Local SEO Fundamentals 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: What is 'review velocity' and why does it matter in local SEO?
- The speed at which Google indexes new reviews
- The rate at which a business accumulates new reviews over time (Correct answer)
- The average word count of customer reviews
- The percentage of reviews that receive a business response
Correct answer: The rate at which a business accumulates new reviews over time
Review velocity refers to how consistently a business earns new reviews — a steady flow signals ongoing activity and builds prominence.
Question 2: Which practice violates Google's review policies and can result in penalties?
- Asking satisfied customers to leave a review
- Offering discounts in exchange for positive reviews (Correct answer)
- Responding to all reviews including negative ones
- Sharing a direct review link with customers
Correct answer: Offering discounts in exchange for positive reviews
Incentivizing reviews (with discounts, gifts, or payment) is explicitly prohibited by Google and can lead to review removal or listing suspension.
Question 3: What is the term for optimizing a local business to appear in searches from users physically near the business?
- Hyper-local targeting
- Proximity optimization (Correct answer)
- Geo-fencing SEO
- Radius marketing
Correct answer: Proximity optimization
Proximity optimization focuses on ranking well for nearby searchers, which is influenced by the distance factor in Google's local algorithm.
Question 4: Which on-page SEO element is most important for signaling local relevance to search engines?
- Meta robots tag
- Canonical tag
- Title tag with city and keyword (Correct answer)
- Hreflang tag
Correct answer: Title tag with city and keyword
Including the target city and primary keyword in the title tag is one of the strongest on-page signals for local search relevance.
Question 5: A business owner wants to track calls generated from their GBP listing. What is the most common method?
- Asking every caller how they found the business
- Using a call tracking phone number on the GBP listing (Correct answer)
- Monitoring GBP 'Calls' insights only
- Installing Google Tag Manager on GBP
Correct answer: Using a call tracking phone number on the GBP listing
A unique call tracking number on the GBP listing lets businesses attribute inbound calls directly to their Google Business Profile.
Question 6: What is 'barnacle SEO' in the context of local search?
- Optimizing for beach-related local businesses
- Attaching your brand to high-authority local sites (like Yelp) that already rank well (Correct answer)
- Building links from local news sites
- Creating content clusters around local topics
Correct answer: Attaching your brand to high-authority local sites (like Yelp) that already rank well
Barnacle SEO means optimizing your profiles on authoritative directories that rank on page one, so your listing rides their authority.
Question 7: Which of the following best describes a 'Service Area Business' (SAB) in Google Business Profile?
- A business that only sells services, not products
- A business that travels to customer locations and hides its physical address (Correct answer)
- A business open 24/7 for service calls
- A business that targets multiple countries simultaneously
Correct answer: A business that travels to customer locations and hides its physical address
A Service Area Business visits or delivers to customers rather than receiving them at a fixed location, and can hide its address on GBP.
Local SEO Fundamentals 5
What is 'review velocity' and why does it matter in local SEO?