5 Important Ranking Factors for Local SEO

There are many factors to be considered in your quest to improve your website’s organic search rankings. SEO nowadays is getting harder due to the ever-changing requirements of search engines.  That’s why we should start first on the best ways to improve and make your website visible to search users.

Major Issues need to be checked

When was the last time you checked your websites for errors? Making sure your site is error-free is important for its SEO. There are several items within your website that needed to be checked, for example meta-descriptions, title pages, H1 tags, Alt-txt for images and importantly the keywords for every landing page.

Directory Listings

If your business isn’t showing in the top 20 results of a local directory search, here are some things for you to check.

• Duplicate listings – check if you have duplicate listings in the search results.   Claim the highest ranking listing if you can, and then contact the directory to have the other one(s) removed.
• Suspended Listing- listings are usually suspended if the search engine found a similar listing and is marking it as associated with spam.
• Difficult keywords.
• Incorrect categories- Check the listing to ensure you have the right category for your business.

Stop Spamming

Spamming links on your website can now be detected by Google Search Engines.  Google and other search engines don’t like spam so they penalise any sites involved in it.  Google’s search engine advancements mean their algorithm is now processing websites based on their content and how searchers react to that website.

Traditional Signals

The best SEO campaigns will focus on both user experience and ranking.  If your site is easily navigable so that people who come to it find what they are looking for easily, and you are including great content to give your customers the information they need to seal the deal, this will all help to increase your organic (unpaid) search results.  High organic traffic can result in higher local search rankings.

Reviews

Reviews are important to many, especially first time customers looking for your services. They want to know what your previous customers thought of your professionalism, or the effectiveness of your products and services. Strong reviews will help your company build trust and confidence in your business. It also helps high-value traffic and CTR (click through rates) for your website. Encourage your clients to enter reviews on your listings and your website.

Building links

Building authoritative links can be a little bit difficult than the other factors. However, link building is of great benefit when it comes to SEO and can bring in a lot of traffic to your website. Consistently using the same form of NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) in links is important for building your local SEO links in different sites like hyper-local directories, commerce links, industry partners and local newspapers (Press Release) and can be a game changer for your business.

SEO needs to be dealt with holistically, as there are many factors both on and off your site which affect your rankings.  The points above are just a few things to consider.  If you need help or don’t have time to check on your website, you can always contact us at WebRight for a comprehensive approach.