Local Search Ranking…Broken Down! – Part 2 of 3

This is Part 2 of my 3 Part Blog post on Local Search Ranking Factors presented by Moz.  If you are looking for vital SEO information on how to make a website rank high in search engines like Google, LISTEN UP!

1. Name, Address, Phone Number Matching on G+ and Website

When you have successfully linked your website from Google places or now to be known as Google+ local, Google will be carefully examining whether the name, address and phone number. If your business matches both on the places page NAP and the HTML NAP, if all the references are properly match, there’s nothing you should be worried about.

But, If Google suspects an inconsistency in the NAP you have on your website page and your G+ local page, then Google will be confused about the data they have receive for your business. Although, tiny inconsistency shouldn’t matter much,  you should always focus on matching the G+ places NAP to the HTML NAP.

Google will be checking the inconsistency of NAP in every website, but there are some instances where Google will not go through the complete process of checking the NAP of a Google+ local page dashboard with the published NAP of a website. These instances or scenarios are witnessed only in cases of home-based businesses where a street address is not published on the website because of privacy.  

2. The Quantity of Structured Citations 

The listing of the name of your business, address and the phone number is called a structured citations. When it is about structured citations, quality deserves the utmost attention, but keep in mind that the quantity of the citations is not overlooked.

If your business is witnessing a constant clash with other competitors in the local market, then I suggest definitely to focus on building more citations. A very simple way to do this would be to type your business category terms into the main search engine of Google and see what are the results.

But if you want to find the right citations with a more refined approach, then you should opt for tools like Whitespark’s Local Citation Finder which will help find new citations and also assist you in keeping track of the number you have garnered.

3. Domain Authority of Your Website

We know for a fact that the higher ranking of a website both locally and organically is attainable  only through a local business’ website or video. With that in mind, Domain Authority is a metric that shows how your website is going to perform on search results in comparison to other websites.

There are lots of aspects that add up to the domain authority of the website. The number of quality links and the age of the website are just some components of the aspect. Every business entrepreneur is acquainted with the fact that to develop the strongest websites that will practice a high level of domain authority, the website must first be user-friendly, full of high-quality content and has earned social mentions and shares. The higher your domain authority, the better are your chances of ranking well in the search engine!

4. Independent Local Plus Page

The first step towards including your business in Google’s index is to create your own Google+ local page. The verification of your ownership of the listing comes in second. The typical step in creating your Google+ local page is receive a postcard or a letter from Google that contains the pin code for the completion of the verification process.

Verifying your listing this way will ensure that no one is falsely representing your company. In order to simply understand all of this, the focal point is that you should be in direct control of your Google+ Local Page, only you!  If find listings getting high ranks in local searches, you should always ensure that you properly verify all your listings.

5. City, States in the Title of Places Landing Page

After you have enabled link connections between your website and your Google+ local page, the page on your site will have a component in its source code which is called as the “title tag”. This “title tag” is located in the head section of the code of your website and the included words in it play a major role in sending signals to both human users and search engine bots concerning the particular topic of the page.

Although many local business focus  more on the aspect of the home page acting as their landing page, a multi-located business practitioner will not take that step of connecting with the users through landing them on the web page every time they click on the landing page. Particular landing pages are developed on the website to ensure that there is diversity in the business.

When you include the city and the state name in the title of your landing page, you will be availing the search engine bots and the human with the information that your enterprise is located in a particular geographic locality.

6. The Closeness of Your Address to Centroid

If you  are unacquainted with the concept of centroid, it is simply the Google-identified city center in it Maps. You must have come across a red dot while you’re utilizing Google map, which is exactly what centroid is.

Although the idea is simple, Google’s decision of different centroids for different businesses have somewhat blurred and has multifaceted the topic. The proximity of the address of your business to the centroid is a feature you will have little control over. Businesses which located out or far away from this centroid are at a disadvantage when compared to the business counterparts who located closer to the Google map centroid. Although I am not suggesting that you move your business closer to the centroid to have more exposure, you have to comprehend the fact that the proximity of your business to the centroid chosen by Google is something that is out of your grasp.

7.  High Quality Inbound Links to Domain

To garner high ranks in the search engine, we know that organic signals play a major part in accomplishing that. If your website is incessantly acquiring high quality links from authoritative sources, the visibility of your website in the search engine will dramatically improve.

There is an ample amount of places from where you can earn high quality authoritative links. National and local newspapers, local business indexes, bloggers with influential members of audiences, and professional industry associations are some sources from where you can earn high quality authoritative links. Strategies considering acquisition of links have evolved from Link building to that of earning of links. Actively searching for websites to place links to the formal and generating links without any effort to build or request for links for the latter.

Both link building and link earning can be implemented by a local business. They can earn links through the development of content and through social sharing and build links through linking their domain from their local business listings. It should be obvious that authoritative links will garner you more rank acquisition compared to links generated from poor quality websites.

8. The Quantity of Reviews for Google Places

There is a conception in the market that the more reviews that is prevalent in your Google+ page, the higher the ranking of your site will be. This is easily distinguishable that a local company that has more prominent grasp over the local market is obviously going to witness reviews from more customers than their business counterparts. If you want to check out how many reviews you have got, click the “reviews” link on your Google+ local link in the main search results. You can also visit your +local page directly as an alternative.

Although the reviews for your Google+ page is important, I am not stretching the fact further that you should only look at generating more reviews. It is of no use for you when your website is jammed with so many reviews and some of the reviews will get filtered. The best method to effectively incline aspect in your favor is to acquire positive reviews from customers who are gratified with your service. The focus should always be on what’s inside the review, not how many you have got more than your business competitors.

If you haven’t received any reviews from customers in your page and you have no idea how you should be earning it, Google allows you to ask for reviews. But be careful not to indulge yourself in parting away with monetary incentives in exchange for positive reviews. The reviews should come straight from your customers’ Google account so that you are not manipulating anyone to garner more positive reviews for your page. Hiring a third party and letting them review may seem a good idea to you, but the reviews provided by these third parties always springs forward as bogus and fake. Patience should be your virtue, and if you feel that your business is on the threshold of exposing itself creatively and effectively to the local market, then you shouldn’t worry about getting reviews.

9. Inclusion of Service or Product Keyword in the Business Title

This idea is widely prevalent and considerably true in the market that merging together the title of your business together with the service you provide or the main product you specialize in gives you an advantage over the other business competitors. This fusion of product and title paves the way for a better understanding of your business and lets customers know the type of business you run without having to scroll from the search result itself.

Warning: If your local business is currently absent of the business and the product name, do not try to arrange keywords in the title to implement changes. This is strictly prohibited.

If you feel the need to completely change the title of your business to include the name of the service and the product you provide, make an ostensible move by legally changing the term of the name of your business to better suit the services. Although it would seem to you like you’re only changing the small title of your business, an ample amount of time is demanded out of you to effectively complete the editing all the web base references of the old name of your business. There are however, other alternatives available to you if you don’t want the hassles of changing the whole façade of the company. Focus more on other promotional ventures and campaigns to garner more rank and prominence in the local search engine results.

10. Citations of relevant local domains

If the Name, Address and Phone number (NAP) of your business is mentioned on a website related to your geographical community strongly propounds the idea of the citation of your business as locally-relevant. This instills more trust Google in your bearings to your surroundings. 

Other locally relevant domains through which you might earn citations is through the associated sites of local professionals, local news sites, blogs about your locality where the new happenings in the vicinity is constantly published. Although the citations don’t necessarily have to link to your website, but it’s always resourceful and efficient when it does.