer at SearchLab Digital, and you can find him over at SearchLabDigital.com.