What does “Good for SEO” really mean?
Unfortunately, we are not your only choice for Google Virtual Tours (Wouldn’t that be nice)
But we’d like to make the case that we’re your best choice.
We regularly make the claim that Google Indoor Street View is good for your online presence, specifically helping both your Google Listing’s ranking & your website’s ranking. Below we get into more specifics.
Core Principle: Google tries to rank search results based on what they believe will help the searcher the most. Virtual Tour content generally aligns very well with this:
- Quality content (which Google tries to judge the best they can) helps Google determine your site is more useful. HTML of a virtual tour is certainly quality content.
- Fresh content is typically more relevant than older content. A new virtual tour qualifies.
- Engagement: Because Google can’t always tell what is & isn’t quality content, one of the elements they track is engagement. Virtual Tours are engaging by their very nature and inherently help in this regard.
Your Google Listing: This basic principle applies in very similar ways to both your website and your Google listing. But helping your Google Listing rank better is crucial. When Google chooses to show a snippet from Google Maps, there’s only so many listings they show. It’s important to do what you can to be in that top tier.
How Much: Sometimes we get asked something along the lines of, “how much will it help my SEO”. The answer is that the specifics of the increase in engagement and the subsequent effect on SEO will vary based on a lot of unique situational data, such as the competitive (for SEO) environment, etc.
Best Practices / Ideas: Clearly, if you embed the tour in a prominent place on your website, the tour will get a lot more engagement than if it’s buried at the bottom of an “about” or “contact us” page. Additionally, you can put the link to the tour in email signature/footers and other places to encourage engagement.
Below are two studies, released by Google, that demonstrate the benefits of the Google Virtual Tour. In summary: Power of Maps & Search Listings Research
The Street View Study concludes:
- When searching for businesses, consumers use mapping products 44% of the time
- Listings with photos and a virtual tour are twice as likely to generate interest
- On average, 41% of these place searches result in an on-site visit
Let’s Get Started!
Our team is happy to create your next Google Virtual Tour. Please reach out to us over the phone, email or by the contact form to talk about price, photoshoot details, and anything else you’d like to share with us!