Seven Key Local SEO Ranking Factors

It is important to be visible in the world of websites and online businesses. If you are not visible on the internet, your website and your business will not go well. This is why SEO is important for your local business. But the internet is big, and some really big multinational companies are out there. Therefore, ranking on global searches can be hard. But what about the local searches? Well, it is not that hard if you do your local SEO well.

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO is simply SEO that is a bit more optimized for a specific geographic area. If your website is about a specific area or your business has a physical store, Local SEO is a must. You need to take a few additional steps alongside general SEO for local rankings.

Local SEO Ranking Factors

If you know SEO, you should already know that along with the extra steps; you need to consider a lot of factors while optimizing for local rankings, i.e., there are a lot of local SEO ranking factors. But these factors can be a bit different from that of general SEO. So what are they? 

Local SEO Ranking Factors Let's find out!

1) Google My Business

Although there are a lot of factors that affect the local SEO rankings, Google My Business is among the most important ones. Google My Business, or GMB for short, is a free profile creation tool that lets websites or local businesses appear when people search for businesses or products in your local area. This is extremely helpful for your local business. 

Google Business Profiles are the first thing that users will come across when searching for any company on Google. Therefore you must list, verify and manage your business. After this, you should use signals such as proximity, contact information, and categories to ensure that your visitors get the correct information. The more accurate the information you have, the better your visitor's trust. This will inevitably result in a better Local ranking for your local business.

You can create your business profile from here: business.google.com 

 2) On-Page SEO

Let's be honest; it doesn't matter if you are going for general SEO or local search rankings; on-page optimization is a huge factor. Many on-page factors are considered for SEO rankings, and if you do this right, your website and local business can rank high on the local rankings. The good news is that you do not need to deviate a lot from general SEO while optimizing your page for local rankings.  

You must ensure that your page speed is good, images are optimized, and you have used locally trending keywords along with the topics. Once this is done, you can then move on to ensure that your business's NAP (Name, Address, and Phone) is uniform throughout your website. This would be good enough a few years back, but considering that over half of the internet users are mobile users, you should also make your website/web page mobile-friendly for a good on-page SEO. 

Yes, besides the keyword and NAP (Name, Address, and Phone), the rest of the process is the same as the ones for general Onsite SEO! 

3) Online Reviews

Although online reviews get a bad rapport, they are important in local search results. Sure, there are fake reviews, but at this point, people are generally smart enough to know how to differentiate between genuine ones and fake ones. If you have many good genuine reviews on your GMB province and product page, people will visit your local business profile, website, and business more often. This further leads to a boost in your search engine rankings and starts a positive loop.

For this, you must have good products. At the same time, it is also a good idea to avoid artificial reviews (Both good and bad ones). People avoid Google My Business Profile and product pages saturated with artificial reviews, even with good ratings. 

4) Backlink Profile

In simple words, a backline profile is information regarding the number of websites linked to your site, the number of links, and everything related. Depending on your backlink profile, your local SEO rankings will be affected.

Among many things that can affect your local (Search Engine Optimization) SEO through backlink profile, anchor text is a lesser talked about one. If your website is backlinked on an anchor text that indicates the physical location, it can boost your local search engine rankings immensely through a process known as proximity ranking.

Back-linking alone is enough to determine and affect your local search rankings, even if there was no proximity ranking. If you have good links on good websites, you will receive more visitors and better general SEO, which in turn affects the local SEO of your business.

5) Local Contents

This is a simple one. Content writing is a way to communicate with your desired audience, so needless to say, it is a local SEO ranking factor. If you are aiming for local Search Engine Optimization, you should have content that the people of the said locality can relate to, enjoy and find value in. This is because different types of the locality have their own set of rules and preferences. This includes things that are considered taboo as well.

You will not rank high in the local SEO of a place if you have content that the people of the said locality do not like or are not interested in.

6) Behavioural Signals

Everything on the internet emits a signal, and among millions of these signals, there are a few that the Google algorithm notices. Among these signals, some of the most common user signals that affect local search rankings are Click-through rate, mobile clicks to calls, and social media check-ins.

Depending on how a visitor behaves on your website, the algorithm can mark it as good or bad. Therefore, a website design that can influence visitors to spend more time is considered a good one and is listed higher on local search engine rankings.

7) Search Personalization

This is among those things that you, as a business cannot control. Search personalization is simply the results one gets depending on their personal browsing history and physical location. Besides the few top results associated with the keyword and search results, the rest of the results will change from person to person. The sad part about this is that you, as a business cannot do much about this besides improve your website to increase the click-through rates so that those who do land on your webpage will return. 

Besides this, you can also take an extra step to ensure that your contact information such as NAP (Name, Address and Phone) are consistent to ensure that once you appear in someone's personal search results, you will continue to stay there. Along with this, maintaining on-page SEO is good for your search personalization as well. 

In the end, 

If you are a business with a physical location, then local SEO is a must; to do this, you must consider many local Search Engine ranking factors. The ones we mentioned above are just some of the core factors that affect local SEO. Needless to say, there are many more factors than the ones we covered here. However, the ones we have covered do cover the overall gist. 

Local SEO is important, and as a business, it is something that you cannot skip out on.

We hope you found this interesting and helpful. If you want to know more about various aspects of website and digital marketing, do check out some of our other blogs. And as always, thank you for reading till the end! 

FAQs Regarding Seven Key Local SEO Ranking Factors

What are some of the most important factors in local SEO?

Some of the most important factors in local SEO are:

• Google My Business
• On-page factors
• Reviews
• Link Building
• Local content and more

Why is local SEO important for Google?

Local SEO allows you to put your important about your website online including your Name, Address and Phone. 

What is done in local SEO?

Local SEO is simply the process of optimizing your website and content for a target location. It’s just SEO but with a bit more specific target audience along with the creation of Google business profiles. 

How is local SEO different from SEO?

Local SEO allows you to target the audience of a specific physical location while SEO is the general optimization of your website for better visibility globally.