The local and longstanding SEO Myths That Do Not Want To Seem To Die…!
Puzzled about what’s true and what isn’t in the realm of SEO? We don’t blame you as there are still some very common myths that clients ask us about that are in fact truths. To help clear up confusion, we’ve explained a little bit about them below.
1) ‘When you break any Google guidelines your ranking will suffer’
Breaking the Google My Business guidelines will result in two things. One; get a soft suspension where you no longer have the authority to manage your local business via Google My Business and you will not receive notifications about your listing or be able to use Google Posts. Ouch. Whilst this isn’t good news, it won’t affect your ranking.
Second; you may get a hard suspension which has more serious consequences like Google removing your entire local business listing, including reviews, images and maps, so essentially, if your listing does not exist you won’t rank anywhere in the local search results. Whilst the above two things are very much in operation, what is mythical is that Google uses an algorithm to reduce the ranking of listings that flout the guidelines.
2) ‘Your service area impacts where you rank’
Google gives business owners the opportunity to set the service area for their listing within the Google My Business dashboard, an essential indicator of how far you are willing to travel to service customers. Many people (wrongly) assume that the information that is in this section will influence where they rank in Google. Servicing 20 cities will not impact a ranking in any one of those cities. The locations you rank in are based on the location of your address.
3) ‘Using a call tracking number will badly affect rankings’
Tracking numbers will not hurt your rankings if you make sure you move your normal phone number to the additional phone set up in Google My Business. In doing this, you are showing Google that you are the same business as issues like duplicate listings will be avoided.
Here at Hooked On Media we like to think we’re experts in our field, but you don’t have to take our word for it – check out our testimonials page here.
