Has Anyone Seen A Correlation Of An Increase/Decrease in Organic Rankings After Becoming BBB Accredited?

[NickW816]

This question pertains to local SEO, and businesses that want to rank for a certain city, service area or metro.

In looking at Ahrefs, it appears businesses that are BBB Accredited will get multiple "nofollow" links and possibly 1 "dofollow" link (on their actual profile), however businesses that only have a free (non-accredited) profile, only got a "nofollow link" and no "dofollow links". While it is definitely not a silver bullet and this is not always the case, in examing hundreds of local SERPS throughout 4-5 years in the SEO biz, there does seem to be some sort of correlation between businesses that are BBB accredited and also have their "BBB accreditation" badge with a link on their website.

Has anyone seen similar results or correlations for local SEO where they live? Is this a coincidence/anomaly?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Nicholas,

Interesting topic! If I'm understanding this right, you're hypothesizing that local businesses with BBB accreditation and a BBB badge rank higher organically. Is that right?

To be totally honest, the BBB has always been a bit of a mystery to me. It could have something to do with my age (40s) that, despite my association of this brand with business ratings, I have never, ever personally looked up a business on the BBB. It could be that older people rely on this more as a trust signal.

What I do wonder about is whether what you've observed might be that a business which is taking pains to get the BBB accreditation and put the badge on the website might be making more general SEO efforts, as a rule. Maybe they are more active in their content publication as well. Maybe they've earned more links.

On the other hand, we do know the emphasis Google places on the thing we call "trust", so while I'd be leery of saying that BBB accreditation correlates with higher rankings, it would be shortsighted to claim that I or anyone else knows all of the exact factors from which Google derives trust. Could BBB accreditation be among them? Sure!

But, that being said, I really hope we'll receive more input from the community here. Maybe someone else will have noticed what you have. I hope so!

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[NickW816]

Correct, and yes the trust factor definitely makes sense to me. I just didn't know if anyone had a case study or experience of a business that wasn't doing much SEO, decided to get BBB Accredited, embedded the BBB badge on their website, and then saw a change in rankings due to it.

I have never used the BBB to search a business either and think that it may be more of a correlation than a causation, as a business that decides to get BBB accredited is also probably investing in SEO, a blog, other high DA directory listing, content marketing or a combination of marketing efforts that could be leading to high local rankings.