9 SEO Factors That Help With Local Ranking

Good local search engine optimization (SEO) is a boon for businesses, especially startups and small businesses that cannot afford massive ad campaigns. After all, your local market is one of, if not the best, sources of traffic and sales.

SEO agency experts say the following factors are helpful in local SEO:

1. Showing Up Where It Counts
2. Trustworthiness as a Brand
3. Maintain a Good Reputation
4. Meet Your Market’s Demands
5. Innovative Use of Social Media
6. Maintaining Business Profiles
7. Optimize for Search on Mobile
8. Prioritize Appearing on Maps
9. High-Quality Local Content

This article covers them in detail.

Let’s go!

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1. Showing Up Where It Counts

Online visibility helps a lot with SEO. Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) have come greatly advanced since their inception to where that there are now plenty of places and methods to rank. Location, image, and video results, among others, are excellent candidates for your local SEO strategies.

In fact, items in your online store can appear directly in front of customers looking for products, if you add them to “Free Listings” on the Google Merchant Center. Of course, if you want to leverage this for ranking, you’ll need to know what your target market is looking for and the intent behind what they’re seeking.

2. Trustworthiness as a Brand

Trust is foundational to good SEO. That is why Google emphasizes experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) in its quality rating guidelines. To assess your brand’s trustworthiness, look no further than this simple checklist based on Google’s E-E-A-T:

• My content is rooted in practical experience with the topic and is not purely speculation.
• I have the required training, education, or expertise to write about the subject matter.
• My content, including its sources, is reliable and agrees with the expert consensus.
• People can trust my content because I have done my due diligence to present facts.

3. Maintain a Good Reputation

Good SEO aims at not making search engines love your website. It seems counterintuitive, but its true purpose is optimizing for human users. SEO’s core function is to guide website owners in making content that search engines have found to serve their user base (and yours) the best.

In other words, you can have the most expensive and optimized website, but it still boils down to whether it is a popular resource for searchers. After all, word gets around quickly online.

4. Meet Your Market’s Demands

One of the recent shifts in SEO best practices is the above mentioned addition of experience to Google’s quality rating system. E-E-A-T emphasizes authentic, valuable, and replicable content for a human audience. In short, are you providing what your users need?

Following E-E-A-T is, therefore, vital for anyone focusing on local SEO. In addition to being good SEO, it also serves as the basis on which users and customers evaluate your business. These same four points are an excellent overall foundation for websites that aim to rank high on SERPs.

5. Innovative Use of Social Media

Reaching local customers is relatively easier, since happy and/or curious customers are more than willing to do free marketing for you in their friend groups. This is where social media and its ability to cause a surge in your website viewership is important.

If you have ever used Twitter or Instagram, you know immediately that trending hashtags positively affect a business’s online reach. It is not limited to shop openings or product launches, either. It also works well for brand building through corporate social responsibility (CSR) posts.

6. Maintaining Business Profiles

To properly serve your audience, you must show up where your target market searches. For local customers, that usually means directories. The logic is that some websites or platforms serve as online Yellow Pages. If your business isn’t there, why should (or would) they put in extra effort to find you out of everyone else?

If you have not done so already, immediately make profiles on these platforms:

• Google My Business
• Bing Places for Business
• Meta Business Suite
• LinkedIn
• Yellowpages.com
• Local.com

7. Optimize for Search on Mobile

Although not exclusive to local SEO, the mobile-first design issue has many implications. One being the rising trend of local search. Another is the change in user search behavior, thanks to the portability of modern smart devices that make access to information faster and easier.

Simply put, as opposed to doing everything beforehand, people today can walk out of the door, casually search for shops, and plan as they go along.

8. Prioritize Appearing on Maps

At the intersection of the two previous points — business profiles and on-the-go access — are maps. They are the ideal place to start building your local SEO strategy, primarily for ease of use. Look at it this way, even if someone knows your business’s address, they most likely need directions.

For that reason, prioritize signing up for the platforms listed below and keep your information up-to-date.

• Google Maps
• Bing Maps
• Apple Maps
• MapQuest

9. High-Quality Local Content

Content quality is a significant concern for search engines, particularly Google, which has been moving to reduce low-quality and unoriginal content in SERPs. You might wonder what counts as “high-quality” content for local SEO. Below are ideas of which you can feel confident.

1. Unique articles that meet Google’s E-E-A-T quality standards, especially experience

2. Original content that you make to answer the specific concerns of your local customers

3. Articles that are thematically relevant to your business, products, and the local area

Summing Up

Many factors affect local SEO rank. That is true. Thankfully, there are many techniques that you can use to give yourself a boost on the SERPs. For instance, you can effectively use popular social media platforms, such as Twitter and Instagram to run your marketing campaigns.

Besides marketing, local SEO also has its uses in connecting with customers and maintaining meaningful relationships with them. It takes foresight and patience to be where your customers most likely are online. This is the main goal of a truly local SEO strategy.

Need help lifting your local SEO ranking? Contact us to learn how we can help.