Local SEO Searches & Factors

What is Local SEO and How Does It Work?

SEO spans lots of aspects in order to get pages to rank on search engines. One of the more crucial aspects of SEO is local searching. Many businesses depend on local sales and services for business, which makes it paramount that they are visible in local searches. At MSEDP, we go above and beyond to make sure the clients we work for are set up properly with organic searches. We want to make sure we put every client in a position to succeed. And if that business relies on local searches, we make sure those local searches continue to impact the website and grow the business. For more information about local SEO and how it works, please reach out to MSEDP today.

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Localized Searches with Google

A search engine like Google has its own proprietary index of local business listings. This index creates local search results for businesses. If you are performing local SEO work for a business that has a physical location customers can visit or for a business that travels to visit their customers, it is important to make sure that the business is claimed, verified, and optimized with a free Google My Business Listing. At MSEDP, we can help to set up a Google My Business account to ensure that box is checked and you are reaching the widest possible audience.

When it comes to localized search results, Google uses three main factors to determine ranking:

1. Relevance
2. Distance
3. Prominence

Let's take a closer look at these factors and how they impact local search rankings.

Relevance

Relevance is how well a local business matches what the searcher is looking for. To ensure that the business is doing everything it can to be relevant to searchers, the website needs to make sure the business’ information is thoroughly and accurately filled out. This way it casts the largest net for a potential audience.

Distance

Google uses a website's geo-location to better serve users local results. Local search results are extremely sensitive to proximity, which refers to the location of the searcher and/or the location specified in the query (if the searcher included one). Organic search results are sensitive to a searcher's location, though seldom as pronounced as in local pack results.

Prominence

With prominence as a factor for local SEO searches, Google is looking to reward businesses that are well-known in the real world. In addition to a business’ offline prominence, Google also looks to some online factors to determine local ranking, such as reviews, citations, and organic rankings.

• Reviews: The number of Google reviews a local business receives, and the sentiment of those reviews, have a notable impact on their ability to rank in local results.
• Citations: A "business citation" or "business listing" is a web-based reference to a local business' "NAP" (name, address, phone number) on a localized platform like Yelp. It may surprise many to know, but local rankings are influenced by the number and consistency of local business citations. Google pulls data from a wide variety of sources in continuously making up its local business index. When Google finds multiple consistent references to a business's name, location, and phone number, these factors strengthen Google's "trust" in the validity of that data. In turn, this leads to higher search engine results because Google is able to show the business with a higher degree of confidence. Google also uses information from other sources on the web, such as links and articles.
• Organic ranking: SEO best practices also apply to local SEO, since Google also considers a website’s position in organic search results when determining local ranking. Building up organic content is one of the services you'll get when you turn to MSDEP for SEO services.

SEO & Local Engagement

The role of local engagement is not technically listed by Google as a local ranking factor. However, its role is only going to increase as time goes on. Google continues to enrich local results by incorporating real-world data like popular times to visit and average length of visits. More than ever before local results are being influenced by this real-world data. This interactivity is how searchers interact with and respond to local businesses, rather than purely static and information like links and citations and organic content that attempts to manipulate Google into getting results. Google wants to deliver the best, most relevant local businesses to searchers. That is why it makes perfect sense for them to use real time engagement metrics to determine quality and relevance. If people are using a service, then Google will reward that business with more accurate local searches since it knows there is local engagement.