The Formula to Get Your Business to Rank in Local Search Results – Updated for 2024

 

For newcomers to SEO there are really three types of SEO: local, national and international, each with slightly different algorithm that Google has deemed the recipe to get your page to Rank in their SERPs. By the way, Google was just ruled as a monopoly. In this article we will just focus on local SEO and what goes into its ranking algorithm (according to Google) and what to focus on to get you to the top of page 1 and map search results. Here is a table that summarizes a lot of what SEOs seem to think are the most important on-page local ranking factors:

Source: https://backlinko.com/local-seo-stats

POV: You have a business, it’s small, you’ve heard of SEO but don’t know much about. Well here ya go:

1. Backlinks: Backlinks are the one of if not the biggest ranking factor that all local SEO and national/international SEO. Backlinks are links from other websites are that link back to your site. This takes time to develop but the more you create optimized content the more chance you have of accumulating backlinks. Backlinks from credible sources establish your credibility in Google’s eyes and this is a heavily weighted component in their ranking algorithms.

 

2. Reviews: This is especially important for Local SEO as people really look at reviews to make decisions about whether or not use your product or service. This is a no-brainer. You should include reviews directly on the website and monitor third party sources like Yelp and even the lesser known forums like Foursquare. Something to help with monitoring this is a software called Yext. Google looks for these qualities in reviews

• Recency – Are your reviews from a long time ago? How recent are they?
• Velocity – How frequent are these reviews?
• Diversity – do reviews of the business exist on multiple platforms?
• Authority – Who is giving the review? Is it an expert on a subject or a regular joe?
• Format – Is it a lengthy review or is it just a star count?

 

3. Citations: In my experience citations are critical and the hardest part of local SEO. Again this is something you can use Yext for (see above for link) There are two types of citations:

• Structured citations: formal structured citations of your business on 3^rd party sites like Yelp
• Un-structured citations: any informal mention of your business on a blog or not a review website.

 

4. Linking profile: internal linking and inbound links (which are the same as backlinks). Internal linking is often an overlooked aspect of SEO as prominent anchor text and linking to related pages is critical for web page discovery and telling Google what each page is about. This is the basis of how Google crawls the web.
5. Creating local pages – In my experience this has been a big issue/opportunity in the past. If you have a national presence and serve in different markets, a lot of times it is beneficial to have webpages dedicated to local demographics. Building out local pages allows you to capture keywords queries based in that demographic.

• • Building out local content in the form of custom demographic based FAQs or videos have lead to increase click-through-rates.

6. Technical Elements– the most important technical elements to incorporate on your website is local schema and any other schema you can use to describe your product or service. These days there is schema for almost everything. Schema is a way for search engines to understand what they are crawling when they are indexing your pages. By putting schema on your site you will be eligible for Featured Results.  which are great drivers of CTR because they push your competition down.
7.  Google My Business – Not surprisingly Google is a little biased and wants you to use its Google My Business  tool in order to stand out in local searches. Your profile needs to be filled out with the name of your business, address and phone number. Responding to all reviews and creating posts to share on your socials and GMB is also helpful.

Here is a breakout of local signals illustrated by Moz

 

 

Source: https://backlinko.com/local-seo-guide

Secrets from Google’s Content Warehouse Leak

 

In case you didn’t see Google’s API content warehouse leak. there are few nuggets of information in here that are actionable items when considering local SEO

 

1. Google seems to respond well to video content. And For a small website adding video content can be a huge plus because video is easily viewed and absorbed. Creating video content can be rewarding because it is something your local competitors are likely not doing. The amount of video results on Google has increased dramatically over the years. Video web pages also usually attract an increased session time on page – this itself is a ranking signal.

   

 

Okay so how does AI impact local SEO?  Well, in terms of the search results you have AI overviews just like for non-local results. Local SERPs (search engine result pages) have local snapshots similar to regular AI overview you see on non-local search. The introduction of AI so far just has just made things a much quicker learning curve. As SERPS more dynamic in the future, especially local SERPs SEOs will have to adjust. Right now AI is really a research tool and has leveled the playing field for SEOs For instance:

• AI can prune automate your review responses and categorize them – this is a huge must as reviews are one of the biggest ranking factors in local SEO.
• Building and analyzing backlinks has become more efficient thanks to AI. Using something like Linkminer will help you analyze the most effective backlinks to your site.

 

Conclusion

Local SEO is a different animal from national SEO. In some ways you have to be more creative to stand out. Having Local SEO in the top of your local business strategy will pay off enormously especially since small businesses don’t usually have the budgets for paid campaigns. See how West Loop SEO can make your local presence stand out.