Hi, my name is Philip Stemann, and I will be learning you how to succeed with your website. We are now at our fourth episode in our mini series of local SEO, we’ve covered the basics, how you dominate Google Maps and how you build your local keyword research. In this episode, we need to focus on the local ranking factors, a ranking factors playing part of what position your business will land on Google. The more ranking factors you fulfil, the higher your business will be positioned in the Google search results.
Let’s dive into the first ranking factor, which is your Google My Business, the number one ranking factor and the single most important is your Google My Business. It beats all the other ranking factors, which is also why I have dedicated an entire episode where we dive into your Google My Business and how you optimise it as much as possible. Moz make a report every year where they study the local ranking factors. Here they found the single most important ranking factor to be your Google My Business.
It counts as much as 25 percent of your entire ranking profile. Whereas link signals and review signals come in second and third with 16 percent and 15 percent, if we look further into it, then your on-page SEO counts 14 percent. This is how good your technical SEO is. Citation signals counts 11 percent. Behavioural signals counts 10 percent. Personalisation of your profile counts 5 percent and social signals counts 3 percent. This shows a lot of interesting things, among others, that your website is still very important.
As mentioned, the on-page SEO still counts 14 percent, however, there is no doubt for you to rank number one, you need a Google My business profile. As mentioned in my earlier episodes, NAP’s should be a huge priority to get right. Google uses this information to confirm your business is correct and legit. The more Google sees these informations, the more they are likely to show these informations on relevant Google searches as it makes Google more confident that they are correct.
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So remember, to be consistent, use the same format in both your name, address and phone number. If you change your phone number, remember to change it everywhere. If we look into the review signals, which count exactly 15.44 percent of your ranking profile, it is especially the negative reviews which will hurt your rankings. These reviews are connected to your Google My Business. And there are rumours that Google also uses third party sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp.
This is not confirmed. This is just rumours. It’s therefore so important you avoid these negative reviews. Remember to ask the customers who had, had a good experience to review you on Google as this will really help you in the rankings. If you do get negative reviews, do not let them stay without an answer. As this shows mistrust. Trust is an unofficial ranking factor and you replying to negative reviews, shows trust for Google and the more trust, the higher you will rank again as it is a ranking factor.
Do remember, as I also mentioned in my previous episode, regular SEO should still be a high priority for you. The better you rank in the organic search results, the better you will also rank locally. Google has stated the following: “Your position in Web results is also a factor. So SEO best practises also apply to local search optimisation”. This means, as I just mentioned, you should focus on overall issue as you ranking on different keywords will also help your local SEO.
So remember to optimise your pages, build a strong linking profile and just overall optimise your SEO performance and your technical SEO on your website. So yeah, that’s the ranking factors for local SEO, in the next episode we’ll deep dive into how you optimise your Google My Business as it is the most important ranking factor. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you found it helpful. I would highly appreciate if you would leave a review and my podcast and remember, consistency is key to success.
Let’s catch up on the next one.
