Relevance
How well your business profile and website match what the searcher is asking for, the first of Google's three main local ranking factors.
Relevance is how well your profile and website match what the person actually searched for. It is decided by your categories, your services, the words on your pages and what your reviews say. Local Owl works on all four so the listing matches the searches you want to win.
What it actually means.
Relevance is the degree to which your business matches the searcher's query. It's mostly driven by your primary category, your secondary categories, the keywords on your website, the services listed on your GBP, and the words inside your reviews.
Of the three pillars (Relevance, Proximity, Prominence), relevance is the fastest to change. Picking a better primary category, adding missing services to your GBP, writing focused service pages, and prompting reviews to mention specific procedures can all shift relevance in 30 days.
Relevance is also where the most spam happens. Owners try to manipulate relevance by stuffing keywords in business names, fake review content, or hidden text on websites. Google's spam detection catches most of these now. The legitimate path is specificity: be exactly what you are, in plain language, in every place Google looks.
Related terms.
Proximity
How close the searcher is physically to your business location, which is one of Google's three main local ranking factors.
Read definitionProminence
How well-known and trusted your business is across the web, the third of Google's three main local ranking factors.
Read definitionPrimary category
The one category Google uses to decide which searches your Google Business Profile can rank for. Changing it changes which queries you show up in at all.
Read definitionWant this explained on a screenshare?
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