It’s carried out by businesses that want to be more easily found online by consumers within a geographical or local area. If you’re looking to sell products or services to consumers located in a certain town or city, you need to be familiar with local search marketing.

Then how does local SEO work?

The local search algorithm doesn’t just differ from traditional SEO in what’s shown on the page; it’s a different algorithm altogether, reliant on specific local ranking factors.

To carry out SEO for a location or multiple branches, you’ll perform a series of actions intended to raise local search visibility. Best practice strategies include tasks like: 

• Claiming and optimizing your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) 
• Reputation management 
• Website optimization
• Citation building
• Adapting to Google search changes
• Local link building
• Spam fighting

Done right, this type of SEO helps a local business to appear more prominently in the Local Pack, the Local Finder, the localized organic results, and on Google Maps. This is referred to as ‘local ranking’ and tracking local rankings is done a little differently to traditional rank tracking.

Local SEO vs SEO: What’s the difference?

If you’re already investing heavily in optimizing for search, the idea that you need to start doing a whole load of additional work can be daunting. The good news is that while there are a number of items specific to local that you’ll need to concentrate on, there are still plenty of crossovers.

A simple way to break it down is to understand that while SEO focuses on improving all organic rankings for your website, local SEO is aimed specifically at improving local rankings. With local SEO you don’t technically even need a website, as your Google Business Profile (Google’s own business listing) can rank without one in the local pack.

Think of it like this:

SEO (whether it’s national or international) is the act of improving your website so it can rank for broader terms either nationally or internationally. Think of this as purely e-commerce brands or national papers—sites that offer a service or product you can buy from (almost) anywhere.

This is optimizing to rank for terms like ‘midi dress’ or ‘online mortgage broker’.

Local SEO, on the other hand, is the act of improving various factors to give your website and Google Business Profile the best opportunity at ranking for products or services in a specific area. This is ideal for things like restaurants, local trades, or franchises.

For local SEO, it’s still best practice to do all the things you’re doing for traditional SEO. You want your website to be as technically sound as possible, for instance. But there are a few other things you’ll need to consider, and this article will cover all of those.

93% of High Performers have a proper understanding of the difference between traditional SEO and local SEO

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Who needs local SEO marketing then?

• Local businesses, typically bricks-and-mortar locations, that need to get more people through their doors
• SEO agencies working with local clients
• Multi-location brands and franchises and
• Service-area businesses (SABs)

Why do you need to do local SEO?

Local SEO marketing raises visibility within the local search results. 46% of all Google searches are performed by people looking for products, services, or information in their local area.

It’s helpful if you want to reach more people in your local area, attract more foot traffic drive more conversions, build your reputation, and grow your business.

Benefits of Local SEO

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1. Reach More People

Better visibility in the local search results means more people are likely to discover your business. From here, the searcher might go to your website, call you or decide to visit your business in person.

2. Drive More Conversions

Taking action to increase search visibility will naturally lead to more people visiting your business website—and more web traffic can result in more conversions (such as sales, subscriptions, or service inquiries).

Since online consumers can often find the information they need within the search results, they won’t always need to visit your website. 

As you can see in the image below, a searcher can get directions to the business and make a phone call without leaving Google Search. They can also see the opening hours and other details about the business:

3. Enhance Your Reputation

Regardless of business type, a positive reputation is a prerequisite for long-term success. Carrying out local search marketing can help you to cultivate a positive public profile. 

Regularly acquiring new online reviews is one of the most important aspects of your online reputation as they are known to play an important role in consumer decision-making. A steady influx of new reviews is also a proven local SEO ranking factor, making this a win-win activity. 

Our guide to Google Business Reviews provides more information on why reviews are beneficial and offers tips for getting more of them.

What tasks does local SEO involve? 

To improve your local search visibility, you need to carry out a series of marketing activities regularly.

Managing and Optimizing Your Business Profile

Setting up a Business Profile is an important part of any successful local SEO strategy. If the business hasn’t claimed its free Business Profile, it will be impossible to feature in the Local Pack, Local Finder, or Google Maps.

Once the profile is set up, initial optimization tasks, such as adding photos and writing a keyword-optimized business description, need to be completed.

Moving forward, ongoing monitoring of your GBP and optimization tasks will be regularly required:

• Keeping business information up to date
• Adding new photos and videos
• Sharing regular Google Posts
• Asking and responding to GBP Q&A
• Requesting and responding to Google reviews

Developing Your Reputation

As we have just seen, reputation management is a key component of a strong local SEO strategy. This is largely achieved through earning reviews and expressing your brand personality online, such as through your social media activity and email marketing.

When it comes to earning reviews, this starts with consistently delivering excellent customer service. If you know that you don’t truly deserve five-star reviews, then you shouldn’t expect them!

The example below shows Yelp reviews for a cafe in New York. We can see that good service has prompted customers to leave glowing reviews. Additionally, in the first review, the customer points out that they visited the cafe because it already had so many good reviews on TripAdvisor, proving that positive reviews can easily lead to more customers:

As the reviews begin rolling in, it’s essential that you respond to them in a timely and professional manner. If you’re unsure how to accomplish this, try our review response templates.

Your social media and email marketing activities also power your brand reputation. Make sure your brand and your message are always front and center, and that you maintain a professional but friendly tone when interacting with your online community.

Optimizing Your Website

Optimizing your website for the local search algorithm is essential. To do this, you’ll need to:

• Create valuable content
• Build internal links
• Have a mobile responsive design
• Optimize image and content metadata
• Provide a positive user experience

Improving On-page SEO for Local

On-page SEO for Local

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Basically, you can’t ignore your website if you want to own the local SERPs. While you don’t have to have a website to rank in the local pack, it can still help. Plus, your website can still rank in the local organic area of the results page.

Creating Valuable Content

Creating high-quality, relevant content for your website is a critical component of local SEO. Your content can take many forms, such as blog posts, videos, podcasts, animations, and more. It should be useful to your audience, so you’ll want to undertake some local keyword research first and have a clear understanding of what your audience needs from you.

Great content will also help you to generate inbound links to your site, which is another local search ranking factor. 

Building Internal Links

Building internal links across your site is a simple yet powerful action, but one that’s easily neglected. Internal links are those that go from one part of your site to another. They help Google to better understand your website, making it easier for your site to be accurately represented in the local search results pages.

When you’re adding internal links, make sure that each link points to a relevant page of your site with sensible anchor text.

Mobile Responsiveness

A mobile responsive site is one that looks good and works perfectly across all screen sizes, including smaller cell phones. 

You can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to check how responsive your site is on mobile. As of December 1st 2023 you’ll need to use Chrome Lighthouse to make this check.

Optimizing Image and Content Metadata

Using attractive images makes your website visually appealing. As well as choosing high-quality, relevant images, you should always optimize your images for search.

Image optimization involves using keywords in the file name, as well as adding helpful alt text and a description—this is great for search discoverability and helps with web accessibility. You’ll also want to make sure your images are the optimum size and format to avoid slowing your website down.

Content metadata helps to explain your site content to search engines. This involves the use of attributes such as title tags and meta descriptions.

It’s a wise idea to spend some time going through your website to make sure you’ve optimized your images and your content.

Providing a Positive User Experience

Providing a positive user experience should be at the heart of everything you do on your website. This isn’t just beneficial to your local SEO campaign. If someone can’t find what they’re looking for on your site because the layout is confusing, for example, they’re almost certain to return to the search results and visit a competitor instead. 

Building Local Citations

Local citations are mentions of your business name, address, phone number, and website (NAPW) on third-party sites such as review platforms and business directories. 

In addition to helping Google verify certain details about your business, you may also get a potentially beneficial backlink to further boost your local search engine visibility.

Local citations can drive more traffic to your business too. As you can see in the image below, these listings provide a range of useful information, such as reviews, driving directions, opening hours, and images. This helps a business to create a more comprehensive profile and helps a searcher find the best fit.

Monitoring Your Competitive Search Landscape

Keeping an eye on your competitors will help you to understand what they’re doing well and whether you should adjust your own strategy.

Focus on the kind of content they’re creating, the keywords they’re targeting, and where they’re getting their backlinks from. It’s also a good idea to check out where they have citations and what their review profile looks like.

Monitoring Changes in Google

Google is consistently making changes to its search algorithms, often without any official warning. Monitoring volatility in the search results is a great way to stay informed about any potential algorithm updates. Lots of ranking changes can signal that something has changed, which means you might need to change your SEO strategy. LocalRank Flux is an efficient tool for this purpose and is free to use.

Local Link Building

Link building is one of the most important ranking factors for local SEO. It helps search engines understand the local relevance of a business, while also demonstrating the value of the content that’s generated the link. 

To get started with building local links, prioritize good quality content creation, check where your competitors are getting theirs from, reach out to other nearby businesses, and build local citations. 

Spam Fighting

To boost their local search visibility, less scrupulous businesses may engage in spammy tactics. This might involve keyword stuffing in the business name, listing inaccurate location information, or creating entirely fake accounts.

Although it can be frustrating when you’re outranked by a spam profile, you do have the opportunity to fight back. If you believe a business is violating Google’s guidelines in any way, you can report it. 

Fighting spam is time-consuming, but it can also be extremely worthwhile if it pushes your profile up the rankings.

Local SEO Reporting

If you’re a marketer working with local clients, then creating reports to document your progress is essential. This is a simple way to keep clients up to date on your actions as well as to demonstrate your value.

Local SEO Reporting

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Your reports might include key metrics such as web traffic, conversion rate, search rankings, new links, and bounce rate. However, the data that you track and report will vary from client to client depending on what their specific goals are.

Learning how to create relevant and engaging reports will help you to produce fantastic insights for your clients that prove your worth.

Getting Started with Local SEO

You should now be able to confidently answer the question, “What is local SEO marketing?” and understand its value to any local business. 

If you’re ready to improve your location marketing, our local SEO Learning Hub contains all of the information you need to elevate your local search performance.

Whether you have a physical bricks-and-mortar location or serve a particular geographical area, local SEO allows you to better connect with people in your neighborhood, town, or city. That’s important given that 81% of consumers now turn to Google to evaluate local businesses. 

Benefits of local SEO 

1. Better online visibility: Local SEO activity, such as citation and link building, increases your online visibility. That makes your business more easily discoverable by new customers.
2. More in-store foot traffic: Greater local visibility brings more foot traffic to your bricks-and-mortar location.
3. Tap into local shopping boom: Post COVID, more than half of consumers now prefer to shop locally and support local businesses or smaller brands. Local SEO puts you in contention for those new business opportunities.
4. Targeted web traffic: Optimizing your site for local search delivers more targeted traffic to your website which can lead to more leads, subscriptions, sign-ups, and sales.
5. More calls: Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business) optimization can lead to enhanced Google Maps visibility. This can lead to more calls and more in-person visits.
6. Thought leadership: Content marketing can help you establish a thought leadership position and be seen as an expert in your field.
7. Enhanced trust levels: Reputation management builds trust in your business.
8. More sales: Consumers are known to use online reviews to help with decision-making when choosing a local business.
9. Improved conversion rate: Website optimization can bolster your conversion rate, increasing contact form submissions, phone calls, email subscriptions, or sales.
10. More competitive: Local SEO also makes you more competitive as it encourages you to study what your rivals are doing well and what tactics are working for them to then ingrate into your own approach.

This is Why Local SEO is Important

Imagine you’re a bridal boutique in Charlotte, North Carolina. A bride-to-be actively looking for ‘bridal boutique, Charlotte North Carolina’ is your ideal customer. However, the organic search results are populated by big-name brands such as directory sites, top 10 lists, and blogs. This makes it hard to compete and difficult to imagine a route for the bride to find her way to your store.

However, if you perform local SEO you’ll appear at the top of the search results, and in the Local Pack, with useful information such as opening times, your phone number and location, an image, and your five-star review rating. The bride-to-be can see you’re close by, offer a great service, and can easily plan a visit or call your store. You’re now in the running to make a sale.

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The 10 Benefits of Local SEO

1. Better Online Visibility 

Many of the activities associated with local SEO will not only help you to improve your visibility in local search results but also help you to build better online visibility overall. 

Citation building, for example, is a staple of local SEO activity. This involves building mentions of your company’s name, its physical address (ideally including zip code), and phone number via directory listings, social media profiles, and online review platforms. 

Because you’ll do this in as many different places as possible, it’s easier for your business to be found by the right people (those interested in your specific product or service in their local area) at the right time (when they’re actively searching for a business like yours). If you’re running a B&B in Upstate New York, for example, a TripAdvisor NAP could help interested guests find you and make a reservation.

2. More In-store Foot Traffic

Greater local visibility can help to bring more foot traffic to your bricks-and-mortar location, whether you’re a cafe, dry cleaner, or hardware store. If you’ve invested heavily in specialist equipment, designed an innovative space, or have a bricks-and-mortar location because your products are best experienced in person, growing the number of people stopping by can help you to create a buzz about your space and make more sales. 

3. Tap Into the Local Shopping Boom

Recent years have seen widespread changes in consumer buying habits. One of the most notable is that today’s consumers increasingly prioritize local businesses when it comes to making purchasing decisions. 

Research shows that consumers are thinking smaller and opting to prioritize small, local, independent businesses rather than bigger, brand name offerings or experiences they may have chosen previously. 

56% of consumers say that they purposefully give their custom to local stores and actively seek out locally sourced products. 

76% of consumers also say that they plan to shop more locally over the next 12 months, meaning an opportunity is emerging for smaller, independent businesses to increase their sales. One of the core benefits of local SEO is it puts you in front of local consumers exactly when they need your products or services. As a result, this can empower you to fully leverage this shift in buyer behavior to grow your business. 

4. Targeted Web Traffic

As a small business, every minute you spend dealing with unqualified leads or people who aren’t likely to make a purchase or book a service is money lost. 

Local SEO can help weed out irrelevant traffic and remove those time saps which prevent your business from running efficiently, helping ensure your business is only visible to search users in your local area. 

With 59% of search users turning to Google to research a purchase they plan to make in-store, this can be a significant advantage as it allows you to focus your resources on those customers most likely to convert. 

5. More Calls and Visits from Maps Users

Optimizing your Google Business Profile can lead to enhanced visibility on Google Maps. This, in turn, can lead to more calls and more in-person visits, since Google Maps was specifically designed to help users find local services and plan their journeys. 

Google Maps is populated using information that Google gleans from Business Profiles, so any Google Business Profile optimization you carry out will directly aid your Maps visibility, increasing your number of calls and in-person visits.

6. Establish a Position of Thought Leadership 

Performing content marketing and link building is necessary to establish prominence and relevance, two of the core pillars of local SEO rankings. This same activity can also help you to cultivate a reputation as a thought leader and expert in your field. 

Local content marketing should naturally see you talking about your local area or hometown and involving your local community. Not only does this help to grow your position as an expert voice, but it can also bring your customers closer to your business, building stronger links, brand loyalty, and increasing engagement.

When you take the time to create locally-focused evergreen resources you’re also more likely to receive links back to your site from other local businesses. These links, whether from a local source like your town newspaper or an industry-specific site (like your local chamber of commerce) can all add to your authority and credibility, helping position you as an expert in your field. 

7. Enhanced Trust Levels 

It’s no secret that reviews are a cornerstone of local SEO success and a key local search ranking factor. The more reviews you get as part of your reputation management strategy, the more visibility you’ll earn in local search. 

Reviews are also an essential ingredient for building consumer trust—a vital attribute that precedes any business transaction. 

Research confirms that more consumers than ever before are reading online reviews more regularly, and half say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. 

Greater visibility, plus top-rated, fresh reviews are a magic formula both for local pack prominence and higher levels of consumer trust.

8. More Sales

Consumers use online reviews to help with the decision-making process when choosing a local business. Around one in eight people go online to find information about a local business more than once a week. 

Being able to present them with authentic recommendations from their peers for your business as a result of your reputation management activity is a powerful benefit and underlines just why local SEO is important. 

9. Improved Conversion Rates

When asking ‘what are the benefits of local SEO?’ it’s easy to focus attention on what’s happening on Google and other platforms, but it can also play a direct role in improving the structure and performance of your own website. 

Website optimization tasks carried out for local SEO, such as adding new locally-focused optimization, reviewing landing page text, and working on page load speed, all help with conversion rate optimization (CRO). From there, you should see an increase in the number of conversions your site generates, including increases in contact form submissions, more phone calls, email subscriptions, or sales. 

10. Your Business Becomes More Competitive

An important part of developing and refining your local SEO strategy is benchmarking competitors and identifying what they’re doing better than you. 

Identifying these opportunities to improve (and being able to put the things they have learned into practice without the trial-and-error they may have gone through to arrive at a successful strategy) puts your business on a much more competitive footing. Studying their reviews, for example, could tell you what customers appreciate about their service so you can incorporate a similar approach within your own business.

Whether you’re reading up on best practice local SEO tactics or compiling a list of tasks to complete on your client websites, names like Google Business Profile, Yelp, and even Facebook are sure to appear multiple times. The reason for that? These platforms are tied to known local SEO ranking signals, meaning you should expect to use them regularly to fully optimize your search presence. 

The key local SEO platforms you will need to be familiar with include:   

• Google Business Profile
• Google Business Profile Insights
• Google Analytics
• Yelp
• Facebook
• BrightLocal 

Google Business Profile

Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business) is closely linked to local SEO success in a number of areas, making it the most important platform on your radar when it comes to attracting more local visitors to your website or bricks-and-mortar location. In fact, our research suggests that Google Business Profile accounts for around a quarter of your Local Pack and organic search ranking overall, with Google referencing different components of your Profile in order to determine what your business does and how relevant it is to a user’s search query.

You can think of Google Business Profile as a business listing, which you set up to tell Google (and local consumers) all about your business. This includes:

• The nature of your business 
• Your physical business location (or areas covered if you’re a service business)
• The products and services you provide
• Your opening hours
• Contact information
• Images
• Videos
• Accessibility information 
• Customer reviews
• Business updates and more

In other words, a Google Business Profile provides everything that Google or a local consumer could possibly need to know before deciding whether you fit the bill and offer the product or service that they’re searching for. 

Google Business Profile Insights 

Most marketers will agree that the more useful data they have, the better their campaigns perform. For small business owners, accurate and accessible data can be hard to come by, especially if you’re not a marketer by profession and have limited time in the day to dedicate to wading through analytics. 

Google Business Profile Insights provide a happy middle ground. This tool sits within your Google Business Profile dashboard and gives you useful information related to your local search presence and Google Business Profile performance, without being overly complex. 

You can expect to find data such as how people are searching for your business, the Google properties that they are using to find your business, and the most common actions that are taken by those viewing your listing; did they call you, for example, or request directions to visit? 

Data gathered from Google Business Profile Insights can help you understand your local search presence better, spot trends, and pinpoint where performance can be improved. 

Google Analytics 

Google Analytics is an analytics tool that tracks how visitors interact with your website, how they find you, and what they do once on the site. This is a more advanced tool than Google Business Profile Insights but can be invaluable if you’re looking to dive deeper and really understand how your local business website is performing, how visitors interact with your site, and where opportunities to change strategy or close performance gaps exist. 

Google Analytics allows you to organize and query the data via a series of different reports. These are split by topic and include ‘Acquisition’ (how traffic found your site), ‘Engagement’ (how visitors interacted with your site with data split by event, pages, and screens), ‘Monetization’ (revenue your site generated, by item, coupon or promotion) and ‘Retention’ (how long visitors stayed on the site and how often they return). 

Analytics data can also help you to understand your audience better, by providing demographic information, categorized by details such as age, interest or location, and the type of device used to access your site. 

Due to the wealth of data on offer, Google Analytics is arguably the most advanced of the local SEO platforms you’ll use. As such, there is a learning curve involved but, once you master the basics and understand which reports are most useful, the data extracted can inform smarter decision making and make it easier to refine your local SEO strategy for improved success. 

Yelp 

If you’ve ever found yourself in need of a local business, wanted a recommendation for a nice bar, a decent restaurant, or a quality hair salon after moving house, then the chances are you’ll have turned to Yelp at some point. 

An online directory known for its crowdsourced reviews and recommendations, Yelp is part Yellow Pages, part online review portal. For that reason, it’s one of the six key local SEO platforms you’ll almost certainly find yourself returning to time and again during your local search marketing campaign. 

Yelp plays an important role for local consumers, with more than 90 million people visiting the platform each month to find local businesses and 97% making a purchase thereafter. 

In many respects, Yelp functions in a similar way to Google Business Profile. You can claim your free Yelp listing to share useful information about your business with Yelp’s users, including your street address, service areas, web address, telephone number, available products and services and hours of operation. Like your Google Business Profile, it’s also a place where you can gather and respond to reviews from customers, answer questions and share images.  

Facebook 

Facebook needs no introduction but, what you may not know is that—in addition to being useful for your overall marketing—it can also help to bolster your local search visibility. This, in turn, makes it one of the more important local SEO platforms you’ll find yourself using on a regular basis. 

Why is Facebook useful for local SEO? The answer lies in Facebook’s status as a top review platform, its popularity with consumers looking for local business information, the ease with which you can build a citation, and the potential to engage with local prospects.  

Perhaps the most powerful contribution Facebook can make to your local SEO strategy is that you can use it to gather reviews and ratings for your local business. We know that reviews are a primary ranking signal so the more reviews you can garner, the better your search visibility. 

There are other, indirect benefits too. Much like a Google Business Profile and Yelp, your Facebook Business Page is a treasure trove of useful information about your business. 

Research carried out by Square suggests that 52% of consumers have discovered new businesses on Facebook in the past year – more than any other channel – making it a valuable source of traffic. What’s more, the information you present in your Facebook profile can help a consumer confirm what they have discovered elsewhere, giving them the confidence to plan a visit or make a call. 

 Source: https://business.yelp.com/

BrightLocal 

Local SEO is continually evolving and best-practice tactics, based on emerging research, data analysis, and trial and error, often change. Add in the frequent addition of new tools and features across these popular local SEO platforms and the pressure to keep up and make sense of everything can be crushing. 

BrightLocal brings together a series of helpful tools, such as reputation management and automated local search audits, with useful content hubs, thought leadership pieces, how-to guides, and expert advice. It’s a one-stop resource that helps you to execute certain parts of your local SEO strategy while also helping you to understand how to make the most of these and other local SEO platforms, tactics, and tools. 

One of the best ways for a business to get noticed, and to gain an advantage over its competitors, is to rank in the Google Local Pack.

What is the Google Local Pack?

The Local Pack appears at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs) when a user makes a search query with local intent. It’s sometimes known as the Local 3 Pack, the Google 3 pack, the Google Map Pack, or—and this is my personal favorite—the Snack Pack.

Why is it called a ‘3 pack’?

The three most relevant results—determined by Google’s search algorithm—are featured in this ‘local SERPs pack’, and are distinctly separate from the remaining organic search results. If you own a brick-and-mortar store, then you’ll want to appear here!

These top three results are accompanied by a map that shows exactly where they’re located, as well as the address, opening hours, and average star rating from customer reviews, plus a click-to-call option for mobile users. ​​​​​​​

How does Google identify a local search?

The following are different ways for Google to identify that a user is making a search with local intent:

• A user will include the name of the desired geographic area, such as the town or city, within their search term. For example, ‘hair salon in Syracuse, NY’.
• A user will include ‘near me’ within their search query. For example, ‘hair salon near me’. Google will use GPS tracking to accurately understand where the user is searching from.
• A user will type their search query, such as ‘hair salon’, without any additional information. Google will understand that this user is likely searching for a hair salon to visit and will factor in their location while determining the most relevant results. 

How is the Google Local Pack different from organic SERPs?

The algorithm for the Google Local Pack is different from organic SERP listings, so you’ll need to consider Local Pack SEO separately—start by checking out these local SEO tips for better visibility.

When it comes to appearance, the main difference is that the Google Local Pack contains clear calls to action, such as to visit the website or to make a phone call. Another important difference is that the Local Pack features concise information about a business that the user will naturally benefit from, such as location and hours of operation.  

These features make these positions more valuable—both to the searcher and to the top-ranking local businesses.

History of the Google Local Pack

The Google Local 3 Pack has been a feature in local SERPs since 2015. Before this time, Google displayed seven results in a list without a map.  

The reduction from seven results to three is great for readability on mobile devices, and the addition of a map helps the user to immediately understand the location of the results. 

Why should I care?

Of the approximately 40,000 Google searches made around the globe every second, data reveals that 46% of these queries have local intent. This equates to a huge number of people seeking information in their local area every single day. 

The stats also show that at least 93% of Google searches with local intent will include a Local Pack within the results.

What’s more, approximately 50% of users making a local search on a phone will visit a nearby business concerning this query within 24 hours. Plus, 78% of these searches will result in an offline sale in the near future. 

These figures highlight the importance of being visible to consumers who are ready to spend when they make a local search. 

How do I climb the Google Map Pack rankings?

To start climbing the rankings into the Google Map Pack, you will first need to claim your Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business).

Once you’ve claimed your Google Business Profile (GBP), you’ll then need to optimize it with the appropriate information. This involves completing all of the relevant sections, as well as including photos of your business. 

When deciding which GBP results to return for a query, Google primarily considers:

• Proximity—how close your business is to the user
• Prominence—how popular your business is
• Relevance—how closely matched your business is to the search query

The algorithm will also prioritize listings that are maintained with accurate and up-to-date details, as well as those that contain beneficial information about the business. 

The majority of consumers won’t check beyond the first page of results, so it’s essential that your business is ranking well for a range of different search terms. Once your listing is claimed and optimized, Local Pack SEO should then be the next step to boosting your online visibility. 

What about Google Maps?

Within the Local Pack Google listings, users can click to see more results, and doing so will take them to Google Local Finder (see image below). This is a more comprehensive list of relevant local businesses for the search query. However, it’s important to be aware that the Local Finder is not the same as Google Maps.

Check out our dedicated post on the difference between Google Local Finder and Google Maps. 

Securing Local Search Success

The importance of ranking in the Google Map Pack shouldn’t be overlooked as a brick-and-mortar business owner. You may wish to hire an agency to help you, but there are many actions you can take yourself. If you want to start learning more about local SEO, then check out our comprehensive article on local ranking factors.

As you push ahead with your local search strategy, it’s important to be aware that Google results will vary when you check your rankings from different locations. Google will always know where you are and will return the results that are most relevant to your current location. 

Variance in the search results can be a stumbling block to understanding how your business is truly performing locally. You can easily solve this problem by using our free tool to accurately observe your local rankings from any location. 

With the best knowledge and the right tools, you’ll be well on your way to local search success!

Both give out local business information, which begs the question—how do they differ and when does a search favor one tool over the other?

Why two tools?

The reason for having two systems is actually pretty straightforward. It all comes back to user intent:

1. Google Local Finder returns results within a small geographic area, making it easy to find nearby businesses. It’s tied to Google Business Profiles and is typically triggered by a user clicking on a local pack result.
2. Google Maps takes a broader approach to results and isn’t as focused on a small geographic area. This is because it was originally conceived as a mapping engine; a tool that can help you plan your journey and find services such as gas stations, hotels, and restaurants en-route.

In short, Maps are for broader searches and Local Finder is for searches where there’s specific intent to find a certain type of local business.

Google Business Profile Gold Product Expert Krystal Taing expands on this:

So which is which?

Google Local Finder is part of Google local search, e.g. when someone types in “plumber in New York”, or “plumber near me”. It draws data from a range of sources including Google and third-party reviews, Google Business Profiles, and business websites.

It’s seen when a user performs a standard Google search and then clicks on one of the local pack results.

When Google Local Finder is open, it gives the user a map with multiple local business listings. These results cover pre-determined businesses, along with relevant information to be evaluated by the user.

Google Maps also draws its ranking data from Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business) content. When it comes to rankings in Maps results, Google will place weight on the relevance, proximity, and prominence to the searcher.

The overall appearance of Maps is similar to Local Finder with the primary difference being the area of coverage. Maps defaults to a much wider geographical area.

Maps is more often used during mobile search (including voice searches), as Google Maps is the default mapping app on all Android phones and tablets. It can also be accessed via the ‘Maps’ tab in search on a desktop device.

Search users opening Maps are more likely to be ‘discovering’ – browsing for an area, route, or landmark, without a set of specific business listings in mind.

Ranking In Google Local Finder and Maps

The crucial first step

Before you can think about improving your rankings in Maps and Local Finder, you’ll need to claim your free Google Local Business listing.

Follow our complete guide to setting up your Google Business Profile to find out how.

Rankings

With your GBP listing claimed you can now start to think about improving your Google local rankings across the two tools.

It’s important to remember here that although Local Finder and Maps appear to be similar Google treats them differently due to the difference in user intent we mentioned earlier.

This means that two visitors, each searching for the same type of business, in the same location, might be shown two very different sets of results.

In fact, research has shown that results across Local Finder and Google Maps can differ from as little as 8% for local attractions to as much as 39% for women’s clothing stores.

Tips to Rank in Google Local Finder

Due to Local Finder’s close connection with Google’s ‘regular’ ranking factors, standard local SEO optimization tactics will help you to improve your Local Finder visibility.

1. Nurture Your Google Business Profile

The information that you share with Google plays a key role in where your local business will appear in search.

Make sure that your Google Business Profile is optimized with the correct category selection, a comprehensive ‘about’ section, and accurate NAPs and Questions and Answers.

2. Focus on SEO

As mentioned, standard local SEO signals will help determine your rankings in Local Finder:

• Google Business Profile signals: Additional category selections, use of keywords in reviews, and frequency of reviews all matter. GBP signals are a key local SEO ranking factor so it pays to spend as much time as you can optimizing your listing.
• Review signals: Encourage customers or visitors to leave a review and, where needed, immediately address any negative feedback. Customer rating matters, so the more four and five star reviews you can collect, the better.
• Citation signals: Citations also aid in Google local discoverability. Aim for high-quality, trustworthy, and authoritative citations. Information should be consistent across your citation profile as any discrepancies can dilute trust.
• On-page signals: Local on-page SEO optimization can help boost Local Finder rankings, so conduct a local SEO audit and identify opportunities for improvement.
• Link signals: Link signals including anchor text, linking domain authority, link quantity, and link position, are a key part in positively impacting your Local Finder placement.

3. Your Digital First Impression

Spend time thinking about what you want your ‘digital first impression’ to be and create a plan to achieve this.

As well as getting you seen, this will get people clicking through to your listing and (hopefully) end up with them becoming a customer. Here are some things you can do:

• Enable GBP Messaging
• Use keywords in GBP Products
• Use keywords in Google Posts
• Enable an Appointment URL
• Use Google Posts frequently

Tips to Rank in Google Maps

Unlike Google Local Finder, Google Maps is a standalone entity and not directly connected to search.

Ranking well on Google Maps depends greatly on the standard pillars of local SEO (relevance, proximity, and prominence), perhaps even more so.

Here are some tactics you can try to boost these key signals in Google Maps.

1. Relevance

Maps users want to know that your business is relevant to their needs.

Look to add suitable attribute icons (such as ‘women-led’ or ‘Black-owned’) that display in Maps results, but not in Local Finder.

You’ll also need to weed out duplicate listings which could contain inaccurate or contradictory information.

2. Proximity

Maps users want to know that your business is close to their search area.

Include a local phone number with area code and embed Google Maps on your website. Both of these factors work to verify your location and provide users with peace of mind that your business is where you say it is.

3. Prominence

Prominence simply means high profile – Maps users want to know that a business is active and legitimate.

You need to maintain an active presence online and posting regularly is the first step. Keep your business hours updated, post photographs of new products, and consider launching a virtual tour.

Away from Google, securing placements in local media, building links from local sources, being active on social media, and authoring thought-leadership pieces or by-lined articles are also worth exploring.

Conclusion

While there’s no official confirmation that Google treats Google Local Finder and Google Maps differently when it comes to rankings, a causal search will show you that they do.

Ranking highly on Local Finder doesn’t guarantee similar visibility in Maps and vice versa.

To cover all bases of user intent, local businesses should plan to rank for both.

As SEO specialists and digital marketers, we need to be aware of these updates and be able to pivot or make changes in strategy accordingly. If we don’t, we can lose our local search presence in the blink of an eye. This advanced guide designed to help you understand the local search algorithm will break down the three major ranking pillars, so that you, like myself, can stay ahead of the competition and know what to look out for.

The three major ranking pillars that I will discuss are relevance, proximity, and prominence. By understanding each core pillar, you can set yourself (and your clients) up for success in local search and conquer Google’s local algorithm.

So, without further ado, let’s unpack what makes up the Google local algorithm!

Relevance

Relevance is a key component of Google’s local algorithm. To ensure that search engines such as Google view your business as relevant enough to surface, you’ll want to ensure you’re targeting keywords or topics that potential customers would be searching for. For example, if you ran a pizza place in New York, you’d want make sure that Google relates your business to keywords such as “pizza New York”.

In this next section, I’ll explain just how you can inform Google’s local algorithm that your business is relevant to the right search queries:

Local Listing Signals

Whether you’re optimizing your Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business), Bing Places listing, or Yahoo Local listing, there are several key components you need to pay attention to. Aside from making sure that all your business’s NAP (name, address, phone number) is correct and that you have just one claimed listing, make sure you have properly filled out the below two features.

1. Local Category Selection

One of the most important factors in ranking locally is selecting relevant categories for your listing. These categories are essentially tags that you associate with your business. You want to ensure that you only select categories that define your business — the more relevant or specific the better. For Google Business Profile, head here for a full list of categories; for Bing Places, click here.

2. Add a Business Description

By adding a description of your business to your GBP, you allow users to know exactly what you do (as well as search engines). This shouldn’t be salesy, or an attempt to market your business. Instead, it should give users (and search engines) the info they require to determine if your business matches their needs or intent.

On-Page Signals

Optimizing your web pages for given keywords will increase relevance and enhance your chances of being favored by the Google local algorithm. By performing basic competitor research and analyzing results you can determine what a search engine likes for a given search query or keyword.

Below I have made a list of on-page attributes that should be considered when trying to increase relevance for a given keyword or topic. You can also check out the on-page checklist I have put together.

1. Content

How you write your content will determine if it deserves to rank or not. Google rolled out a core algorithm update in 2018 that focused on content with relevance. This means that it is not necessarily how long your content is or the quality of it that matters. In fact, all that matters is if your content is relevant to a user’s search query. Web pages that had strong relevance for a keyword or topic were rewarded with an increase in rankings.

Search engines are looking for whether or not your content matches the intent of the user’s original search query. Does it give the user the answer they are looking for? Here are two tips to increase relevance when writing your content:

• LSI Keywords: By including keywords that are semantically related to each other you increase relevance to your target keyword or query. Search engines are very smart; they are capable of drawing connections between keywords and rewarding pages that do so properly. Tip: Use Google’s search predictor or a tool like this to help.
• Long Tail Keywords: These keywords differ from LSI keywords but also add relevance. Although these keywords are longer, they do tend to convert higher. This is because they are usually more specific and descriptive. Long-tail keywords help add context to your content which helps search engines determine if your page matches the context of a user’s search query.

50% of search queries are four words or longer – Hubspot

2. Title Tag

First impressions count! A title tag is a great way to incorporate your page’s target keyword, as well as draw a click from a user. Not only is it great to incorporate your keyword for search engine purposes, it allows the user to know what to expect upon clicking. 

3. Meta Description

Your meta description allows you to expand on your title tag and add more context to what your page is about. Again, be sure to include your target keyword.

4. Body Tags (H1, H2, etc.)

Within your content, you can create headings to capture users and encourage them to read on. This is another great way to increase your relevance. Your heading tags should be descriptive and explain the content they precede. Especially your H1, as it stands out the most on a webpage. Search engines detect these tags and give higher importance to what they contain. (Hint Hint, try to include your keywords.)

H1s are usually the most visually notable content on the page – Neil Patel

5. Alt Text

Every user consumes information differently, and some people are very visual. As such it’s best to try to include images with your content wherever possible. These assets will help increase user engagement, which helps with ranking.

Whenever you add images to a page you have the option to add alt text, which is a way for search engines to easily crawl and understand what the media is. This is another great place to incorporate keywords. If you have an image that showcases a service your business offers, you want that alt text to include the service keyword. It’s also a really important aspect for accessible reasons, to ensure your content can reach as many people as possible.

6. Internal Linking

Creating internal links helps users navigate to relevant pages on your website. They help establish hierarchy and spread link equity throughout a website. You can use internal linking to increase relevance for a page by creating a navigation path to similar pages or pages that help strengthen your topic or keyword.

7. Outbound Links

An outbound link is an external link from your website to another website. Very similar to internal links, these links allow users to navigate to external websites for additional information on a related topic. Outbound links will help the Google local algorithm identify your chosen niche — so be sure to focus on giving relevant links, as well as getting them.

8. Schema

Schema helps you organize and provide search engines like Google with the information they need to understand your content. It helps ensure the best search results possible and improves the way your page is displayed in search results. By adding schema to a page, you can increase the relevance for a given topic or keyword. Search engines can easily find schema and make sense of the content that it represents, helping to ensure that you show up when you should.

9. Relevant Reviews

We all know how important reviews are to a business and rankings, but how important are relevant reviews? For example, if you have a product page or a location page you want to make sure that any reviews on that given page reflect the topic. All reviews or testimonials on a given page should be relevant to that page and refer to the product or service described on the page. If you have reviews that mention specific locations, showcase them on the relevant areas of your site.

10. URL Structure

Setting up your website’s hierarchy and site architecture is very important. It essentially allows you to tell search engine algorithms how they should prioritize and crawl your website. The URL slug that you use should reflect the topic of the page — this is another quick way to increase relevance.

Treat these on-page signals as a checklist. You should be able to go through your target page and check off every one of the above attributes. Once you get through this checklist, you should be able to confidently say that your page is relevant to your target keyword or topic, and so your site is more likely to be favored by the Google local algorithm.

Off-Page Signals

Trust and credibility are two major ranking signals. Off-page signals are external links from one website pointing to yours (also known as backlinks). The more good backlinks you have, the higher your website/page authority will be. This shows search engines that you are trustworthy and credible. Before you ask, a ‘good’ backlink is a link from a credible website (usually with good Page or Domain Authority) that is relevant to the page it is linking to.

If you have a service page on “car insurance”, for example, you would want links from insurance-related pages, and even better, car insurance-related pages. You would not want a link from a “home insurance” page pointing to your “car insurance” page because the topics are different. Below are two great examples of off-page link building strategies.

1. Guest Posting

By using the right set of Google search strings you can find guest posting opportunities. These opportunities are great because you get to create and share your own content. Most of the time these opportunities will be relevant and help increase your website authority (as well as relevance) as well.

When you are reaching out to websites, you want to stand out from the rest. Remember, you’re not the only one reaching out. Your initial message should sell yourself or your business and contain more than one topic idea (options are always good).

2. Creating 10x Content Pieces

What better way to build links to your website than leveraging your own great content? A lot of research and planning goes into creating great 10x content pieces, but the payoff is always very rewarding.

Your content needs to be captivating and needs to knock readers off their feet (so to speak). Once you have your 10x content you will find that promoting it is fairly easy. Experts (external site owners) love linking to high quality, relevant content. The better your content, the easier it is to attain links!

For one of my clients at Powered By Search (where I worked previously), we built this cigar pairing guide. After we performed our research, we found that users were searching for “cigars + drinks,” etc. We used this information to create an interactive piece of content that users can engage with. As a result, experts wanted to link to it. This piece, in particular, has acquired 2.26K links to date!

Prominence

Think of prominence as how well your brand stands out from the rest (in a positive way). This can come in several forms: links; articles; directories; mentions; reviews; etc. It is the trust and credibility your brand has built up with search engines.

Brands that have a stronger online prominence seem more credible and trustworthy to the Google local algorithm. We know that search engines (especially Google) pull data from all across the web. So essentially, if your brand is out there on the web, search engines will find this data and give you a prominence score. Let’s take a look at some important ways you can build up, maintain your brand prominence, and grow your economic position.

Reviews

Online reviews for a business not only have the power to increase ranking signals, but the power to push a consumer to a decision. You can never have enough reviews!

Ask yourself, would you trust a business with 100 reviews or 10? Chances are it’s the former. That’s because (like the Google local algorithm) users need to gain trust from a brand before purchasing or clicking. So, similar to users, search engines have the ability to analyze the type of review, how many reviews a business has, and how they interact with reviews (respond to them or not). All these factors can increase a brand’s online prominence. Below you will find some tips to help gain stronger signals from online reviews.

1. Develop a Review Strategy

In order for a business to gain more reviews, they need to develop a strategy. This is very important. If you want to have a great online brand prominence you need to first find a way to get more reviews. There are lots of tools available to help you generate more reviews.

2. Respond to Reviews

Once you have a strategy in place, you need to find a way to monitor and manage your reviews. This is just as important as getting reviews. Search engines are able to tell if you engage with customers and reply to their comments. It shows that you’re active and willing to interact.

A great tool to use is Brightlocal’s Reputation Manager tool. You can monitor all your reviews and highlight the ones you need to respond to. This is especially important for negative reviews. Yes, negative reviews aren’t great but you can respond to them in a positive, proactive way that can turn that negative review around.

Remember that you want to stand out from competitors, and you want your brand prominence to look good in the eyes of users and Google’s local algorithm.

Citations

A citation is a reference to your business’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) online. Unlike external links, citations do not need to link back to your website. Just having your business name, address and phone number mentioned gets you credit for a citation.

Businesses that are mentioned a lot online are viewed as more credible to search engine algorithms. A great place to start is Brightlocal’s Citation Tracker. Here you can uncover any existing citations, incorrect citations, and citation opportunities. From there you can determine which citations hold the most weight and fix/create them.

Inbound Links (Backlinks)

I mentioned backlinks in the relevance section but it’s important that I mention it again in the prominence section. What is another very big way that a business can build its online reputation? You’re right, gaining relevant backlinks.

If you are ever trying to figure out why a competitor may be outranking you, always look at how many backlinks their page has vs yours. The more good links you have pointing to your page the more trust and authority your page will hold.

Proximity

Now that we know your business is relevant to the user’s search query and has a strong prominence, let’s look at our last ranking factor, proximity. Local algorithms are constantly being updated to ensure that search results contain the most relevant searches for a user. I’m sure you have all heard that proximity to the searcher is the #1 ranking factor? Well, that hasn’t changed.

Unfortunately, while it’s the most integral to local search, proximity is also the factor most out of your control. Your business is where your business is.

What’s important here, then, is to show Google where your business is so that it surfaces you for nearby search queries.

You can track your current status of local rankings using a tool like Local Search Results Checker. Enter the zip code from one road over, two roads over, three roads over and see how your rankings change based on the searcher’s location.

Just take a look at how much the local results for ‘Pizza’ change when you search from a different zip code:

Types of Local Search

There are three ways a user can perform a local search; non-geo-modified, geo-modified, and “near me.” You should always consider optimizing for the different ways users are searching. Let’s look at the difference:

Non-Geo Modified Searches

This search behavior is typical of a user that is looking for something around them. For example, I’m located in Toronto and I perform a local search for “pubs.” The local search results will most likely contain pubs that are closest to me. This is because search engines are relying more heavily on proximity (not to say they aren’t considering prominence and relevance).

Geo-Modified Searches

Although this isn’t always the case, users typically perform these local searches when they are looking to go somewhere or traveling to a different city. For example, if I’m searching in Toronto for a pub in a nearby city, my search query might be “Pubs in Oakville.” These search results will be different then if I searched for “pubs” while physically being in Oakville. Geo-modified searches will rely heavier on the other two pillars (relevance and prominence) over proximity if they detect that you are not within the city you included. Often, search results will contain listings that are close to the city centroid and have strong relevance and prominence.

30% of mobile searches are related to a location. – Google, 2016

“Near Me” Searches

A few years back, “near me” searches were very popular. These are searches where a user performs a query like “pubs near me.” Fast forward to 2018 and we see this trend in decline.

Why, you ask? It’s because “near me” is now implied when someone performs a local search. Users are expecting to get the most relevant results “near them” upon searching. Nevertheless, it is still a variation that some users still search and I figured I should add it.

Remember These Three Core Pillars: Relevance, Prominence, and Proximity

These pillars will help you drive the results you need to reach a new level of success for your business. Take the lead on your competition today, stay ahead of Google’s ever-changing local algorithm, and focus on the three core pillars!

Say it again with me:

• Relevance: How Can You Increase Your Relevance?
• Prominence: How Well Known Is Your Brand Online?
• Proximity: The Distance Between the Searcher and What They Are Looking For

As more and more local businesses grasp the importance of SEO, ranking well in the search engine results pages (SERPs) will naturally become harder. As striving towards search success becomes more competitive, understanding how to dominate the SERPs becomes all the more valuable.

In this article, we’ll explore the most important factors for ranking—in both the Local Pack and the localized organic results—based on data from the 2023 Local Search Ranking Factors Report from Whitespark. We’ll also highlight how these results have changed over time, and discuss which tasks you should focus your energy on.

The Top Local SEO Ranking Factors in 2023

This table shows what the expert survey respondents believed were the most important local search engine ranking factors inbreat 2023. As you can see, they’re separated into Local Pack and localized organic.

We’ll go into the individual factors in more detail shortly, but first let’s look at how the Local Ranking Factors survey has documented ranking trends over time. This should help to give you a snapshot of what impacted local search rankings in 2023 and where things are likely headed next year.

If you’re working towards improving Local Pack and localized organic rankings at the same time, then it can be helpful to see the average importance of the local SEO ranking factors when combined:

1. On-page optimization (28%)
2. GBP (21%)
3. Links (19%)
4. Reviews (11%)
5. Behavioral (9%)
6. =Citations (7%)
6. =Personalization (7%)

It’s important to remember that each of these factors will require different amounts of time to be invested; the percentage does not correlate with the amount of time that should be allocated to each.

For example, link building is an ongoing task that is quite time-intensive, whereas Google Business Profile (GBP) setup and management should not take too much of your time.

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Local SEO Ranking Factors 2013-2023

As with Google’s regular search algorithm, the local algorithm is often updated by Google. This ongoing fluctuation means that doing the best job for your clients will require you to pay ongoing attention to what’s happening in the SERPs.

If you’re an agency working specifically with local businesses, being vigilant to the changing local environment can be critical to success. The factors that have the biggest impact on local search engine rankings can make a huge difference to customer conversions, so changes in importance should be monitored closely.

As with the 2020 and 2021 Local Search Ranking Factors surveys, social signals aren’t included in the 2023 results. Social signals have been decreasing in importance in relation to local search rankings for a while, so it makes sense to exclude them entirely from the survey.

Local Pack / Local Finder Ranking Factors Over Time

Since 2015, Google Business Profile has continued to increase in importance for Local Pack/Finder ranking importance, leaping from 15% in 2015 to a peak of 36% in 2021. In 2023, this percentage dropped slightly to 32%, although it remains the factor rated as most important. Links, citations, behavioral signals, and personalization have all seen drops in importance during this time.

On-page signals have seen an increase from 17% in 2021 to 19% in 2023. This finding reinforces the importance of ensuring your key content is well linked internally, as well as maintaining the accuracy of your NAP information.

Local Organic Ranking Factors Over Time

The Local Search Ranking Factors survey has revealed that on-page optimization and links are the most significant factors for localized organic rankings, accounting for a combined 62% of ranking importance.

Although the remaining factors reportedly carry less weight, they’re still important to give some attention to, and doing so could give you the final push you need to outrank your competitors.

Interestingly, after declining between 2018-2020, citations have consistently remained at 7%.

The Top 15 Individual Local Search Ranking Factors

Concentrating your efforts on the individual factors from the table above is a great way to move forwards when optimizing for local search. However, don’t overlook the fact that there are many more contributing factors beyond those featured here, therefore it’s important to give your attention to a wide range of optimization tasks.

Google Business Profile Signals

Important individual ranking factors within Google Business Profile include the primary category, the use of keywords in the business name, and the proximity of address to the point of search.

The impact and value of GBP for Local Pack/Finder rankings has been on an upward trajectory since 2018. However, it has fluctuated slightly in importance for the localized organic results. It’s significant to note that, while the impact of GBP within the Local Pack remains the top ranking factor in 2023, it has decreased from 36% in 2021 to 32%.

The overall increase in the significance of GBP for local rankings in recent years correlates with how Google continues to evolve and improve this tool. New features are often being added to enhance the user experience, so it makes sense that GBP has become even more valuable to local business owners. 

However, with the slight decrease in expert respondents citing GBP as the most important ranking factor for Local Pack/Finder, it also suggests an increased weighting across other ranking signals.

If we look back at the two lists for the top 15 individual local search ranking factors, we can see that many are directly related to Google Business Profile. This includes actions such as setting the primary GBP category, completing and verifying the GBP, using keywords on the GBP landing page, and more.

It’s clear that there are certain actions on these lists that are great for rankings, but that you don’t have much control over or potential to optimize.

For example, the primary GBP category is the most important ranking factor for the Local Pack/Finder, but as soon as you’ve set the relevant category, there’s no more work to be done here.

Similarly, having keywords in the business name listed on GBP can boost rankings, but if the business in question doesn’t have keywords in its name, then there’s not much you can do (without violating Google’s guidelines). Once you’ve entered the name into the listing, this task won’t require any ongoing attention.

What you can do, however, is ensure the ‘completeness’ of your Google Business Profile. This means making sure you’ve filled out all of the relevant sections and that you continue to add photos and make new Posts.

Data from Google highlights how important this is, stating that, “Customers are 70% more likely to visit and 50% more likely to consider purchasing from businesses with a complete Business Profile.”

Google Business Profile Factors That Don’t Impact Rankings

It’s worth noting that you don’t need to take advantage of every aspect of GBP if you’re only focusing on improving your rankings.

The 2023 Local Search Ranking Factors survey experts are in agreement that several GBP-related factors don’t impact rankings.

These include:

• Geo-tagged photos uploaded to GBP
• Keywords in GBP description
• Keywords in GBP products
• Keywords in Google Posts
• Keywords in GBP services
• GBP messaging feature enabled
• Frequency of Google Posts
• Setting service areas

Remember, there’s more to Google Business Profile than just rankings. The actions that don’t influence rankings could still contribute to conversions, so it’s a good idea to pay attention to the bigger picture.

A Note on Google Business Profile Name Spam

2020 was the first time that GBP spam fighting was included as a possible ranking factor in the Whitespark survey, and this task has remained relevant into 2023.

Although this is an action that doesn’t improve your own listing, it can still give you a boost if higher-ranking competitor listings are penalized for spam violations.

Fighting spam sits within the top five actions that the experts have given more focus to when working towards Local Pack/Finder rankings. This task has dropped in prominence slightly, however, from third in 2021 to fifth as of 2023.

Arguably, as long as keywords in the business title remain a top ranking factor, some listings managers will continue to try to violate the guidelines by inappropriately including keywords. As of 2023, this is ranked by experts as the second most impactful factor for Local Pack rankings. 

Tools that show Google Business Profiles and business names on a map as part of a grid tracker can make the process of combating spam a lot easier. This is because all of the appropriate information can be easily seen on a map display.

Review Signals

Individual review signal factors include first- and third-party reviews, review recency, review site diversity, and positive sentiments in review content.

Reviews have grown slightly in importance for Local Pack/Finder rankings over the last few years, moving from 12% in 2018 to 17% in 2021. Although 2023 has seen a minor decrease to 16%, the relative stability reflects the ongoing value of reviews among consumers. Having consistently been the second most important Local Pack/Finder ranking factor since 2018, review signals have now been overtaken by on-page signals in 2023.

If we look at the top 15 Local Pack/Finder ranking factors, we can see fewer review-specific signals have made it into this list as of 2023. Higher Google ratings, the quantity of native Google reviews, and a steady influx of reviews over time sit at sixth eight and thirteenth within this list respectively.

The experts also revealed, for a second year running, that a high Google rating from reviews is the leading factor driving conversions in GBP. So as well as helping local businesses to rank, reviews can also increase sales.

As online reviews remain an important factor for local rankings, developing processes to monitor, grow, and display reviews can be extremely beneficial. This helps save time, while also enhancing a local business’s online reputation and rankings.

Review management software, such as BrightLocal’s Reputation Manager, can automate review monitoring. This helps to ensure that you don’t miss important feedback, and can also help you to grow the quantity of your reviews through slick review campaigns.

It’s easy to believe that consistently getting five-star ratings is the only way to dominate reviews, however, this isn’t the case. In November 2021, Google shared that a mix of positive and negative reviews actually makes a business appear more trustworthy. On top of that, our own Local Consumer Review Survey found that 88% of consumers state they’re fairly or highly likely to use a business that responds to all types of reviews, whether positive or negative. 

Remember, Google isn’t the only place that you should be getting reviews. Third-party review sites can also impact rankings and encourage conversions. The authority and diversity of third-party review sites, as well as the quantity of these reviews, are considered amongst local search ranking factors.

On-page Signals

Individual on-page optimization factors include NAP data, keywords in titles, and domain authority.

On-page signals are incredibly important for both traditional and local SEO. As we can see from the table below, on-page optimization has been consistently important for rankings since 2013, and especially so for the localized organic results. This has grown even more so for both the Local Pack and localized organic results in 2023.

In particular, having relevant and dedicated service pages on your website, good internal linking throughout, and maintaining topical relevance across your site can make a difference to local rankings.

The importance of optimizing your local business website for search engines shouldn’t be overlooked. Optimizing increases your chances of being discovered in both general organic and localized searches. On-page optimization is always going to be essential, so it’s wise to master this aspect of SEO.

Keyword research is a huge part of on-page SEO, and you should always be thorough with this when building your strategy. Be sure to get into the mindset of your target audience and tailor your content towards the words and phrases you know these people use. Essentially, you need to think like your customers in order to better appeal to them.

To be a serious competitor in the local search results, you’ll need to feature the name of your location (city, town, state etc.) in multiple places across your website. You’ll also want to use location-specific keywords in the metadata for titles and descriptions across your site.

To further boost your local authority in the eyes of Google, create dedicated pages on your website for local content. You’ll also want to make frequent mentions to your location within your blog posts—and if you’re not writing blog posts, then you’ll need to start!

If you’re working to boost the SEO efforts of a business with multiple locations, then enrolling in BrightLocal Academy’s How to Perform Local SEO Audits for Multi-location Businesses course is a great place to start. This course will equip you with the knowledge you need to comprehensively audit a business with two locations or 200!

Link Signals

Individual link factors include inbound anchor text, linking domain authority, and linking domain quantity.

Link signals have long been known to be very valuable for boosting organic search rankings, and the same is true of localized results.

Links make up 26% of the localized organic ranking factors in 2023, having decreased from 31% in 2021.

The quality and authority of inbound links to a website have dropped considerably as factors considered important for Local Pack/Finder results in 2023. However, the quality, authority and diversity of industry or locally-relevant inbound links sit within the top 15 most important factors for localized organic rankings. 

Earning quality backlinks can be a difficult and time-consuming task, but they go a long way to improving the authority of a site, and are a worthwhile investment of your resources.

Use of relevant keywords in the anchor text of inbound links is the tenth most important ranking factor for localized organic results, with quantity of inbound links to domain from locally-relevant domains coming in sixth (moving up from ninth in 2021).

Behavioral Signals

The individual behavioral ranking factors include click-through rate, mobile clicks to call, and dwell time.

In terms of importance as a Local Pack/Finder ranking factor, behavioral signals have been in steady decline for three years, dropping from 10% in 2018 down to 7% in 2021. As of 2023, it sits at 8%.

After seeing a slight increase in importance for localized organic search in 2021, behavioral signals have decreased from 11% to 9% in 2023.

Behavioral signals are a reliable source of information for Google because they’re much harder to manipulate than other factors. These actions are taken by the searcher, and therefore can only be influenced to a certain degree.

Instead of thinking up innovative new ways to influence user behaviour, why not spend this time optimizing your GBP to give the user the best possible experience? This involves creating optimized copy for titles, meta descriptions, Posts, and more. Make your listing as valuable and coherent as possible, and you’ll move closer to winning at rankings and conversions.

Try to remember that the end goal of SEO isn’t just to improve rankings, the focus must also be to attract the right customers to a business for those all-important sales. When you start getting seen by the right customers—those who want to learn more about your business—these users will naturally help to enhance the behavioral signals towards your site.

Citation Signals

Individual citation ranking factors include location data, IYP/aggregator NAP consistency, and citation volume.

Citations have decreased in ranking importance over the years, dropping from joint second for Local Pack rankings in 2013, down to sixth place in 2021 and 2023.

In relation to Local Pack/Finder importance, citations dropped from 17% in 2015 to 7% in 2020, and has held steady at 7% since.

In terms of importance in localized organic search results, citations decreased from 10% in 2015 to 6% in 2020, and back up slightly to 7% in 2021, where it has remained static since. While this percentage has not changed in 2023, the position of citation signals has moved from fourth to six in the list of seven possible ranking factor groups. 

Even though citations have gradually decreased in overall importance, they’re still valuable for visibility and for building trust with consumers. When a potential customer can observe that a business’s information is correct and consistent across the web, this helps to establish credibility.

There are two different types of citations—structured and unstructured.

Structured citations, which are listings made by a business on relevant directories and third-party websites, are the most common type. These citations provide a quick and easy way for a business to earn backlinks.

Many of the websites that structured citations appear on are seen as trustworthy and authoritative by Google, which makes these backlinks valuable to the business in question. This can help a business to begin building the authority of its website, as well as to give an established website a boost.

Take a look at the example below of a recent Google search for ‘Cafe in Sacramento’. You can see that there are several results from business directories, including the top three spots!

Personalization Signals

Individual personalization ranking factors include search history, search location, and device.

Personalization essentially boils down to how you’re more likely to see results from websites that you’re already familiar with and have visited frequently. However, it’s also influenced by the location a user searches from and the language that they use, among other factors.

In relation to Local Pack/Finder ranking importance, personalization peaked at 10% in 2017, and has fluctuated between 6% and 4% since. For the localized organic results, personalization was rated consistently at 9% throughout 2013 to 2017, and has been at 7% since 2018, with a minor decrease to 6% in 2021.

Although personalization can have an impact on general search results, this is much less likely to impact local search results. This means there’s not much you can do from an SEO perspective to optimize a website for personalization considerations.

Businesses that serve customers in countries with different native languages can translate—and therefore personalize—their content to reach the relevant audiences. Multilingual SEO is a largely underutilized resource that local businesses can tap into where appropriate.

It’s worth noting that in the US, 60 million people—almost a quarter of the population—aren’t native English speakers. So if you operate a business in a multicultural city, then it’s likely worth targeting your website at the languages besides English that are commonly spoken.

What’s Next?

As you likely already know, there are no guarantees on the path to SEO success. This is a process that requires ongoing research, effort, and a willingness to adjust your strategy as you go.

Although there are a number of different factors influencing search rankings, some of the associated tasks require much more ongoing effort than others. Understanding where your priorities should lie—and being able to adjust your focus accordingly—will be key to staying one step ahead of your competitors.

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The insights provided in the latest Local Search Ranking Factors survey should serve as your guide as you assess your local search strategy for the year ahead. This expert advice helps to take the guesswork out of local SEO so that you can dedicate your time and energy in all the right places.

Finally, we’d like to send our gratitude and appreciation to Darren Shaw, the Whitespark team, and everyone who contributed their expertise to the survey!