Local SEO differs from the traditional SEO activity because it aims to provide maximum visibility in a carefully defined area (city, province, region) and is very important especially for professionals who want to be clearly visible in the area where they play their profession.
This is why we at Kitsune always stay abreast of effectively using all the news and tools that Google provides.
The Key Role of Google My Business
Google My Business (GMB) is a free tool to help companies manage their presence on Google-owned services, such as “Google Search” and “Google Maps”, and, by closing the “Google+” service, it is recently modified and constantly being upgraded.
GMB makes it easier for patients to search locally. This is because in the visualization of the results, it rewards the health professionals who are closest to the physical position of the researching patient. To determine the proximity of a doctor to the patient who is carrying out the search, Google relies on the data of the professional’s Google My Business profile, and checks if the profile is present and verified.
This means that if a patient enters “Milan oculist” or “Rome plastic surgeon”, the professional with an active and well-profiled Google My Business account has the opportunity to appear in the main list. According to a study by Google, activities that maintain a complete profile on GMB get 5 times more views than competitors who have not completed their profile. And 60% of patients click on a doctor’s profile if it appears in the local search results of Google (which are drawn up mainly based on the presence of the GMB page).
This is the reason why having a GMB profile verified and constantly fed with new content is one of the keys to online success. Those who skilfully exploit the local SEO by combining it with traditional SEO can also beat competitors who are geographically closer to the researching patient but who do not appear due to the lack of an effective GMB profile.
The Impact of Reviews
Another factor that greatly influences the results of a local search are the Google reviews which are crucial for placing well in the “Google’s local 3-pack”, that is among those that Google considers the best three local results, which are shown first and with evidence on the results page.
The “local 3-pack” initially displays only the name of the business, the number of Google reviews, the average rating of the reviews and the link to the website.
GMB Posts Attract Patients
In Kitsune, we dedicate a lot of time to posts articles that can be published in Google My Business. In fact, GMB provides a new blog and news platform that can transmit directly to Google’s search results and which contribute to increasing the professional’s authority in a specific sector, its positioning in research and the overall value provided to patients who are looking for that information right now.
In short, the Google My Business posts, if well exploited, can be the ideal bridge between the pay-per-click ads and the organic results obtained via SEO.