With the rising competition of Google Business Profiles (GBP) for the highest rankings in local SEO, several businesses have turned to “geotagging”, or uploading photos to their GBP that are embedded with location metadata they believe Google uses to improve local search results. But is this really the most effective way to climb the ranks? The short answer is ‘very rarely’. In fact, a study shows that geotagging can even potentially hurt your local SEO rankings.
Currently, Google Maps is feeding into Google Business Profiles in powerful ways with “near-me” and location-specific search terms plugged directly into the app. This makes every piece of information on your Google Business Profile incredibly important!
This is where the practice of “geotagging” was inspired. Although the intention is to upload photos to the GBP with location data that Google would use to increase local search rankings, a 10-week study on geotagging’s impact on local SEO reveals quite the opposite.
According to an article by Jake Hundley, the study tested several lawn care businesses’s GBPs by geotagging two specific towns and the results showed that out of the seven standard search term metrics they measured, only one saw improvement, six had no impact, and four of them even saw a decrease in rank when images were geotagged. Essentially, this means that although geotagging may help “near me” searches in those specific areas, it may decrease search rankings in every other area where you don’t add geotagged images.
Now, we promise we’re not here to deter you from learning more about SEO strategies, because many of them do work–and they work well when handled properly. But SEO is always changing and can be difficult to navigate on your own, even when you think you’re following the latest tips. That’s where we come in! Our team specializes in keeping your platforms up to date on the most effective SEO operations for your target audiences and can do the heavy lifting so that you reap the benefits of every interaction.
Please contact us if you’d like to talk about your search marketing strategy.