Very often local businesses spend money, time and energy on things which have little to no impact on their rankings in SERP.

Following the wrong practices can even negatively impact your SEO if you are not careful.

Given below are some common local SEO myths.

1. All Backlinks Produce The Same Results

Not every backlink has the same impact on your SEO. The authority of the site from where you get a backlink plays a huge role in the link-juice that you get. For example, backlinks from forum profiles, web profiles have little to no value for your SEO. Rather they can kill your SEO efforts.

According to Auckland SEO Services, building low quality & irrelevant links (blog comments, forum links, profile links etc.) will only hurt your off-page SEO. You should always try to get the best quality links, as quality is more important than quantity.

2. Deleting Your Listing In Google My Business Removes The Listing From Google

While some business owners try to delete duplicate listings of their businesses on Google, they get a message stating that everything will be deleted.

What actually happens is that the particular listing you delete will become unverified. The listing will continue to exist on Google Maps and show information related to it. It will still rank if the relevant details are not removed.

3. You Should Close The Listing For Your Old Location If Your Business Has A New One

If your business has shifted to a new location, all you need to do is edit the address in your dashboard. Closing the listing will give the impression that your business is permanently closed if anyone searches for your business name. Mark your old and unverified listings as ‘Moved’.

4. Setting A Huge Radius Around Your Business Address Will Help You Rank In Other Cities

Businesses which offer local services (e.g. locksmith, water damage restoration etc.) are offered an option to set a radius around their business address. This is usually done to set limits on how far they can travel to offer services. Just making this radius large by extending it to other cities won’t help you rank in other cities.

5. Having Connections With Google Employees Will Help Your SEO

Google employees can provide you with advice and opinions but they cannot help you improve your SEO just because they have nothing to do with SERP rankings. The only way is to keep up with the latest SEO trends and make sure you are following Google’s algorithm.

6. Google Displays Everything Written In Your GMB Dashboard

Google gets information about your business from multiple sources including your business website, Google Maps and other third party websites. It can display any part of the information from your GMB dashboard. Google also has the ability to update your verified listing.

7. Unverified Businesses Won’t Rank Anywhere

Not claiming your page doesn’t mean it won’t rank anywhere. The only reason people think verification affects ranking is because verified businesses tend to have more information included about them.

8. Social Media Is Not Useful For Local SEO

Having a social media presence will definitely impact your SEO positively. If you have a local business and don’t have a social media platform for it, you are possibly missing out on sales.

Conclusion

Make sure you do thorough research on proper SEO practices for your local business. If possible, hire a reputed SEO agency who has been in the industry for a good length of time.