Where Does All The Traffic Go?

It happens all the time, whether it be on a cell phone, mobile tablet, or home computer, someone has a need and does a search right from their mobile phone.  What they find, determines who will most likely get a call first.There are three areas for traffic to click on, on a typical Google search query, paid advertising, Google My Business directory and organic search results.

By looking at the graph below, you can see that the majority of clicks for a local business come from Google's local directory.

The ironic part about this, is it seems as the majority of clicks come from the Google Places or Maps directory.  This is a free service provided by Google and allows local businesses to list their companies in there free of charge.

So if there are so many clicks here, why is Google giving away their prime real estate?

Well the answer is, is that they reduced the number of businesses that showed up in the search results from 7 down to 3, making it more competitive for business owners to show up here.  This means the top 3 will get the overwhelming majority of the clicks.

But there are ways to position your company there. The first is by making sure your listing is completely filled out, pictures in every category, text filled out, name, address, phone number and website are all accurate across the board, filled with YouTube videos and topped with multiple and consistent five star reviews.  Think of it this way.  The more effort, Google sees in setting up your listing and maintaining your reputation, the more likely Google is to display your listing because remember the goal of Google is to make the user experience as pleasant as possible.

So what shows up on your places page?  How many reviews do you have?  Are they all positive, negative or a mixture.  You should be trying to position your business as a five star provider. Google looks at the consistency of the ratings but also looks for continuous and steady reviews. So if you have a few customers that left you reviews in one month and neglected to get any new reviews, they may see your business as inactive and may penalize your listing by not displaying it as often in the search results.

There are other tricks to optimize your business listing so you can improve your chances of showing up more frequently in their local directory.  For more information on how to get your business to optimize your Google listings, contact Trackable Results for a free consultation or call 630-326-5556.