Local SEO

In this ninth lesson on Local SEO, we'll talk about other signals that affect local search visibility. In the previous lessons, we covered all the important signals that affect local relevance and how your business appears in local search results. In the second lesson, we talked about the annual Local Search Ranking Factors study and then covered the most important signals in the following lessons. In this lesson, we'll look at the other factors - although they don't carry much weight, it's important to understand how they all fit together in Google's local algorithm. Remember, you'll stand out when you do what everyone else ignores.

Sure, we could have included them in the Google My Business course, but we try to keep these lessons short and digestible, and if I had included them, I'd have to go on for even longer, and you'd start wondering when I'd stop writing, and maybe even start wondering if you should just commit to the course, which we certainly didn't want to happen, because this information is really amazing. Seriously, these features are powerful and most businesses and marketers don't use them at all, so we felt it was worth dedicating an entire course just to these elements.

Your Google My Business profile - or GMB - is your business listing on Google, where you can let Google know specific information about your business. It's a direct communication with Google about your business. The information is displayed to users in various locations. The most common location is the table box that appears on the right side of the search results when someone searches for your business name. Your GMB information is also displayed if you appear in the map pack or as a result on the local search page, which appears when you click on "more places" at the bottom of the map pack. Your GMB information also appears whenever someone searches for your business on Google Maps. But as I said, the most common place your information appears in Google My Business is in the GMB profile, which is the information box that appears to the right of the search results when someone searches for your business.

Reviews are not only important for potential customers, but are an important factor in Google's local algorithm. Remember - Google's local algorithm has always been entity-based, and customer reviews are basically entity data coming from your customers. Think about how you decide to visit a local business - first you read their reviews. Right? You want to see what others think. Studies have shown that people now trust online reviews as much as they trust a review from a friend or family member. If a business has bad reviews, you're much less likely to go there (especially if the business doesn't even respond). Google's algorithm uses reviews in the same way - if a business has bad reviews and the business doesn't respond to them, they are less likely to show up higher in the search results.

A business's online reports your information - name, address and phone number - to other websites. It's your online identifier - third-party backups of your business information that help you prove you're a local business at your real address. Learn how to manage them effectively so you show up in all relevant local searches that pertain to you.

Site content has always been one of the main factors in SEO - obviously, you can't rank for a keyword phrase if you don't have relevant information on your site. Google has evolved from simple keyword matching to entity-based search, and Local SEO has always been entity-based. However, the old idea still holds true - for any keyword phrase you want to rank for, you need a page on your site about that concept. All the typical technical elements also matter. We're here to talk specifically about Local SEO, so let's talk about the elements that differ from traditional SEO.

Links have always been the most weighted ranking factor in Google's traditional algorithm and are incredibly powerful in Google's local algorithm as well. Ideally, the best sites will have the most inbound links. The majority of local business sites only have a few hundred link domains - sometimes not even 100. Read how to fix it.

No one knows exactly what's in Google's algorithm except Google's engineers, so how are you supposed to know how to optimize your site? Every year, several companies and specialized tools publish their lists of important ranking factors, but you should never take anything you read or track as gospel. Sure, it's likely that most of what you read or listen to will be useful, but some of it may make little difference to you.

In this course, your first lesson on Local SEO, we'll talk about how Local SEO differs from regular SEO and why it's important for your business. So if you have any physical location and you want people searching for a service or product in your area to find you online, this course is for you.