Results Of Local Search Ranking Factors
If you are curious about the local search ranking factors in your local area, look no further than this article. Though it does not list specifics for each local area, it will inform you of what goes into the rankings for local businesses. Use this info to maximize your business potential.
The Ranking Factors
First let us look at what goes into the ranking factors as a whole. There are the on page signals such as the keywords that are in the title. We have the external and local signals such as the citation volume. There are the place page signals like the proximity and keywords in the business title. We also have link signals, social signals from Facebook likes and more, review signals, behavioral and mob signals and the personalization factor.
The Factors That Matter
Next let us look at the foundational ranking factors. These include, but are not limited to: Public, matching WHOIS info, authority of the +1s on the website, products and service keywords in the anchor text and in the local plus page description. There is also the location keywords that are in the local plus page descriptions, the percentage of the local plus page completeness, the load time, the association of the photos with the local plus page, GeoTagged media such as YouTube, velocity of the native Google Places Reviews, authority and quality of inbound links and much more.
We also have the quantity of any unstructured citations such as blog posts, the keywords of locations in reviews and anchor text, geographic keywords in the website address, the velocity of the reviews, presence of an author on the website, quantity of the reviews by influential reviewers. There are also the diversity of the third party sites, quantity of the inbound links, the business title in the anchor text, the quantity of inbound links to domain, the city and state tags.
Understanding Categories
Also there is whether the primary category is in sync with the broader category, the keyword of the location in the business title, the quality and authority of unstructured citations, the diversity of inbound links. There is also the page authority of the places landing pages, the local area code in the local plus page, the quantity of citations, the proximity of the physical location to the point of the search, the quantity of the Native Google Places Reviews.
There should also be appropriate category associations, domain authority on the website, a good quantity of structured citations and consistency of the structured citations. On the negative side, search engines look for false locations, wrong business categories, mismatched information, whether there are multiple place pages with similar listings, reports of any violations on the place page, whether there are multiple pages with the same phone number.
These are just a few of the many things that search engines look for when ranking local businesses.
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