Huge local SEO news! Adding predefined services to your Google Business Profile can now significantly impact rankings.
Until now, services have NOT been a ranking factor. In fact, the idea that services impacted rankings was the #4 local SEO myth in the latest Whitespark Local Search Ranking Factors survey.
They were still valuable for other reasons: they drove more conversions, and they triggered eye-catching justifications in the search results. But rankings? No.
However, new research by SterlingSky shows that selecting Google’s predefined services now has a positive impact on rankings. In this video, I go over their study and show you how to make the most out of your Services section.
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0:00 Context
0:48 Summary of SterlingSky’s study
1:53 Tutorial: How to add predefined services
4:17 Increasing rankings in action
4:57 The takeaways
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Transcript:
Sterling Sky recently published new research showing that adding predefined services to your Google Business Profile can have a significant impact on your rankings.
Previous testing has shown that no matter what you put in that Services section, it doesn’t really impact rankings, but it can have a positive impact on conversions because of justifications and because you can see them on mobile.
But ranking impact? No. It actually comes in as one of the local search myths in the most recent Local Search Ranking Factors survey.
But a huge shout out to Joy Hawkins and her team at Sterling Sky for testing this again and discovering something really phenomenal. This is a new tactic that we can now use to improve local search rankings.
What they found is that if you add any of these predefined services that Google is suggesting to your Profile, you’ll see a significant ranking boost.
Here’s an example. Prior to adding that service to this profile, they only ranked in their immediate area. But after clicking that button, they start ranking quite well, in a pretty wide range.
They did it again on another listing. Previously, this business was not ranking at all for vampire facials, a pretty obscure term. But when they added the predefined service that Google was suggesting to their profile, boom.
Let me walk you through the action items.
You go to your GBP and click this button here, edit services.
It’s important to note that if you have any pending services that Google is suggesting, you either have to edit or accept those before you get the predefined service options.
You can edit any of the services you’ve selected. You can add a price, you can add a description. If you have any services that you don’t want, you can delete them.
After accepting those, you now get this “add more services” button, and when you click that you can see all of the predefined services.
As I add all of these, I’m improving my rankings for those terms. Click save after you’ve selected the ones you want, and then add descriptions to them.
Some of these will even have “add custom services”. What you’ll find is that Google is offering predefined service suggestions for every additional category you have. You can add them and rank better for those terms. The jury is still out about whether or not adding custom services has any impact on rankings.
Joy and her team say that they’re testing that, so I look forward to their follow-up. But you might as well add custom services because they might help you rank for extra terms.
This is a wonderful new discovery that can have a huge impact on your rankings. I actually think this should now be a new weekly task for anyone that cares about their local search rankings.
Once a week you should check your GBP to see if Google is suggesting any categories. If yes, accept or edit, remove the ones that don’t make sense. Then click “add more services” and see if there are any additional predefined services you can add to your category. Because it seems that every time you add one of those additional services, you’re casting a wider net allowing you to rank for those services. Plus you also get the benefit of additional “provides” justifications.
Shout out and a huge thank you to Joy Hawkins and the team at Sterling Sky for giving us this new local search strategy to add to our tool belt. Great job.
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