While the exact Google algorithm has always been a mystery, it has been widely known that the secret “Google juice” for PageRank to get your business to the top consists of keyword relevant content, inbound links coming from across the web that give your page authority, along with social bookmarks from sites like StumbleUpon and Digg, that make your site more important to the search engines.
The game is changing again.
Google wants to be a destination instead of sending consumers to other sites. In the following image from ReachLocal, you can see that Google is making an effort to keep consumers on their site through tools such as: Google Hotpot for reviews, instead of serving up results to Yelp and CitySearch, Google Places for local directories instead of Yellowpages or Superpages directories, also Google just announced Google Offers to compete against Groupon and Living Social, and who knows whether Google will get on their feet with Google Me and have success with social to compete with Facebook and Twitter.
So how does this affect you… the local small business owner? It is now more important than ever to have a total web presence, engage fans and followers, keep up with your online reputation, and keep up to date with fresh content, because it’s going to even play a part in whether or not you will be found online.
What should you do to impact your organic results?
- Claim and update your Places page (see video in right sidebar)
- Invest in content marketing
- Build a strong group of fans and followers to impact your search rank
- Manage a positive reputation for your business
