Google has announced a change to its search algorithm which gives increased visibility to local publishers.

This is great news for small businesses, as it means that they will have an easier time reaching potential customers through Google searches.

In this blog post, we will discuss the implications of this change and how small businesses can take advantage of it.

Google’s Declaration

The Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines from Google have been updated to place a stronger emphasis on original news and reporting.

This adjustment is intended to assist independent publishers and content creators in the SERPs.

Considerations

The most important aspects of Google Local are relevance, distance, and prominence. The ideal match for a user search is determined by a mix of these variables.

Relevance: Relevance is a measure of how well a local Business Profile fits with what people are looking for.

As a result, make sure you provide comprehensive and thorough company information to Google so it can better understand your business and match your profile to relevant searches.

Distance: The distance between each possible search result and the location term used in a search is known as geographic distance.

To give you some context, Google calculates distance based on what it knows about the user’s location if a user does not provide a location in their query.

Prominence: The term prominence refers to how well known a company is.

As expected, some locations are more recognized in the real world, and search engine results try to reflect this in local rankings. As a result, famous museums, historic hotels, or well-known shop brands are likely to appear in local search results, for example.

Also, the prominence of a web page is affected by information that Google has about a company, such as links, articles, and directories on the web.

In addition, local search ranking is influenced by Google review count and rating. So, higher ratings and reviews can help your company’s local rank improve.

It’s also worth noting that, because the AI algorithm is constantly monitoring your site for fresh content, recent changes to its structure will trigger new SEO concerns (such as a change in pages), which may cause it to rank higher or lower.

Impact on Content Marketing

The new Google local news feature is a spin-off of COVID-19’s news centre, which was introduced to provide a secure source of information on the virus.

A page displaying as a search result for the COVID-19 news centre automatically indicated that it was accurate and trustworthy.

In this regard, publishers started producing higher-quality content in order to better match the information supplied. That approach helped these sites establish themselves as authorities on COVID-19 issues.

Local news websites are on their way to reclaiming the limelight, following the same procedures. Furthermore, more from it will profit those websites that have developed with content marketing’s best practices.

The Required Mentality Now

It was simply a matter of time for Google to add more business categories on display in local results. And rather than waiting for it to happen and take full shape, why not begin now?

You can boost your blog traffic, improve conversion rates, create new sessions, and become a more profitable business by implementing a strong content marketing plan that stays on top of what is happening in your industry.

The sooner you start using Google’s new local search tools, the more likely you are to get superior and more relevant results.