You could probably guess that reviews are the biggest factor in determining the rank of a Google Business Profile. I’m sure you also understand how a wealth of social proof inspires prospects to get in touch.
Beyond these two foundational points, there’s so much to learn about what Google values in GBP reviews.
Lean in close because this article is about the biggest algorithmic aspect of the best hyperlocal marketing strategy for real estate agents in 2024.
Why GBP Is The #1 Hyperlocal Strategy
As a real estate marketing expert with decades of experience, I’ve reorganized a significant portion of my business to actualize the potential of optimized Google Business Profiles.
Everything about it is win-win-win. The only downside is that it can take time to build a strong set of optimized reviews.
But even that can be considered a benefit because your competition will have to do the same. If you start now and continually use my techniques, they won’t be able to catch up to you. It’s my educated guess that 80% of agents don’t have a profile at all, and 95% of agents don’t have well-optimized profiles.
Check out my other articles to learn everything you need to know about leveraging GBP into massive success.
Google Business Profile Official Guidelines
The official Google guidelines for setting up a GBP purposely avoid giving deep information on how to rank well. That’s standard practice to prevent people from gaming the system. Fortunately, I have a strong technical understanding of how to optimize your GBP.
Let’s start with what the Google guidelines share about the role of reviews.
The main two advices Google provides is making sure you respond to customer reviews and the general statement that high-quality, positive reviews help you rank better. My experience leads me to say these reviews make up about 35% of the total ranking factors for a Google Business Profile.
The fact that they specifically encourage businesses to respond to reviews is a clear indicator that it’s an essential practice for optimizing your GBP. We will get into responding perfectly to reviews later.
Google also has the following to say about the role of reviews.
Again, they are pretty tight-lipped about what’s going on behind the scenes. However, they make one revealing statement. “Your position in web results is also a ranking factor, so SEO best practices apply.”
This last statement applies to the landing page you list on your profile. In most cases, this will be the homepage of your website. However, it’s also a good indicator that SEO best practices also apply to the content of your Google Business Profile.
This is not equally true across the board for all aspects of your profile. Google ignores keywords found across different parts of your profile, such as the business description, Questions and Answers, and Google posts.
The most important places Google checks for keywords are the business title and reviews. The clearest indication of this is how Google highlights reviews that include the keywords of the search query.
The Importance of Keywords in Google Reviews
Let’s check out exactly how and what kind of keywords Google pays attention to for real estate professionals, specifically in the reviews.
Here’s an example from the search “best real estate agents in Myrtle Beach”.
As you can see, Google highlights a review and bolds the keyphrase “the best agents”. When I recreate the same search with the new search term “real estate agents in Myrtle beach”, the results are different since I have omitted the word “best”.
Now Right Find Homes has dropped off the Local Pack Top 3. In fact, they fell all the way to Rank 9.
Or to put it differently, Right Find Homes jumps from Rank 9 all the way to Rank 2 for the modified search “best real estate agents in myrtle beach” because it has a single review including the word “best agent”.
But that’s nothing. Read on to find out how crazy things get.
“Best Realtor” Keywords in Google Reviews
Real Estate Agent | City | “Best Realtors in (City)” Rank | “Realtors in City” Rank | Rank Difference | Highlighted Comment | # of Reviews with “Best” | # of Reviews with “Best Realtor” |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Brook Gardner Real Estate Broker | Bend, Oregon | 2 | 6 | +4 | “Brook is the BEST real estate agent!” | 16 | 3 |
The Eisenhauer Team | Vancouver, WA | 3 | 19 | +16 | “It will be the best decision you’ve made!!!” | 9 | 1G |
Lux Properties Hawaii – Michelle Wood Realtor | Honolulu | 3 | 14 | +11 | “I cannot imagine a better realtor anywhere.” | 8 | 1 |
Jill Robinson REALTOR® Century 21 Circle | South Bend, IN | 1 | 5 | +4 | “Best realtor we’ve ever had!” | 10 | 1 |
George Maynes – Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices | Philadelphia | 2 | 11 | +9 | “Not only is he a great realtor, but he has a wonderful personality.” | 17 | 2 |
Norm Pullen, REALTOR | Roanoke, VA | 2 | 11 | +9 | “Norm and Julie Ann are the best!” | 11 | 2 |
Brad Long Real Estate Group | Louisville, KY | 2 | 300+ | +300 | “She was the best of the best.” | 10 | 6 |
Laura Kaan, The Platinum Group | Colorado Springs | 2 | 300+ | +300 | “It was the best decision of our lives.” | 12 | 4 |
Faith Harmer, REALTOR | Faith & Team – Urban Nest Realty | Las Vegas | 3 | 300+ | +300 | “She’s by far the best realtor I’ve worked with.” | 18 | 3 |
Julie Liles – Best Coast Realty | Jacksonville, FL | 1 | 300+ | +300 | “Julia is the best realtor/broker I’ve ever worked with.” | 5 | 4 |
There’s so much to unpack from this data, so let’s jump in.
1. “Best Realtor” Keywords Can Greatly Expand Your Geographical Range
The first thing I want to draw attention to is the four agents at the bottom: Brad, Laura, Faith, and Julie.
Their GBP addresses were too far outside the city center to rank in the Top 300 for the keyword “realtor in (City)”, but they managed to rank in the Local Pack Top 3 for the same exact area when the search became “best realtor in (City)”. To put it mildly, that’s insane.
These realtors jumped 300 ranks and appeared in the Local Pack for city centers located far away from their offices because they had 3-6 Google reviews with the phrase “best realtor” or “best real estate agent” in them.
- Julie’s offices are located 20 miles away from the Jacksonville city center.
- Brad’s offices are located 13 miles away from the Louisville city center.
- Faith’s offices are located 12 miles away from the Las Vegas city center.
- Laura’s offices are located 7 miles away from the Colorado Springs city center.
These are not cherry-picked examples. In fact, they are random. Yet 40% of the metropolitan areas I checked had agents (probably unknowingly) leveraging this ranking hack.
It’s important to note that Julie’s (Jacksonville) GBP business name contains the word “Best”. So that’s certainly giving an additional boost.
But it’s important to emphasize that physical proximity to the IP address (where the actual search was made) is one of the top three factors for determining ranking. The other two are the primary business category and keywords in the business name.
For the most part, the business names of these four agents are no better optimized than their competition. Plus they all have the same primary business category, leaving physical proximity as the most influential ranking factor.
Because I completed these searches without physically being in these cities, my IP address is irrelevant. Google uses the city center coordinates instead.
These four agents completely bypassed the physical proximity ranking factor and outranked 250-300+ agents with better locations, simply by having several instances of “best realtor” in their client reviews.
Again, that’s for the specific keyphrase “best realtors in (City)”. Still, it’s probably the most astonishing GBP hack I’ve ever encountered. It’s certainly the most powerful one I’ve personally discovered.
2. “Best Realtor” Keywords Can Cause Huge Rank Jumps
These case studies represent a HUGE hack for outranking literally every competing agent in your market.
Once you have 25-40+ reviews, a 4.8+ Star rating, and a decently optimized profile, you just need to collect at least 5 reviews with the phrase “best realtor” for a strong chance at jumping to the Local Pack Top 3 for that respective search.
The data also shows that agents and agencies with decent GBPs who received only 1-2 reviews with the phrase “best realtor” jumped from Page 2 and 3 to the Local Pack Top 3 for that same respective search.
That said, I want to make our conclusion here very clear: Exact match keywords in Google Reviews can cause huge rank jumps for keyword searches with language outside business category names.
These agents didn’t rank at all for the keywords “realtor in (City)”. This is a groundbreaking case study, but it has limits. It mostly applies to these four keywords:
- Best (Insert City) realtors
- Best (Insert City) real estate agents
- Top (Insert City) realtors
- Top (Insert City) real estate agents
As far as I can tell, you cannot replicate these insane results for individual real estate niches, like “luxury realtors” or “commercial real estate agents”. In these cases, Google relies heavily on GBP business categories, including secondary categories.
However, agents close to cities can use this hack to appear in the Local Pack Top 3 for hundreds to thousands of prospects each month. We break down the potential inbound leads and commissions further below.
3. Reviews are the Most Important GBP Section for Keywords
This case study is also a HUGE indicator of how much importance Google places on keywords found in Google Reviews when ranking GBPs. It’s far and away the most important part of your profile for keywords to appear.
The next most important part is the GBP business name. You can see this in Julie’s data set. She only has 22 reviews, yet the combination of her business name “Best Coast Realty” and the 4 exact match keyword reviews pushed her to the Local Pack from 20 miles away.
While we recommend naturally incorporating keywords into your business description, Questions and Answers, GBP Posts, etc., these areas will not be weighted nearly as much as the reviews.
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Potential Leads and Commissions from “Best Realtor” Searches
We’ve broken down the potential prospect pool sizes for different sized cities:
City | Population | Geo-Modified “Best Realtor” Searches | Non Geo-Modified “Best Realtor” Searches | Total Monthly Searches |
---|---|---|---|---|
Los Angeles | ∼ 4 Million | 2600 | 1300 | 3900 |
San Diego | ∼ 1.5 Million | 1600 | 800 | 2400 |
Seattle | ∼ 750,000 | 750 | 325 | 1075 |
Honolulu | ∼ 325,000 | 300 | 150 | 450 |
Here’s a screenshot demonstrating the “Top/Best” keywords totaling 1600 per month in San Diego.
For the table, “Geo-Modified ‘Best Realtor’ Searches” refers to searches like “Best Los Angeles Realtor”. Non-Geo-Modified searches refer to searches like “Best realtor near me” for devices located in LA.
As you can see, every 100,000 people in your city creates loosely 100-150 monthly “Best Realtor” searches. This only includes local searches with phrases like “best real estate agent” or “top realtor”.
By harnessing this hack, a San Diego realtor could appear in the Local Pack Top 3 for 2400 searches per month, or 28,800 searches per year.
According to Web4Realty, 5% of Google Business Profile visits result in some kind of conversion, whether a website visit, phone call, etc. That equals to 1440 inbound leads per year.
If you convert a modest 1% of your inbound leads (or 0.05% of the annual searches) to clients, that’s about 15 commissions. Taking a modest commission estimate of $30,000 for San Diego, that equals $450,000 in total commissions from this single hack.
That’s basically the ideal scenario. But even a fraction of that success is still an enormous payoff for generating around 5 reviews with the phrase “best realtor”.
Limitations to Consider
Of course, this hack won’t pay off unless you have a decently strong GBP. You’ll want a minimum 4.8-Star rating and 25-40+ reviews for most cities.
While this hack can boost profiles well outside the city center, proximity still helps. Ideally your business address is located within 5 miles of the closest city center.
In addition, agents serving smaller cities should expect respectively smaller payoffs. For rural areas, agents may not see much difference at all.
Regardless, this case study is a powerful indicator that it’s worth investing in your GBP through our clever optimization hacks ASAP.
How InboundREM Can Help
Based on developments for hyperlocal search, the Google Local Pack, and Google Map Pack, we have pivoted our entire business to offer services dedicated to actualizing this potential for our clients.
By combining our hyperlocal expertise with powerful tools like BrightLocal, we’ve hit the ground running with insane success. Here’s a little snippet of the powerful Before and After results we achieved for Bret Wallace in Fort Bend, Texas.
Hyperlocal Search Results (July 2023)
That grid represents how Bret ranked for the keyword “Fort Bend Realtors” across his farm area. On average, he ranked in 14th place.
Hyperlocal Search Results (October 2023)
A short 3 months later, Bret dominates the Local Pack and Map Pack results for the same keyword. Basically every person located in his area who searches for a Fort Bend realtor will see his impressive and high-conversion GBP.
I’d love to chat with you about how these results are possible for your business. Schedule a free, no-strings-attached consultation below!