GMBChat Recap: February 9, 2021
Carrie Hill

Good Morning, LocalU Friends!

Last week we were lucky enough to have a wide variety of GMB experts weigh in for our first #gmbchat co-held by LocalU and Sterling Sky, our parent company.  We had time in the hour to address 10 great questions crowdsourced from Twitter and some question submissions and we’re excited to share a recap of our discussion here with you!

Q1: With Google’s Recent Clarification on virtual offices & coworking spaces, is there an alternative for a service area business that doesn’t want to operate from home, but cant rent/buy/staff a physical location?

A1:

The consensus was to use the home address and hide it. Services area businesses are at a disadvantage in Local search but if you cannot rent/buy/staff a location, this is your TOS-safe alternative.

Q2: Why does GMB treat synonyms so differently in search results? i.e. “attorney or lawyer + city” returns a completely different local pack. h/t to @HardyIntl on Twitter for the question.

A2:

Exact matching is pretty strong in the local algo, as well as influence from what’s on the website – if you’re heavily optimized for lawyer vs attorney on-site, that can have an influence on your rankings as well.

Q3: When you report a business for keyword stuffing and Google never does anything about it. What then? h/t to @DonnieStrompf via Twitter for the question

A3:


And this question is never fully answered without a little cheek from Brian Barwig 😉

Q4: What do you do when every review on a GMB account is fake? h/t to @DonnieStrompf via Twitter for the question

A4:

But in all fairness, Brian is a pretty smart guy 👇👇👇

Q5: I understand that Google Posts are important- but I struggle with it because it’s hard to see the results. What should I post about? How often should I post something? How do I track it?

A5:

Q6: I have more reviews than the business that ranks above me, Why don’t I rank #1, or at least above THEM?

A6:

Q7: Should I embed a Google Map on my website? On every page? Or just certain pages? Are the benefits for UX, Ranking or Both?

A7:

Q8: How many categories should I have? Is there a “too many?”

A8:

Q9: I keep hearing new photos are important. How often should I post new photos to my GMB? (should I geotag them? 😂😂😂)

A9:

Q10: I have all of my service areas listed correctly in my GMB listing, but I don’t rank in any of them!

A10:

Thanks for joining us this month, tune in for the next GMB Chat on Tuesday, March 9th at 11am Eastern Time!

Carrie comes to Sterling Sky with SEO experience that dates back to 2005! She has a passion for figuring out what works for each and every client and picking apart the problems that arise in our “it depends” relationship with Google. She has also been organizing and nurturing the LocalU Conference Series since 2017 – through to today – across a hectic few years of pandemic and back into in-person conferences again.