Ranking Factors for Local Search

Local Search

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This would be an area often glossed over by small business owners, but the significance of it may not be understated. One of the main ranking factors for local listings would be reviews, and so that you may get high rankings, you would not only have to be on the sites, you will have to monitor your reputation on it as well.

Bad reviews cause the sinking of sites. Would you want to put up your business via 60 percent or more not using additional work? While thorough optimizing with the help of precise SEO tools such as KeywordSpy could help, you have to acquire and maintain high rankings for review sites.

Bad Reviews

Bad reviews would be a part of business. A sad truth would be that most of the customers would not take the time to put in a review should they have a positive experience, but they would go out of their way to do such if they encounter a negative one. The key here would be to remind people to put in positive reviews. Give a coupon, place a table topper to remind people to leave a review, place it on the receipt or mention it at the beginning of the sale. There would be room for creativity here.

A. Citations

Citations would usually be mentions by other businesses, people or websites. These would be links, without having to actually link to the site you mention. This would be a famous PR term that would find its way on to the web in recent years. Citations would be another key ranking factor for local search and properly optimized campaigns would acquire their business name to be mentioned as often as one can, from as many various sources as they could find.

Keep in mind a citation would just be a mention of a business. Anywhere you are able to leave your business information, including directories, forums, blog posts, etc., would be a contribution to the number of citations for the business.

B. Review Plus Discovery Sites

Would you be aware that “checking in” when you would be at a place of business would do more that just informing your friends what you are doing? Such a simple act would allow Google an opportunity to verify listing information through seeing that people have actually gone to the business, proving its authenticity.

This would not be a ranking factor on its own, but it would aid to build trust that such a business would be genuine and not a spam listing, which would go a long way in the earning of top rankings.

It would all be about trust with Google, plus the more you can do to prove that you would be an actual business, the better the search position would become.

There would be hundreds of these kinds of sites online, but these would be the most popular, so these would be the ones that have to get the most share of your focus.

Review and discovery sites would give two opportunities, or challenges for local businesses. In essence, you would want people to:

A. Check in

B. Place positive reviews.

Peter Zmijewski provides step-by-step guidance with comprehensive resource book about the secrets of making millions over the internet for online business. He is also knows as Professional Internet Marketing GURU

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