Local Search Ranking…Broken Down! – Part 1 of 3

One of the most common questions asked to me by small business owners is, “How do I get my local business ranked in search results?”  Here it is folks, listen up! I’m going to tell you specific ways on how to do just that in my 3 part blog post.

Part 1 of 3

For all local business entrepreneurs who are looking to improve their rankings in search results, this yearly report known as Local Search Ranking Factors will help.  I know how important acquiring these new insights is, so I have broken it down according to their significance to make it easier to follow and make your local business flourish.

Here are the top 20 Local Search Ranking Factors gathered by Moz which I will describe brief specifications. Take a deep breath and let us start!

No.1- Proper Category Associations

Most of you have gone through the categorization option of Google+ Local when you created your G+ Local page, but this process of choosing the type of business you are conducting is most important.  Google+ will let you choose the primary category of your business when you’re filling out the details initially. But be wary of the fact that you choose the right type of business as it will affect the categorization of your business in the local search result page later.

Although I would have recommended that you choose a customized category of the business, this feature is no longer availed by Google. The categories provided are from Google’s preset category of various types of businesses. Google Places for business is a very helpful tool when it comes to successfully announcing the type of business you’re going to run. It will allow you to type in keywords that best describe your business and it will show you the kind of business category the keyword falls in.

No.2  Physical Address Is A Must

When a user makes a search about a type of business that is available in your vicinity, there is a high probability that your business will spring up in Google’s local results for searches which:

• Contains the name of the city in which it is actually located.
• Springs up from devices which are in the city itself.

Because of the fact that Google plays favoritism towards business who put out physical locations, the businesses that are devoid of any physical address has a less chance of ever appearing in the local search results. The best options for these businesses who doesn’t have a physical address is to develop city landing pages where they can brandish their proficient association with other cities. The only objective you should focus on is to attain a visible geographical location in the search engine results.

In a nutshell, it is recommended for local business entrepreneurs to set forth on the objective of earning local pack rankings for searches for their city of location while organic rankings for various geographical phrases that are of some significance.

No.3  Uniformity Of Structured Citations

Don’t try to comprehend too much when it is about citations. It is nothing but the mentioning of your company’s name, address and phone number in full specifications. With that in mind, a structured citation is the listing of your business on various online indexes.

Some bad examples of citations:

• A dissimilarity in the name of the business
• Wrong street address
• A nonoperational phone number
• Wrong URL of the website

Be very tenacious when you’re mentioning the citations as negligence will cost you a lot of unfortunate depreciation of the quality of your website later. Sometimes when the location of the business changes and is moved from time to time, the update of citations is often overlooked or not noticed by the owner. If you want to move the location of your business, it is recommended that you edit the citation of your business before completely settling in on a new spot.

4. Quan-lity Of Citations

It is very obvious that you would want your company’s citation to appear on a high quality website instead of a poor quality one. Your goal should always be inclined towards being listed in authoritative local business indexes. Utilize tools such as Getlisted to make sure that you are listed only in authoritative directories.

Once you’re done with the campaign by putting up citations, you should focus on further enhancement of your company’s visibility and authority. Initiate searches on geographic terms and service terms and various other terms to witness what propels forth in the search results. The websites that are listed in the search engine results is potential places where you should look forward to list your business.