Andrew Shotland | 11/04/2017
How to rank your business in Google "Near Me"
In this post, Mono Solutions has invited the CEO & Founder of Local SEO Guide - Andrew Shotland, to discuss how "near me" search is affecting the Google rankings of small businesses and highlight what you can do to help your SMB customers succeed in optimizing their online presence for "near me" searches.
Part of every SEO’s job is to keep track of how search engines and searchers’ behavior change over time and to spot opportunities to get their clients more customers out of search as it evolves. Today I’d like to talk about a relatively new opportunity for local marketers -“near me” searches.
Check out how “near me” queries have grown over the past two years according to Google Trends. (See image 1 in gallery)
Not only has “near me” risen as a whole, but specific “near me” searches have also skyrocketed. (See image 2 in gallery)
This is a result of Google, and Apple’s Spotlight Search to some extent, increasing the number of queries that suggest “near me” as an option as search goes more mobile (and thus more local in intent). And fat fingers being what they are, we hit the first suggestion near us.
(See image 3 in gallery)
In our Local SEO Ranking Factors study, link metrics also were some of the strongest indicators of good rankings, so it’s not surprising that they also matter for “near me” queries. In fact, TripAdvisor’s aggressive use of “near me” in internal link anchor text may be one of the reasons those URLs rank so well for “near me” queries: (See image 4 in gallery)
For more detail on the methodology of our “near me” study, go to Near Me Local SEO Ranking Factors on our blog.
Better still, join me & Mono Solutions for our webinar on April 19th at 11 a.m. (ET)/ 5 p.m. (CET) where we will go over various tactics for improving your Local Google rankings. Thanks!
About Andrew Shotland
A guest contributor - Andrew Shotland is the CEO of Local SEO Guide, an SEO consulting company offering multi-location Local SEO Services.