I have found that Google My Business categories are often an overlooked tactic by many people that work in the Local Search space. According to Moz’s Local Search Ranking Factors Survey , proper Google My Business category associations are the #3 search ranking factor for local packs. It has been one of the top ranking factors for as long as I can remember so I wanted to share some things about Google My Business categories that people often aren’t aware of.
1. Google constantly changes the names of categories. For example, “Lincoln Mercury Dealer” got renamed to “Lincoln Dealer” in the fall of 2018 and “Natural Foods Store” got renamed to “Natural Goods Store” in December. It’s important to know that Google can rename them so you’re not thinking it’s a new category that has been added.
2. Google constantly removes categories and adds new ones. For example, in the first six months of 2018 in the U.S., Google added 34 categories and removed 36. One that they added was “Fitness Class” and one that they removed was “Dog Sitter.”
3. New categories can give you a boost in ranking. In this thread , Rich Owings of Local Is Where It’s At talks about how he started doing Local SEO for an escape room. Google had just recently added a category for this business type so most of the competition didn’t have the new category yet. By being one of the first to add the new category, he was […]
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