Local SEO is a very important part of a marketing strategy especially for those who offer the traditional street-side kind of businesses like convenience stores, banks, and other local stores found at the corner of your streets.
Local SEO has benefited a lot of businesses for the past years, regardless of the size and nature of business. To make sure that your business will claim the top spot on the search engine results pages, optimizing your presence online will do the job, and that is where Google ranking factors come in.
There are more than 200 Google ranking factors that will help your business reach the top search results. But the question is, do you need all of them? Not really. You will only need to implement the factors that are beneficial for your business and it will take research and understanding to effectively do it.
Understanding how these Google ranking factors work will also help you understand why a website’s ranking on Google is high. You might have a lot of questions right now as to what Google ranking factors do you need to pick or the ones that you need to ignore. By the time you finish reading this article, you will find the answers to your questions but still more research will help you achieve a more effective strategy.
The algorithms in Google ranking changes constantly. New factors are introduced, some are removed, and some Google ranking factors that were once important are now less relevant. Staying up-to-date on the latest ranking factors is a must. Using an SEO audit tool will keep you updated with SEO best practices. You can find more SEO best practices online, make researching a habit.
Some Google ranking factors that kept its relevance over the years are:
Authority of Domain
The first and biggest one so far. Considered to be the general snapshot of your website. Aside from the keyword contents of your website, Google also looks at the relationship of other sites to your website through connecting to your site’s pages. The number of your content that your website has an effect to the strength of your domain authority trumping all the mini sites.
External Link Anchor Text
Letting Google identify what your page and your contents are about is essential. Those anchor texts you use from different websites that points to a page or your site helps building your identity.
On-Page SEO / Keyword Usage
The importance of this factor is often overlooked. It is very simple to implement but plays a very big role in your Google ranking. Adding variations of your keywords like their synonyms will make the keywords of your page natural-looking to search engines.
Bounce Rate and Traffic
The traffic that your site is getting is a different metric of your site’s quality and one of the most important Google ranking factors. Also, bounce rate is a different metric. There are site visitors that often leaves immediately without going through your other site pages and that would mean your contents are low-quality or the website itself is not optimized.
Hosting
Questions have asked if hosting can really affect the site’s ranking, the answer is always a yes. Usage of cheap web hosting though can lower your rank. Most cheap hosting services encounter a lot of issues specifically but not limited to, frequent outages which give people difficulties in reaching the site and Google doesn’t want that.
Social Proof
Your contents will play a big role on this since Google users will be the one to give a thumbs up based on your web contents’ quality. That way, Google you are worth giving a good rank.
Mentioned above are just some of the Google ranking factors that are helpful for your site and businesses have been using these for years already to market their services and products. On the latter part of this article, you will see new trends that will help your business even more.
If your business’ target is local customers, usage of local SEO is highly-effective and recommended for local marketing online. With countless techniques you can use to compete with the higher-ranking companies in your local area, local SEO can definitely turn the tables.
Local SEO utilizes not only Google but also yellow pages and other business directories. A huge number of prospected customers will check these directories on a daily basis to discover local businesses in the area where they’re located.
With the presence of the internet, a lot of people have switched to checking local businesses online. Connecting with your desired target of customers will give you a higher chance of boosting your business profit. If you’re doing your local SEO right with the perfect Google ranking factors, you’ll never miss your potential local customers.
2022 has begun and new businesses have popped up. Expect more competitors to come in the long run. Aside from those Google ranking factors mentioned above, there are new trends that you could for this newly started year to effectively market your local business online. Make a move and get ahead of them with these top Google ranking factors for the year 2022.
Google Ranking Factors:
Top Trends Coming Up This Year for Local SEO
Domain Registration Length
Most valuable domains are being paid in advance for years while other domains are not. For Google, the legitimacy of a domain is the length of its registration.
Site Security
This refers to the use of the HTTPS encryption on your website. With HTTPS on your site, you will also have SSL certificates which means you have a secure connection to your users. Exchange of information made from secured sites are added with extra layer of security for protection.
Mobile-Friendliness
Submitting your site to Google’s Mobile Friendly Test to see if yours is responsive. If there are any issues, a report will be given back to you.
How your website looks when people use it with their mobile phones is important to the users as well as the search engines. Half of the percentage of the traffic that goes to your website are mostly from mobile users.
Making sure that while making your website, the mobile look is also as pleasing as seen on the desktop. Adjustments can be done to go well with mobile view.
User Engagement
Google will determine the pages that are worth promoting with the help of the users who interact with your website.
- Time on Site – the duration of which the user stays at your website.
- Click-through Rate (CTR) – the rate of people who clicks on the search engine result presented to them.
- Bounce Rate – keeping your website nice looking, update and pleasing to the eyes will make you site visitors stay and navigate through your website. If they leave immediately, that would mean your site is in a bad state.
Backlinks
With the use of backlinks, Google is given a signal that your website is authoritative and credible. The quality and quantity of links that points to your site has a very important impact to your ranking.
Backlinks are considered second next most important in the Google ranking factors next to your website contents.
Business Listings
If your business is well established online, Google will most likely believe that your site is credible, trustworthy and authoritative giving you a hiring chance of getting a higher rank. Consistency in business listing will help you achieve this making this one of the most need Google ranking factors of all time.
Setting up a profile on directory sites with the same industry, creating a Google My Business page, and ensuring that your business address, name, and phone number are used and visible in these directories are just a few things that you can do.
Optimized Contents
Optimizing each page of your website with the right target keywords will help you get a more optimized content. Each page should consist of one unique keyword and apply on-page local SEO best practices. There are tools available online that you can use to check if your website is optimized correctly.
Also making sure that your contents are of high-quality that will catch the eyes of the visitors of your website.
Page Load Speed
Google knows people expect to find answers quickly and that is why Google will make sure to present sites that loads fast for users. Among the Google rank factors stated, this one should never be absent especially for mobile sites. Google actually announced that load speed is a metric for determining the ranking.
Direct Traffic
Google determines how many people constantly visit your website and how often they do it. Sites with a lot of direct traffic are considered to be of higher quality compared to other sites that get less traffic.
People who visits your website directly without accessing any link outside your website can bring direct traffic to your site.
Number of Comments
Comments are very helpful when it comes to Google ranking. The interaction between the user and your page signals high-quality contents. However, spam comments may also affect your ranking on google.
Negative comments can also affect your brand’s reputation and not just your ranking so make sure to give the quality service to your customers.
Branded Searches
If people will directly search about your brand or business on Google, it will recognize your business as a trusted branded gaining a higher rank.
Establishing your brand well will help people know more about your brand so it will be easier for them to search you rather than using keywords which might lead them to a different website.
Online Reviews
More positive Google reviews reflect on your site will draw more potential customers telling Google that your business/website is trustworthy. There are really people who will take their time and post their experience on about you service or your product online so make sure to give them the kind of service that they deserve in order to keep the good words coming.
Implementing all of these Google ranking factors can be very stressful if you will do it all alone since you also have to manage your business at the same time. Hiring a local SEO firm is possible however, make sure to let them grasp the goals that you have for your business and also know their willingness to put their efforts into your request.
Although not all of the mention Google ranking factors above guarantee sudden boost to your business, it is a good starting point. Knowing all of these will give you plenty of knowledge how to make your business sky-rocket. Study your business well rather than depending on the firm that you are going to hire if you are planning on getting one. That is an investment and will cost you money so make sure that you are choosing the right firm to do the job or else you will end up losing more than gaining what you imagined.
In conclusion…
In general, Google ranking factors for your local SEO can be a huge help in marketing your business to your local customers instead of doing the traditional marketing strategy like newspapers or radio announcement which are considered now outdated. Bear in mind that these Google ranking factors can change from time to time so make sure to do your part in keeping yourself up to date to the new trends coming out.
A balanced strategy is always a must. Good business on the physical store, good business online. Do great on both aspects. Do not only focus on your online marketing and these Google ranking factors or local SEO but also focus on your customer service and the quality of products that your provide to your customers. That way, you will draw more customers even more and gain more positive feedback to help your business.
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