In August 2019, we started noticing pre-defined services show up as an option in the Google Business Profile dashboard. Certain categories have several items listed like plumbers (see image below). Others do not and allow you to create your own…
Did you know that your business name is the #2 ranking factor according to Whitespark's 2023 ranking factors study? Many people might assume your business name isn't something that you can really use to help your SEO efforts, but I…
If you read Google’s spam report from 2022, it seems like they are doing a decent job of tackling fake reviews. In 2022, they blocked or removed over 115 million policy-violating reviews, with the majority of them caught before they…
Google has a section inside Google Business Profile that helps businesses understand the keywords searchers typed into Google to find your business. This section is often extremely valuable for businesses and marketers to find out where they are ranking on…
One recent test we did involving Google ads was with image extensions. We wanted to see what would happen to the click-through rate (CTR) if we used an image of a green arrow pointing to the ad copy. We…
Many people think that local SEO is all about the 3-pack rankings, but we disagree with this. Over the years, we have tracked a ton of local SERPs. We are fascinated to see recently that a lot of big…
![Do Images Impact Ranking On Google [Case Study] Sterling Sky](https://www.sterlingsky.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Do-Images-Impact-Ranking-on-Google-Case-Study.png)
We have been doing a lot of testing around images in the last year at Sterling Sky. You can read about the tests we did on geotagging photos and the cover photo you select in Google My Business. For this…
This article is part 5 of 9 from my LocalU presentation from March 2020. If you missed the event, the videos are available for purchase here. Business Name & SEO Ranking in Google Maps For as long as there have…
There are many questions that often come up about how to properly interpret Google Business Profile Performance (formerly known as Google My Business Insights). I’m going to break down the different sections and explain what they mean. For an overview…
As we near the end of our case study on reviews, this next bit of information is probably the most mind-blowing thing we have learned about reviews in the last decade. When someone is leaving you a review, they can…
Are you wondering how you can leverage AI to boost your Google Business Profile and save yourself a ton of time? An effortless way to utilize AI is to optimize your Google Posts. ChatGPT is a great tool to write…
Did you know that Google explicitly gives manual penalties to websites for having thin content? Thin Content Penalty: A business owner recently reached out to us via the Local Search Forum and told us about something wild that happened to…