January 19, 2012

Impact Your Local SEO Ranking

Want more business? Making sure potential buyers can find you in an instant on search engines is key. And, not just in paid advertising, but in organic results.

Large brands and their local businesses have a vested interest in making sure every listing ranks in the top 10 for local search results. While each local search portal has a different algorithm for sorting through the hundreds or thousands of business listing results, there is no doubt that properly claiming and setting up each listing is the best first step.

Even though the ranking factors are always changing, there is a generally agreed upon set of best practices to make sure listings are fully optimized. The better you understand and use them, the more likely you are to get business.

Specifically for Google, here are the top 10 factors for listing rank. (source: 2011 Local Search Ranking Factors).

1. Physical Address in City of Search – Having an address that is physically within the search area is far and away the most important factor for local ranking. Unfortunately, this is very difficult to optimize for unless you’re willing to move your place of business. If you are trying to get on the first page of a nearby city or town where you’re not actually located, it often comes down to how many other competitors are already in that area.
2. Manually Owner-Verified Places Page – Manually owner-verifying every business listing is still the most beneficial method to distribute accurate information. However, for many organizations and brands this just isn’t realistic. Google’s bulk verification methods are a great way to improve ranking and improve data integrity for large volumes of listings.
3. Proper Category Associations – Choosing categories that are already established by Google is always advised. Custom categories are available, but they won’t match up with important keywords for products and searches as well. Make sure these categories are chosen to cover your specific business model, but also are broad enough to capture a high volume of searches.
4. Volume of Citations – Citations are simply the number of times a search engine will find your exact name, address and phone number(NAP) across other websites. Make sure to always submit the same information when you’re distributing your NAP, and try to submit as many reputable local search portals as you can.
5. Crawlable Address on Website Matching Place Page – In addition, Google’s ranking algorithm will scan the URL that you provide for each listing. Your listing should be built into your website in a way that is displayed in text format (not an image) so that Google can check for consistency between the two sets of information.
6. Page Rank/Authority of Website – The reputation and general search-friendliness of your website also has an impact on your Places listing. Considering how well your site is built and the authority it has in your industry, they can make sure to keep fly-by-night businesses from appearing too high for popular searches.
7. Quality of Inbound Links to Website – This is another traditional SEO monitoring method that is used for website ranking. Google takes this into consideration to help identify who the most respected and widely known brands are for each industry or category.  Their websites will usually have the highest quality links from blogs and other news outlets pointing back to their website.
8. Crawlable Phone Number Matching Place Page – Along with item number 5, make sure that the exact same phone number appears in text form on the URL that is provided for each listing. This also helps Google confirm accuracy of the information you have provided.
9. Local Area Code on Place Page – Google prefers that you give them a local phone number, instead of a toll-free number. This is an indicator to them that business listings are truly “local”. If you want to list an 800-number as well, you can provide it in the Places account as an alternate number.
10. City State in Places Landing Page Title – Page titles have always played a significant role for search engine optimization, and for local it is no different. Titles ‘tell’ search crawlers what each page is and its purpose, so make sure each location page for your business is named appropriately. An example would be “[Brand] – Dine-in, Carryout, and Delivery Pizza – Serving the Greater Milwaukee, WI Area”

While this list is not exhaustive, it’s a great start for any local listings. Other important factors include setting up social network places pages on popular sites such as Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. And of course, frequent positive reviews can’t hurt.

In order to determine if your listing is being scanned and indexed properly, do some generic searches at the hyper-local level instead of using a city/state name. For example, search for “pizza delivery 61602” instead of “pizza delivery Peoria, IL.”

If you have set your listing up properly and you have optimized for these other factors, then you should rank relatively high at the zip code level. Always start here, because if you can’t rank highly in your own zip code, you will almost always have a difficult time ranking in a wider area with more competition.

Source: http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml