What You Need to Know When Ranking a New Location on Google
Opening a new location in your Google My Business listing may seem easy and hassle-free. Just add a new place and optimize the keywords on your site, then you’re done. However, there are some technicalities involved here. As you expand your business, you also have to pay attention to your location-specific pages and listings rank on the web.
If you’re opening a new branch and listing its location on your GMB, you have to understand the following points first.
How Google ranks places for locations
When it comes to ranking location keywords, Google considers three essential factors: relevance, proximity, and prominence.
Relevance
For this part, Google indexes your pages based on how relevant the optimized keywords are to the search query. Whenever an internet user searches for a specific query, say a restaurant, laundry service, supermarket, and more, Google will show the most relevant results within the local area.
This is possible through optimizing relevant keywords, location modifier keywords, specifically. This way, Google, can possibly include you on the search results. However, your ranking is a whole different story.
Proximity
When it comes to ranking locations, the proximity of the keyword to the local intent search (within or outside the area) will determine if you’re going to show up on search results or not.
Proximity is a two-edged sword. We have the local intent search within the area and the local intent search outside the area.
The local intent search within the area is when a person within the location looks up a certain query. It can go like this “XYZ near me” for a person living in Fort Lauderdale, for example. However, in the case of local intent search outside the area, it can go like this “XYZ in Fort Lauderdale”.
These are two ways to rank your location. Also, it will require different approaches to ensure that your location-specific keywords will see its purpose.
Prominence
Another make-or-break ranking factor is prominence. It’s how popular and trustworthy your website is across the internet.
Prominence is determined through many factors, but the most popular are backlinking from authority sites, online reviews, and citations.
All of these build your image on Google. In return, web crawlers find your location and web pages more accurate.
If paired with proximity and relevant, prominence will help rank your location on SERPs.
Important reminders
When adding or ranking a new location, make sure that you avoid location cannibalization. This is a product of faulty keyword optimization where two locations pit for the same keyword. In the process, one location will be filtered out, causing some locations to rank poorly and in improper proximity.
Also, your business will benefit from creating unique landing pages for every location that you’re ranking for. While you’re getting visibility on your GMB listing, you’re also gaining organic traffic from the additional pages. It doubles the benefit, especially if you’re continuously expanding your business.
Final words
Adding new locations to your GMB listing or website helps you rank your business locations better. However, you should keep the aforementioned points in mind to prevent any hiccups on your ranking.
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