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What is Google My Business Location Authority? How Local Content Can Help.

Blue Swing Media • May 07, 2020

How to boost Location Authority using Local Content Marketing

Location authority plays a huge role in advancing the interests of businesses that are looking to gain more customers and local content can help. The reason behind this is that location authority endows a company with the ability and power to rank better on Google Map searches, thus increasing the chances of it being discovered by new customers. As a business’s location authority grows, it will start ranking higher on Google Map search results. To put it simply, your business listing will pop up without the need for a customer to zoom in on a particular location, thus enhancing your credibility and visibility among potential customers. With increasing location authority, a company will be able to dominate search results over a much larger area in Google Maps.

For instance, if a customer types ‘Restaurants in FL’, restaurants with greater location authority will be ranked higher and be displayed first to the user. And if your business has a content rich website, search engines with eventually take notice. Additionally, the restaurant will also rank first on the map’s listed results, thus increasing the likelihood of the user clicking on their listing.

Local businesses can generate a huge amount of leads and sales by ranking better on Google Map results. Bagging one of the top spots is absolutely crucial since the latest statistics show that more than 90% of all traffic is hogged by the top 3 local business listings. To gain more customers, it is imperative that you improve the location authority of your business.

Verification of your listing on Google My Business is necessary for ensuring your business is visible on Google Map results.

However, mere verification doesn’t mean that your listing is going to top the search rankings automatically.

Laptop with facts on a business location authority

How to Achieve Better Google Map Rankings?

The secret lies in increasing your business’s location authority and having a local content marketing strategy will take care of a large portion of what is needed. Apart from giving your business the ability to rank better on Map results, your business listing will also likely be shown to users who are relatively at a greater distance from your location.

Not having any location authority means that your Google Maps listing will only pop up when users are near your place of business. However, by increasing your location authority, your business will be visible to users even at greater distances.

For instance, possessing enough location authority could help your business be seen by people who are 3 miles, 6 miles, or even 12 miles away from your business location.

At Blue Swing Media, we frequently talk to our clients about an important phrase that can take the performance of their Google Maps listing to a whole new level – Location Authority.

This is what drives the rankings of a location or local business in Google Map search results. If you want to drive more customers to your business in this digital age, you need to make location authority your new best friend.

Once your business starts ratcheting up its location authority, it will start making its way up the local Google Map search results, shining a spotlight on your business in the process.

While describing local SEO practices to our clients, we usually talk to them about location authority as well. However, many prospective and existing clients are completely unaware of the role played by location authority.

Location Authority – How Useful Is It?

Location Authority is a measure of a business’s credibility, consistency, and accuracy.

For achieving any significant location authority & for competing in Google Map/local search results effectively, it is location authority that plays the biggest role compared to other factors in determining your ranking within the defined radius and market.

Location authority can be boosted by ensuring that the information posted online about your business is accurate and consistent to the best of your abilities.

The information we’re talking about here are your official business citations. Business citations contain the following information regarding your business:

Name of your business (as per GMB listing)
Street Address
City Name, State, and Zip Code
Your Business Phone Number
Website URL

All of your online business citations should follow the same format given in your listing on Google My Business.

What are Google Maps Citations?

Let’s take Blue Swing Media as an example. Here is our standard citation format, which we use for distributing on webpages around the Internet via our partner network:

Blue Swing Media – Website Design, Content Marketing & SEO in Southwest Florida
157 S. Davis Street
LaBelle, FL 33935
863-517-0615
https://blueswingmedia.com

Even you can harness the magnitude and scale of our citation distribution network that we use for enhancing Blue Swing Media’s rankings, when you engage our services.

You can also check out White Spark’s graph, which has been presented here to help you better understand the citation ecosystem in greater detail.

Are Google Map Citations Enough for Building Location Authority?

Distributing business citations across many websites is actually quite similar to backlink building strategies that are commonly used for increasing a website’s organic search traffic from search engines.

However, mere publication and distribution of your business citations isn’t enough for building your business’s location authority.

The citations must be published on websites that deal with your location and industry.

To sum this article up, this is what you need to do to improve your location authority:

Register your business on Google Maps
Claim your business listing
Provide comprehensive details about your business on your Google profile
Use local contact numbers
Avoid using tracked phone numbers
Update the working hours of your business
Optimize your business description on Google Maps
Ensure that the business has been categorized properly
Add photos of your office to the listing
Try to increase the number of Google reviews you have
Consolidate all duplicate listings for your business
Maintain a well-designed, responsive site
Embed Google Maps on your site
Utilize local keywords

Building location authority can be extremely useful in increasing your search result rankings on Google Maps. By optimizing it properly, not only will your leads, sales, and revenues rocket monumentally, but your business will also be able to make a name for itself as a reliable and credible service provider. In this day and age, where the reputation of your business online can make or break your business, this is one aspect that you cannot afford to ignore.

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