The Ultimate Guide for Local SEO: Rankings in 2016 and Ahead

“Good SEO work only gets better over time. It’s only Search Engine tricks that need to keep changing when the Ranking Algorithms change – Jill Whalen“

SEO is getting difficult day-by-day for all businesses. Google’s update from 7 page listing to 3-page listing and some risks in various ads of the Local space has created a great competition for all businesses. We’ll now see a tough fight for the organic and paid listings. Outcomes may change but to be staying alive in the market, you have to pay key attention to all the details.

In this article, we will look at some local SEO ranking factors for 2016 and beyond.

This Local SEO Ranking Factors can be categorized as follows:

1. Overall Ranking Factors

The overall ranking factors which lay an impact on local and organic results are:

• On-page Signals : For on-page signals look into Title tags, meta descriptions, header tags, page content, images, maps, name, address and phone number on every page by giving them the exact services as the customer requires.
• Link Signals : A key to building authority. Domain level and page level links are the factors which help in generating rankings. A link from a relevant source that specifies your location is helpful. Whereas, a link from a site which is similar to your industry is helpful.
• Place Page Signals : you need to keep some points in your mind such as: create and verify your content, use correct name, address, phone number, and web address, create the best cover photo for the website, use of a brief description for your business wherein you can add address, special offers, etc, work hard to get more reviews and always reply to the reviews.
• Review Signals : A review always helps to grow potentially and in increase the ranking too. This will benefit to improve the things that you lack in.
• Social Signals : Be active on social media, do enough branding, mention keywords, links, address in your profile.
• External Loc. Signals : 2 things to be remembered correct name, address, and phone number and citations where Google will try to match the address information on your website with the address of Google My Business and then will try to ratify it with the web.
• Behavioural Signals : Search results have become more prominent nowadays. Important basics like page title, meta descriptions, and schema should be correct.
• Personalisation : A personalized result is obtained to each one for every search. Offline advertisements, PPC hits make an influence to the people on how much they search and how far your site is helpful to them.

2. Local Ranking Factors

Local Ranking factors directly lay impact in the Google SERPs even if you appear on the map or not. To optimize ranking if you try to target a city and yet your address appears on the edge in the search you will have to work hard upon it. Moreover, you must have consistency in your citations and all the reviews should have citations wherever possible. Make sure you have a correct strategy for your business. Another thing, if you don’t have correct categorization then you may lack in ranking. You also can have product / service keyword in your business title. And make sure your location signal and the address signal matches your website.

3. Negative Ranking Factors

Negative Ranking factors are the replica of the positive ranking factors. The use of the incorrect business strategy, using of false business address, a malware in a site, violations on Google My Business location, mismatch in Name, Address, Phone number and Address on Google My Business landing page, having same phone number on multiple Google My Business location and no crawling of NAP on website are some negative factors which might affect the ranking.

Final Thoughts:

There is much competition in Local SEO from all directions. To be known and to get known in local results, you have set priorities for your approach on all areas and aspects and resolve as many issues you come across. So, keep in mind consistency and quality in structured citations, authority for the website, quality of the inbound links, proper GMB associations, quality and consistency of unstructured citations, and quality of the reviews will help you good ranking for Local SEO.

For Local SEO Services, you can contact us on +44 20 8144 6541 / +1 917 675 3286 or email us at sales@technoinfonet.com.