How to Improve Google’s Local Search Rankings

If you’re a business owner, you know how important it is to rank high on Google’s search results. But with the recent proximity update, things have changed in the local search world. In this episode, Seth Price shares his insights on how to navigate Google’s proximity update and improve your local search rankings.

According to Seth, the proximity update has rebalanced factors and made proximity to the searcher a significant factor in local search rankings. But don’t worry, there are ways to counteract this update. One strategy is to diversify your risks by having multiple office locations. By doing this, you’ll increase your chances of getting found in different areas and improve your local search rankings.

Another strategy is to take advantage of new features in Google My Business profiles, such as posts and neighborhoods. By doing this, you can improve your rankings and get more visibility. However, Seth cautions that just because Google is doing something doesn’t necessarily mean it will work.

Seth emphasizes the importance of having an authoritative site and an office location to accelerate local search rankings. He also suggests focusing on signage and ensuring that the building you choose is not already saturated with competitors in your field.

So, if you want to improve your local search rankings, make sure you listen to this episode and implement these strategies. 

Episode Highlights:

00:40 Google’s proximity update and its impact on local search rankings

04:03 The local ranking factors that Google considers

07:12 The importance of having multiple office locations to counteract the effects of Google’s proximity update 

10:15 The importance of service areas in local search rankings and how they can help counteract the reduced radius from the home office 

16:02 The impact of Google’s proximity update on local search rankings and the importance of having satellite offices

Watch the full video on YouTube here.

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Transcript: How to Improve Google’s Local Search Rankings

Speaker 1 (00:00:01) – In today’s episode, we’re sharing a presentation from Max Lock Con 2022. Keep listening to hear Seth Price as we share his talk proximity update what it means to you and how to leverage it. You can also hedge in the Maximum Lawyer YouTube channel to watch the full video now to the episode.

Speaker 0 (00:00:19) – Run Your Law firm the right way. The right way. This is The Maximum Lawyer podcast. Maximum Lawyer podcast. Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Nutrex. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Seth Price (00:00:40) – Today, in my limited time with you, I wanted to give you an update of what is going on with Google and its proximity update. For many of you, December was the first time that you had seen the local search world change. We’re used to algorithm updates for organic search, the things that come below the three pack. But the three pack, which is below the ads and above the organic, had stayed very stable for a very long time. And December of last year was the first time that things moved. And for many people in this room, this was actually probably, it could be upsetting, but for many people here, it’s actually probably positive. If you were the market dominator in his space, this could be something that would be tremendously upsetting. Bill Umansky, a friend of the uh, his group here is a guy who called me up the next day and said, oh my God, what do I do?

Seth Price (00:01:36) – I got one office in Orlando and this is what we’re talking about today, what Google did in December and how it affects the distance people are from your office when you’re searching and what you can do about it. So basically if you are dominating, you dominated less. So if you, you’re a smaller player that wasn’t dominating, this could be an opportunity, right? So what do we see? The first was sort of a graphic change where we just saw stuff below to the side of the map. Big deal. That’s not gonna make or break anybody, but it was just sort of the first noticeable difference. Hey, something is happening, right? But what we did see was for people that before in November for example, this is from Sterling Sky who dominated a market. This means they were number one in the three pack two for most of their geography.

Seth Price (00:02:22) – All of a sudden they controlled less of it and all of a sudden there was less green and more colors that we don’t want to see here. This is uh, Washington DC and you could see that overnight things went from mostly green to a lot of colors that we don’t want for personal injury lawyer, for injury lawyer and for accident lawyer left is before right, is after. This is what we saw going on. So Google acknowledged it. Google doesn’t give us a lot of information for those of us who geek out on digital and are trying to play the game and get every possible advantage. Google said, yep. In fact, we are rebalancing factors and we’re trying to figure out how we can give people, they’re always trying to figure out the best way slash make the most money. But this update was reevaluating the distance of somebody searching from where it is.

Seth Price (00:03:12) – My colleague Melini who speaks on this a lot, she always talks about the example of pizza near me. You don’t really want the best pizza PR likely 45 minutes away. You want something that’s gonna get to you quickly and hot Google is kind of applying that near me to its search algorithm, which is a big change cuz before if you were hypothetically the dominant player in in Arizona divorces, you could have a huge geography for that three pack. All of a sudden it was narrowing where it would show you velocity. This is over time showing you how much in this period of time we saw the, the legal industry in particular saw huge, huge bumps during this time and giving basically this is over an extended period of time. On the far right it shows you how much velocity we were seeing and how much change was going on.

Seth Price (00:04:03) – Okay, so here are the local ranking factors and you have, you know, Google my business profile signals, review signals, the key highlighted in blue on the left proximity to the searcher, what is your distance to the office? And that is something that before was less of a factor. All of a sudden this has been turned on its head. Okay? So we are basically trying to figure out if Google is looking at proximity, what do you do about it? Cuz you know, if you have a single office, this is something that is problematic and you now all of a sudden have less of a radius, which means less population is gonna see your results in the all-important three pack. But this is something that we had seen coming for those that had heard me speak before we’re, we’ve talked for a very long time about multiple office locations and diversifying risks so that you don’t have all your eggs in one basket.

Seth Price (00:04:52) – For a lot of reasons this is a good thing and it is something that every time Google is adding new features to the Google My Business interface or Google business profiles as I call it now, we are looking to take advantage of as many of those as possible. So when they do this and they give you the ability to do things, you want to be able to take advantage of it. So if Google is starting a feature on neighborhoods, we want that. If it’s posts, people, anybody here do posts once a week in your Google My Business, you’re able to put something there. A graphic might be something that you wanna highlight, an event, whatever it is, it’s up for one week. For the longest time it wasn’t really focused on by Google, but over time they’re like okay, we want to incorporate that. And now it’s an analytics.

Seth Price (00:05:39) – So that’s now an important touchpoint. The flip side would be those of us who were on Google Plus back in the day, it was a precursor when they were trying to fight with Facebook for you to spend time there, it was a wonderful platform, but by the end of the day it was just a bunch of marketers and Google ended up shutting it down. So the thing is, if Google’s doing it, we want to participate, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s gonna work. So here with posts was just, they put it out in 17 wasn’t all that exciting but present day the posts are being crawled and the search terms can improve rankings, which is something that was not really the case back in 17. But once Google said Yeah we’re gonna make a go of it, we wanna make sure that we’re there. So this is the proximity before and after and actually brought, I believe this is a St.

Seth Price (00:06:23) – Louis example. So this is an example of a dominant player from the suburbs who couldn’t get, if you look on the left hand side, any love downtown for immigration. Whereas on the right, if you had something like visa lawyer, you could. And the difference being that in the Google my business profile, there are pull downs for criminal lawyer, injury, lawyer, immigration lawyer, but not for visa lawyer. So when you’re going up against a direct competitor who does something specifically, it will be harder for injury lawyer. But if you’re doing something catastrophic at upstate New York and you have something very specific, it would give you an advantage because a player that’s further away that has injury lawyer could stop you but not if it’s something that’s unique to you that you’re doing that others aren’t fighting for. So this was basically the point that we proved, which was a, a pin on the map.

Seth Price (00:07:12) – An office downtown within two weeks took an authoritative site and pushed it. So if you have an authoritative site and you said, you know what, I really want to be in Rockland County right now, it’d be very hard to get love in Rockland County digitally, but if you put an office there with an authoritative site and everything behind it, that is gonna accelerate. And that’s not new news, but I’m using this to show the importance of that office location. So what is the strategy of getting additional offices right? Because that’s part of the, one of the ways to counteract this proximity search is to have an east side and a west side or a suburban and a downtown, et cetera. No executive suites. Theoretically, if you have a legit suite at Regis with an office and a door and you keep a lease and you have pictures, if it gets suspended, you could get it back.

Seth Price (00:08:02) – My advice is not to play that game, particularly if it’s something that you’re just, you know, saying, Hey here Regis here are eight offices, let me put them everywhere. That would be awesome. It doesn’t work. And over time we’ve seen sweeps where they all get wiped out. I just talked to ’em on the way in. When your thing gets suspended, it’s a painful moment. It may come back, but why take that risk signage? The more signage the better. And then this is what’s tricky about any office, not just a a Regis space, but if you say you want to do injury and let’s say you’re gonna go and you wanna be able to find something in Rockland County to put an office in. If you put something at the same address as somebody else doing injury, either it’s gonna prevent you from being seen or prevent them from being seen if you’re become the dominant player.

Seth Price (00:08:46) – So making sure that whatever building you’re going into isn’t filled with people doing the same type of lot in that address next door is fine but in one address, Google does not generally allow two of the same type of lawyer there. So find somebody doing criminal or immigration but not the same type of law as you. So basically when you’re doing this, this is not to be taken lightly before you sign a lease, think about this and figure out is this something that’s gonna be seen? Cause it’s not competing directly against somebody else. A and then B, are you sure that this is something that will have a chance at visibility? You don’t wanna spend all this time and money and not have a chance at visibility.

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Seth Price (00:10:15) – So the local service areas, this is the second way that we have gone about trying to deal with this proximity update. So you have your main pin on the map at your home office and you have a a geography around that. We’ve seen that reduced with the proximity search. There historically have been service areas and something that Google really didn’t focus that much on and it didn’t help with search. But these service areas for instance, if you were a garage door company, were important because it doesn’t, you don’t really care if you were a garage door is broken where the company is located, you care, is a van gonna come to your house and service you? And if it’s too far away they won’t. But if it’s part of a service area, they will. So Google started testing these service areas as something, but it wasn’t helping us as lawyers.

Seth Price (00:11:00) – So here are the examples of service areas and if you’re looking at a, I believe it’s Houston on the right, that what you’re dealing with are different neighborhoods that before this DC on the left, that these different areas are areas that may not mean anything to you, but to Google it means something. So while you may say you have a Houston address, they are gonna look at this like it is, no it’s not Houston, it is this, you know, springs area or whatever neighborhood it’s in. They’re looking at areas and grouping them together. So basically 2018 came in 2019, we don’t see pins anymore. We’re seeing groupings of areas and 2019 up to 20 service areas can be added to your Google business pages. Google my business was the way we said it for a long time and I, it’s kinda hard to stop saying it, but basically you now have the ability just like the pull down to say that you do injury or criminal, you can now say where do you service?

Seth Price (00:12:01) – So here’s an example, Houston, the different areas, Houston Gardens, garden Oaks, these are area and clusters where you can say yes, even though I’m not closest to this, I still service this area. And these are the beginnings of what we want to see in order to counteract the fact that you can’t get as large a radius from the home office by just putting a pin on the map. So basically in 2020 this is something that we didn’t see and nobody else could, you know, there was basically studies out there saying hey this is not moving the needle at all. You could put all the service areas you want but it’s not gonna make you any money. And this is an example of April, 2020. It’s showing that if somebody was in a particular area, the service areas was not getting you any greater love. The physical location got you loved but nothing else.

Seth Price (00:12:50) – So the local service area timeline, basically the summer of 2021, Google started identifying where you were. You didn’t just say that you were in Atlanta, you were in Century Center or in New York it’s saying that you were in White Plains. It’s determining where you are. Westchester is not allowing you to say the area that you’re in. So basically pre proximity update, you can’t alter this proximity, you only rank where X is. But that’s what’s no longer the case. And that’s the takeaway from today’s talk, which is that with service areas now, and this has literally happened in the last couple months, you can now do a land grab for additional real estate beyond what you have from just that one office. So that if you’re a player with an office in Albany and you say, Hey I want this greater surrounding area, this is gonna allow you to fight to get additional eyes.

Seth Price (00:13:45) – And here is an example. So on the left we’re seeing what happened post update where the entire left side became non-green, meaning you’re not in the three pack. What we saw was by adding service areas in, you’ll see on the right that as you are gonna see a number of green in the upper left-hand corner, this is significant because it is nowhere near the office or the pin on the map as I call it. But areas that have direct competitors, this is not gonna work. So that if in, you know, if a neighborhood near you, you have a direct competitor doing what you have with a pin on the map, you will not likely compete against them. But if there is geography where your competitors are not by listing the service areas, you can gain that real estate back that you lost with the proximity update. So that is what I have to say. I’m happy to take any and all questions. No

Speaker 3 (00:14:41) – I was just looking at our business profile sees listed multiple locations. Does it matter? We have three seven

Seth Price (00:14:53) – As many as there’s no to max as many as you could reasonably argue. And also understanding that if there’s a neighborhood which is saturated with lawyers, this is not gonna have a huge effect. But the ones that are not, we wanna be able to pick up that real estate because Google is saying, hey, if it’s close we’re gonna show it. But when there’s not a great answer, we’re falling back on this.

Speaker 3 (00:15:14) – My business still want the aerial block cause I have the trading but it always bumps

Seth Price (00:15:21) – Beyond. Great question. You know, it was a huge factor pre-up update it seems like it’s less of a factor, but if you can get it, I still love it. And that, you know, again, I can’t tell you the like exactly how much it matters but, and I can’t tell cause and effect because so many people race to it pre-up update. But if you look in my market, uh, for personal injury, I move to it and two of my biggest digital competitors move to it. And when you do a search, that’s what you’re seeing is you’re seeing the people with trade and with the exact match answers. You don’t want it to be spammy. Anything you can do and depending if you’re an injury, it’s the most competitive people are gonna fight you. Family let’s say is in the middle, you know, trust and estates, nobody really cares.

Seth Price (00:16:02) – So god bless and go for it. But make sure you do it right and do in case you do get the suspension, have all the information to show this is a legitimate name was the question in the back. So yes, satellite office, that’s why I talked about it before in in the presentation. But I would say that it’s not a panacea, you’re not gonna get everything. But if you’re on the west side of town and you have no presence on the east side of town, you don’t even have a chance. So there’s also a pull and tug. So the area that you saw that did not have the green on the after is the area where there’s a high density of lawyers. DuPont Circle in DC has a huge number of personal injury lawyers. So we’ve sort of punted and said okay, we’re gonna give up on this little tiny, you know, 10 block area and we want to be able to get the power of everything else.

Seth Price (00:16:48) – That said, I could put an office there and fight there. But then I’m also building, that’s the the one sort of dirty secret of all this, which is not pretty, which is you now need to start reviews all over again for another office. Good buddy of ours had five offices and you had the same review posted at all of ’em. Bad thing Google will take it down. Could you get away with two from a single person? Possibly. But building reviews from scratch for new offices is not nothing. So you want to be able to do this but it’s gonna take a lot of effort. It’s hard enough getting reviews in one office now you got 2, 3, 4, 5 offices over time. Yeah. You know that that happens from time to time. It is frustrating and very often you wait and they eventually come. There are other times when there is something wrong pinging the Google support is helpful, it is clunky and we don’t have full transparency. So

Speaker 3 (00:17:35) – You’re saying that, I mean best practice to a physical location and had service areas do that address

Seth Price (00:17:44) – Correct? I mean additional offices is good too, but if you don’t have the resources to do that or that’s a limiting factor, whether the reviews are otherwise, that’s the conclusion that we have is that it will get you maximum value for the offices you have. My time is up, but I thank you very much. I’m here. Blue Shark has a booth outside if anyone wants to talk to anybody, but I’ll geek out on this with anybody who wants to talk. Thank you.

Speaker 0 (00:18:05) – Thanks for listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. To stay in contact with your host and to access more content, go to maximum lawyer com. Have a great week and catch you next time.

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