Google has just made an update named ‘Possum’ in its algorithm. This update is made for the purpose of bringing advancement to local search. If you ever have wished for the proximity to be used as ranking factor in local search, it is now possible due to Possum. Moreover, this update has made it possible for the local and organic search ranking signals to merge with each other.
This algorithmic change has made it possible for the businesses to get huge benefits based on their location. Furthermore, the location data of those businesses can now be better optimized with the help of this update. The impact of Possum can be better elaborated with the help of examples, which describe two scenarios, given below.
- Scenario before Possum: Let’s start with an example. A search for orthopedic specialists may end up brining search results involving many pages from a hospital website that publishes pages about several orthopedic services in searcher’s locality. The reason for this dominance of that hospital may not be because of the high quality content or better marketing campaign but it would be mainly due to domain strength and big size of the hospital. Hence, there would easily be a monopoly of a service in local search based on the business size and domain strength.
- Post Possum: Same kind of search is made. Now Google considers other services in the area and also the ranking signals which are commonly used in global searches. It means that dominance of a business in local search just because it is of bigger size and it has greater domain strength is not going to be the case anymore. For a business to show on the top of local search results, it has to be optimized for search engine, like Indianapolis SEO.
This change in local search is not an unknown thing. Google has been working in the past to make it difficult for bigger services like Amazon to dominate search results when users would search for different products.
Now, the online retailers have got the chance to bring their products on the top of search results after Amazon’s ‘monopoly’ is ended. Possum works in the same way but for local searches.
The big worry for dominating local brick and mortar businesses after the launch of Possum is a downfall in ranking. There is also a chance that already dominating businesses may not get affected or even get further boost. However, the business optimization for local search results now needs to be remodeled. To make your business do well in this aspect, you need to change several priorities. There are a few questions that may serve as a checklist for your business.
- Is the website content accurate and optimized for search engine? Is the content distributed among the high quality services that spread the business listings?
- Is my web content really offering something that makes my business gain reasonable prominence? Does my main content really provide great insight of the business according to best marketing practices?
If you pass this checklist, you are surely going to make your business dominate the local search.
David A. Lebo 