2015 is a big year for local search, which is why understanding which factors are important for achieving a high ranking on SERPs is essential for your business. Many factors go into how well your website ranks on search engines, but we’re just going to be looking at the top ranking factors. According to a study conducted by Moz, here are the top 5 localized organic factors:
1. Domain Authority of Website
Domain authority measures how well a website will rank on search engines. It’s a score on a 100 point scale that compares websites and determines the authority it has compared to other websites. You can find out yours here.
2. Quality/Authority of Inbound Links to Domain
The quality of inbound links to your domain measures how much authority links from external websites have that are linking to your website. The more inbound links coming from a domain with authority that are relevant to your website, the greater the chance for higher rankings in local search and traffic coming into your website.
3. City, State, in GMB Landing Page Title
Google also looks at the relevancy of your location listed in your GMB landing page title (GMB stands for “Google My Business”). You can learn more about getting your Google My Business page set up here.
4. Click-Through Rate from Search Results
CTR measures the number of search users that click on a link out of all the users that see it on the SERPs. The higher the click through rate for a keyword or search phrase, the more likely that link is relevant to that search phrase and what the users want to see.
5. Topical (Product/Service) Keyword Relevance of Domain Content
Google considers keyword relevance to websites. It looks at the connections between keywords and the domain while looking at a number of other factors to determine the relevance.
When optimizing for local search this year, use these 5 search ranking factors as a guide. It’s also important to note that mobile behavior plays a significant role as well in how Google does its ranking for local search. Google announced earlier this year that there are now more searches made on mobile than ever before. According to Google, “more Google searches take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries including the US and Japan.” Definitely keep your mobile users in mind when working on local SEO for your business.
How has your success been with local SEO in 2015? Have any SEO tips you’d like to share? Let us know your thoughts!
References:
https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors
http://searchengineland.com/local-seo-2015-look-big-picture-211905
http://www.toprankblog.com/2009/11/1-seo-tools-for-tracking-inbound-links/
http://searchengineland.com/its-official-google-says-more-searches-now-on-mobile-than-on-desktop-220369
