Loading

Grow Smart Business


teaserInfographic
Close

Search Articles

Most liked posts



Recent Articles

Popular Tags

accounting and taxes blogging blogs Branding Business Development business travel Capital Access Compliance Customer Service ecommerce Email marketing entrepreneur entrepreneurship Facebook Generational Marketing GrowSmartBiz Conference Grow Smart Business lead generation LinkedIn Marketing michael dougherty mobile marketing networking online marketing Raising Capital Resources retail sales sales process SBSI Search Marketing seo small business small business accounting small business hiring small business loans small business marketing small business resources small business technology Small Business Trends social media Technology Twitter Web Design Workforce

Categories

«
»


What Factors Influence Local Search Results?

July 6th, 2012 ::

By Rieva Lesonsky

When customers and prospects search online for what you sell, you hope and pray your business comes up at the top of their search results. Well, of course, you do more than hope and pray. But what exactly do you need to do? What factors make the most difference in where your business pops up in local search results? The 5th annual Local Search Ranking Factors report from David Mihm polls more than 40 local search experts to see what are the biggest ranking factors in local search.

The survey analyzes factors including:

  • Overall Ranking
  • General Signals
  • Place Page Factors
  • Off-Site Factors
  • On-Site Factors
  • Review Factors
  • Social/Mobile Factors

With major changes such as Google Panda, Venice and Penguin algorithm adjustments in the past year, how have the basics of local search changed? The good news is that, in many ways, they haven’t. As Mihm notes in his overview of the results, it’s still important to:

  • Have an address in the city the user is searching
  • Make sure your business is associated with the proper categories.
  • Make sure your business data is accurate and complete across Google Maps, Yahoo Local, and Bing Local.
  • Make sure your business data is accurate and complete at secondary sources including Infogroup, Acxiom, Localeze, Yellowpages.com and Superpages.com.
  • Work on getting your customers to review you at the new Google +Local (formerly Google Places).

Reviews got more important this year, and Mihm notes it’s especially important to:

  • Have Google Places (now Google+ Local) reviews,
  • Have a high quantity of third-party reviews, and
  • Include product or service keywords in reviews.

Mihm’s survey was conducted before Google Places morphed into Google+ Local, so keep that in mind when reading. You can find the full survey results here.

Image by Flickr user Christian Holmer (Creative Commons)

 

 

 

The views expressed here are the author's alone and not those of Network Solutions or its partners.

Get more small business resources from Network Solutions

Web.com is now offering forums designed to support small businesses in cities throughout the US. Learn more about these forums here: http://Businessforum.web.com/

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Marketing, Search Marketing, Small Business, small business, Technology | No Comments »

This entry was posted on Friday, July 6th, 2012 at 6:00 am and is filed under Marketing, Search Marketing, Small Business, small business, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.