Effective ways to improve your local search rankings

Got a local business? You’re not getting what you want from the market? Well, Let’s Google it!

Focus on optimizing Local SEO is the primary factor behind improving your local search rankings. These pages are put in order by their respective geography and keywords. This is because local search results take up a certain percentage of the standard search results on any search engine.

How to make your business stand apart from others? Find out here!

Following are the essential categories of local search ranking factors that can optimize your presence on the search engine response pages or SERPs:

? Google Places: the best place to be!

Whether your business is a startup initiative or it’s an old one listed on SERPs, you would inevitably require these search engines to produce accurate information when searched for. What you need is Google Places account to not only get listed better on the SERPs but also to get that chunk of exposure your brand requires, and you desire!

The following are factors that will help you rank highly on Google Local Search via Google Places:

? Importantly, always mention the correct physical address because that’s how your customer is going to find you in Google Places and use the up-to-date contact information. Mention exact operation hours and relevant photos on your Google Places account.

? Maintain a consistent NAP (Name, Address and Phone) on your Places page, website and Google+ Local.

? Always choose an apt business category only to narrow down the chances of your local SERPs ranking based on the competition for each category.

? Always, use a product/service-based keyword.

 ? Google+ Local Business: Get Reviewed and hold on to stars.

The partial merger of Google Places into Google+ Local Business has made way for shifting many features, such as reviews and ratings, to Google+ Local. In fact, customers using Gmail accounts can review your service/business on your Google+ Local page, and these will be displayed on your Google Places listing in Google SERPs.

The following points will help you rank highly on Google Local Search via Google+ Local:

? Get as many reviews as possible. Better reviews mean better services offered and hence your doorbell would always be ringing. Ting!

? Get yourself high Google+ ratings.

? Verify your own page. That’ll give you a higher ranking on SERP’s.

? Always remember to include product/service-based keywords in the Google+ page title and page description along with the location-based keyword.

? Mention a local area code.

? Importantly, mention the duration of time your brand has been on Google+ Local.

? Never let your profile go vague. Make sure you keep updating your profile every now and then. Keep adding to your circle.

? Having videos with high-quality content associated with your Google+ Local page can

improve your rank on SERP’s.

? Try getting reviews from top reviewers in your niche.

? Get a high number of shared Google+ posts.

? Local Link Building & Citations

? We often overlook the simplest of attributes while building a business from scratch or

maintaining a business when it comes to link building within local SEO campaigns.

? Simply, local directories are a useful resource for local link building. Comparing standard SEO campaigns to local SEO, the latter relies more on links from different local websites that are really relevant to your business.

? “A citation is an online reference to your business’s name, address and phone number (NAP).” (source)

? These citations don’t even need to be linked, as long as they’re referencing your business NAP consistently in the same way.

 ? Various ways to get local citations:

? Use a service like WhiteSpark and get them to find and upload local citations for you.

? Go through the extensive list of citations on the Moz website and manually submit your citations.

? Use a tool like Open Site Explorer to run competitive link research and find citations that your competitors have gained.

? Set up alerts through Google Alerts to track new mentions of your competitors’ NAP listing.

? The ‘SERP’ Through Rate:

? One famous ranking signal is CTR (Click Through Rate) from the SERPs.CTR SERP is a strong signal because it’s used as one of Google’s core Quality Score measures within their Adwords platform.

? A certain Moz’ Rand Fishkin carried out an interesting experiment with his Twitter followers to see the impact of a large increase in CTR SERP on search rankings. The results were pretty huge — he saw several position ranking increases in less than an hour!

? Steps to consistently increase your CTR SERP:

? Ensure you have Schema.org markup set up, with reviews (if relevant).

? Make your title tag as readable and relevant as possible.

? Have a detailed meta description, relevant to what users will be searching for.

? Use Twitter/Facebook/Google+ to split test titles to measure CTR from social and then take those findings to adapt your SERP snippet.

? Optimize all of your landing pages with local keyword data.

? Ensure your NAP listings remain consistent across the web.

? Generate genuine reviews from your customers on Google and optimize your search engine snippets.

? The Do’s of improving your local search rankings:

1. ALWAYS! Market apt data and update your content regularly

? Initially, identify a keyword phrase for each page you publish. Also, quality of your content is the prime factor of your search engine rankings and there is no substitute for great content.

 Evidently, customer-specific content for your intended user increases site traffic, which improves your site’s authority and relevance.

? Don’t forget to use bold, italics, heading tags, and other emphasis tags to highlight keyword phrases, but don’t overdo it. And to keep your site’s relevance do update your content regularly. Naturally, keep it fresh!

Title Metadata

? The most critical metadata on your page as it is responsible for the page titles displayed at the top of a browser window.

Description Metadata

? Description metadata is the textual description that a browser will use in your page search return. Think of it as your site’s window display—a concise and appealing description of what is contained within, with the goal of encouraging people to enter.

Keyword Metadata

? These are the search phrases that people type when they want to find your page. You’ll want to have a variety of expressions. As a general rule, try to keep it to about 6-8 phrases with each phrase consisting of 1-4 words.

2. Always! Have a link-worthy site

Work more on having relevant links. Instead of having “click here” links, try writing out the name of the destination. “Click here” has no search engine value beyond the attached URL, whereas “HOTBOX FOOD DELIVERY” is rich with keywords and will improve your search engine rankings as well as the ranking of the page you are linking to.

 3. Metadata: The big DATA!

  4. ALWAYS! Use alt tags

Still describe your visual and video media using alt tags, or in alternative text descriptions. They

allow search engines to locate your page.

5. Social Media: The way it should be.

For any local business to prosper, social media platforms play a significant role in deciding its local search ranking. Social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, StumbleUpon, YouTube and many others give a plethora of opportunities for successful brand exposure to your local target customers.

The following are the factors that will help you rank highly on Google local search via social media:

? Gaining Google+, Twitter, Facebook and other social media site mentions of your brand.

? The number of likes on your Facebook page, the famous you get.

? Promote content sharing on Facebook.

? Inbounded links are pointing to your site from discussions on local community forums.

? Encouraging check-ins from mobile social networking apps, such as Facebook and

FourSquare or even Zomato.

? Associating your brand page with social media profiles of known personalities.

? Using location-based keywords in your brand-page title or description.

? Having a high user engagement rate on your social media profiles.

6. Mobile: The movable asset!

What’s new? Local check-ins on smartphones are in vogue, so the user-activity on your mobile site also helps determine the Google local search ranking of your desktop site.

The following are some factors that will help you rank highly on Google local search via mobile:

? The website should be secure while accessing and the mobile page should load quickly.

? Prompt the use of a click-to-call business option on the mobile site.

? Having a good CTR from mobile search.

? Importantly, including driving directions.

? Provide an excellent user-experience on your mobile site.

Always give more time and make more effort in improving your local search ranking. Factors above will help your local business rank highly in Google local. Always keep in mind that developing your Google local ranking is a process that must continually be worked on; it’s not just a onetime thing. Change is always there and to keep up the competition one must still make quick changes as required by the business. Consistent monitoring and improvements can help your local search rankings improve and promote your business become a skyrocket in no time!