Don't be too focused on the "destination" of high Google rankings. Why? It's not just a destination... It's a bumpy ride of unexpected turns and twists on the journey to achieving high rankings in local search results.
Yes, it really is a journey. Listen to this short story.
Years ago it was Google Places and many of us, #autorepairshop owners and SEO experts alike relied on this data to measure local SEO progress. That is... until the gloomy day Google decided they would turn OFF #GooglePlaces.
At first, the only way we could measure progress for our auto repair shop clients was to use.................
#GoogleMaps. Of course there were problems with getting reliable data from Google Maps because of its inherent algorithims:
- The results were too reliant on zoom level
- The results were too reliant on exact geo location
After a huge push back from the industry, or maybe Google came up with it on their own, a new type of results page appeared just a few months ago. Thankfully, as it was shared with us, we were thrilled to learn that a full local SERP had returned. Moving forward, our reporting tool will now exclusively scrape this SERP.
Definition of SERP: A search engine results page (SERP) is the listing of results returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query. The results normally include a list of items with titles, a reference to the full version, and a short description showing where the keywords have matched content within the page.