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8 Most Important Local SEO Ranking Criteria of 2022

Local SEO Ranking

by donaldbolt
local seo services

PNM Group uses local SEO to help clients rank higher in local search results. Local SEO is vital for businesses that are located in a specific area.
Our digital media marketing team specializes in local business sales growth. We can help you with local SEO strategies. PNM GROUP is a digital marketing agency Toronto and currently providing all-one solutions for businesses to reach their full potential for SEO, SEM, PPC, etc!

Do you want to get the best out of your local ranking? Let’s go:

1. Google My Business
Your Google My Business listing is one of the most critical factors in local search rankings.
Make sure your business name, address, and phone number are correct when you claim or create your GMB listing. This is important for customers and Google because it allows you to rank nearby businesses.
Optimize your listing by making sure you complete it entirely. Verify that your business hours and the link to your website are correct.

2. Review
Positive reviews will make your website more credible to potential customers and other people who may view it as more trustworthy. Google also uses this ranking factor to determine your rank in local SEO.
Google Maps and your local pack will show you a summary of reviews for your business. It’s essential to concentrate on positive reviews from satisfied customers. It’s not worth putting all your effort into the local pack if you have a low star ranking that people cannot trust.
Although you might believe that only Google reviews are considered, there are many other review sites. Some of the most critical review signals are Google My Business, Facebook, and Foursquare.

3. Behavioral Signals
Google will be more likely to rank your site in the SERPs when it has a good reputation for being helpful.
Google uses click-through rates, click-to-call, and check-ins to show that people are interfacing with your company. You will be higher in Google’s rankings if more people interact with your company.
Optimizing your website for SEO is a great way to increase your behavioral signals. If the content on your website isn’t optimized, 79% of users will look for another site that can help them with their tasks. This can lead to lost conversions and cause users to report that your site is irrelevant to their query.

4. Social Media
Social media sites are search engines by themselves. Facebook alone receives over 1.5 billion searches every day, and more than 600 million people visit business pages.
Google is attentive to social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram due to their high domain authority and large user base. If you search for that name, you’ll find the social media pages of any company listed in the search results, along with their website.
This will help you rank higher if people talk about your brand via social media. Google’s algorithms can detect positive and negative mentions. Keep an eye on them and interact with your audience to maintain your reputation.

5. SEO on-page
The content of your website is an excellent place to start when optimizing local SEO.
Google ranks content quality as a key ranking factor. This makes your website more valuable and relevant to users. This has led to the rapid growth of content marketing. 89% of B2B companies now use content marketing.
Your website content should be well-written, informative, and relevant to your keywords. It’s essential to include keywords on your website. However, it is also important to use them naturally. Use them wherever possible in URLs, page titles, and meta descriptions. Headings, anchor text, and alt text are good places to include them. Variations and similar phrases can strengthen the connection.

6. Backlink Profile
Your backlink profile is one of the most critical areas of local SEO.
According to an estimate, 75% of SEO is done by off-page factors. Your website’s content is vital and much easier to manage than external factors. However, optimizing only on-page SEO factors will not result in a successful SEO strategy.
No longer are there any links that were more important than others. Google only values high-quality, relevant backlinks, so any suspicious-looking links can dramatically affect your rankings. You can see how valuable a backlink is with the MozBar Chrome extension.
Local ranking factors are a great reason to target local links. Your website can be connected to the community through articles in local newspapers, sponsor pages on the team’s home team, or blog posts about charitable work.

7. Online Citations
Ensure that your business’s name, address, and phone number are correct online.
This can confuse if your website’s address says “123 Example Street”, but your Yelp listing states “121-123 Example Road”. Google and your customers should be able to verify your location, especially for local searches. Local SEO aside, consumers are less likely to trust local businesses if they find incorrect contact information or names online.
Double-check all citations you create yourself before you submit them. Many sources are automatically created by third parties or robots crawling web data. This means incorrect citations may exist without you being aware.

8. Personalization Search
In years past, people saw the same results regardless of location if they entered the exact search term. This approach is not the best for local searches.
Personalization in search engines was implemented more than a decade ago to deliver the most relevant results to users. In 2011, approximately half of all Google searches had personalization. They are all now personalized.
Although some results will remain the same regardless of who searches and where factors like physical location and browsing history can influence the rest of the search results, Google will learn if a user selects a website often from the SERPs and recommend that it be displayed more often to them.

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