Google rolled out its biggest local search algorithm (the Vicinity Update) in five years towards the end of 2021, dramatically impacting local businesses. Some are still suffering the consequences of the update.
The Vicinity update was introduced to make the search results more relevant. Before this update, businesses heavy on inappropriate keywords could rank farther than their actual location. So to help small businesses be noticeable in the market, Google readjusted its algorithm to help them rank higher than big businesses.
The algorithm caused widespread ranking disruption in some industries more than others, the real estate industry being one of them.
In this case study, we have addressed issues encountered during this update by one of our clients from the real estate industry and how we helped them regain their ranking on the local SERPs and outperform competitors with our winning local SEO strategies.
Background
OKC Home Realty Services, LLC is a trustable property management firm in Oklahoma City. We have built their website, ensuring it is SEO friendly & user friendly and meets the global standards.
Along with the website development, we’re also performing the business’s overall SEO, including on-site SEO, link building, local SEO, and technical SEO.
During the roll of Vicinity Update, we started encountering significant changes by the end of November. The changes included a decline in total calls, website visits, direction requests, and impressions. To understand the abnormal decline in the GBP, we carried out intense research and participated in trustworthy forums. All of it assisted us in resolving the issues we faced and restructuring our work patterns & strategies to reacquire our client’s business on the GBP.
In this case study, we will highlight the breakdown of our unbeaten strategies, key challenges we faced after the algorithm rolled out, the outcomes, and how long it took us to achieve the results.
Objectives of The Case Study
The main objectives of this case study are enlisted below:
- To share how we regained and improved the local rankings and related metrics.
- Share our plan of action to deal with Google’s Vicinity Update.
- To help businesses overcome the negatives of the update with our strategies.
Key Challenges Faced After The Update
Many local businesses are still facing the detrimental effects of the update and are struggling with finding strategies to be back on the local SERPs. We’ve listed the key challenges we faced with the Google Business Profile (GBP) of OKC Home Realty Services, LLC after the update struck:
- Significant Drop in website clicks
- Drop-in calls
- Drop-in Business Profile Appearance on the search results
- Drop-in business profile views
- A decline in the number of keywords
- Lost rankings on Geogrids
Our Winning Local SEO Strategy
Regaining the lost slot was tricky, and figuring out the strategies that would do the work was the most important need of the hour. Our team of SEO experts cracked the case, and not only did the business regain its ranking, but it also started getting exceptional results.
Here are the winning strategies we utilized to be back in the game, stronger this time!
- Tiered Link Building
- Proximity Push
- CID Manipulation
- GBP Post Silo Push
- Local Business Schema Implementation
- Optimized/Tuned GBP Website Content
- Google Stacking
- Optimized GBP Service pages, descriptions, product pages, and business site with business-related keywords & LSIs
- Local Business Citations
Let’s break down these strategies!
Tiered link building basically means building links from various sources to your website. In this strategy, we create quality content and publish it on relevant high-ranking sites, then link it back to the contributed content via other sites.
Proximity in SEO denotes the physical nearness of potential customers from the business or to the business. We ensured that our client’s GBP showed up in reasonable local searches for relevant keywords through proximity push.
CID or Customer Identification Manipulation is the tactic used to connect different views of business listings. Google assigns a unique ID to each business entity and helps cluster business information across GBP and Google Maps Products. We manipulate this ID with our primary keyword and geo coordinates to signal the Google algorithm about the business presence in that specific geo coordinates.
Through silo push, we created a series of images, infographics, videos, and blog articles for centralized landing pages covering particular topics. This helped the client’s business website get higher rankings on business keywords. We further moved on and tuned/optimized all the GBP contents.
Likewise, we used Google’s authoritative SEO strategy, Google Stacking, to build high authority backlinks on several Google platforms and optimized GBP Service pages, descriptions, product pages, and business sites with business-related keywords & LSIs (search terms related to the main keyword you’re targeting).
Last but not least, we created local business citations on high DA-PA websites on alternative days. While creating citations, we submitted consistent NAP (Name, Address, and Phone Number) details and other important business details (including business hours, descriptions, and so on) across the web.
Our unbeatable strategies not only helped our client reacquire the lost assets but also helped us receive striking results.
Results
We didn’t get instant results, and we were not disappointed because, with the change in the algorithm, it was understandable that results would not be instant. Our team worked on all the strategies discussed above daily till positive results could be seen by the end of the February month.
Ever since the stats have been going up the chart, and our client’s business has been booming.
We’ve attached some screenshots to demonstrate progress over the time:
