Being a reasonably dedicated student of local search marketing I’m always on the look out for the straight skinny on search marketing and improving rankings at the local level.
Over the weekend I had a chance to read David Mihm’s results from his 2009 Local Search Ranking Factors survey that was conducted in May 2009 with 27 prominent bloggers and practitioners in the local search arena.
They were asked to rate the importance of 49 criteria with respect to their influence on rankings in the Google and Yahoo Local “Universal” search algorithms (those that drive the 10-pack, 3-pack, and authoritative one-box search results; NOT the standard organic algorithms).
While all the points in David’s study are interesting I have found that there are 5 things that really have the most influencing on the position of your listing.
Claiming your Local Business Listing
I put this as #1 on my list. I can’t tell you how many unclaimed listing I still see in the Local search. Most businesses have not taken the 15 minutes and claimed their listing. As Mike Blumenthal said in the study – “You can’t see the game if you don’t enter the gate.”
Keywords in the Title
When I first claimed my business listing I just put my company name in the title. When I went to look for my listing I couldn’t find it unless I search for the exact company name. After adding a good targeted keyword to the title along with the company name my listing immediately showed up #2 in several 10-pack and 3-pack results when preforming a broad keyword search.
Keywords in the Description
While this might not be as important as having keywords in the title, leaving them out of the description does appear to have a negative effect on where your listing ranks in the packs. Adding targeted keywords, without spamming, somewhere near the beginning of the description can help to pull your listing deep from within the results into the 10-pack.
On-page Optimization
While most who participated in the survey agree that you don’t even need a website to rank high in Local search I’ve found that adding the City, State and Zip code along with a keyword-rich anchor text back to the site in the footer has definitely had an impact on my listing position.
Quality/Quanity of Inbound Links
In my experience the quality and quantity of inbound links has been a huge contributing factor in ranking well in Local search. As David Klein said – “from the beginning Google has judged sites based on the quality and quantity of inbound links. It is my opinion, that quality, and quantity of inbound links with the right anchor text will just possibly overcome everything else in doing well in Local search.”
Conclusion
Where there is a search engine involved you will always have a 100 different views on how to optimize the content to increase your chances of get listed on page one of the serp’s.
A lot of the information you find about rankings is aimed at trying to exploit the serp’s with keywords and linking. While this may be a contributing factor for organic search results when it comes to Local search listings keywords and incoming links don’t carry the same weight but do have a positive effect on the Local search results and where you will show up.
If you do any one thing make sure it’s to claim your listing.
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