The Basics on Google Local Algorithm

by

15 August 2017

SEO

seo

Being at the top of Google search results page has been one of the goals of various businesses ever since the advent of the search engine giant. Landing the top ranking spot can help draw traffic to your page and increase the effectiveness of your website.

Many have tried to breakdown the factors that affect Google ranking and a study in 2016 has made an analysis of the various factors that Google use in its rankings. The study determined which of the different factors correlate either positively or negatively with local rankings in the Google search results page. This study is very helpful in guiding businesses when prioritizing for their local SEO plans.

Read also: Google Maps Marketing: Guides On How To Boost Brand Advantage

The Factors that Affect Google Rankings

1. Website

The use of keywords and the number of words on a page actually have a huge impact on the rankings. Location pages with a lot of information written have a tendency to fare better than those with less content. Put quality information on your website on different broad topics to help draw traffic towards your site. Crafting a quality small business website design is crucial from the start and best to hire a professional.

2. Links

Backlinks affect your local rankings. In fact, it has the most positive correlation with good rankings. The infamous Toolbar PageRank is no longer a current tool but there are many other tools similar to the toolbar that can gauge the quality of a site. The study has shown that sites with older links are doing better than the newer ones.

3. Google My Business

Having good reviews and verified information about your business, as well as photos of your location and products, all contributed to stronger rankings. It can be due to the reliable information that these sites have attracted more interaction with the searchers. Therefore, make sure that in every channel you have, you put in their the basic information about your business. Lastly, revamp your Google My Business pages because it also helps immensely in supplying information.

4. Citations

One of the surprising findings of the study is that citations did not seem to correlate with positive local rankings. However, the researchers have pointed out that citations do help if the business or website is at its foundation stage. But once the groundwork has been laid down and all the citations have been made, further citing will not make any difference.

5. Surprises

The study had a huge surprise when the researchers found out that the “City & State” information in the Google My Business page does not have any correlation with positive ranking. Therefore, geotargeting should not be all the craze. Keywords, however, do help.

Going Forward With Google & amp; The Search Engines 

Knowing what are the factors when Google ranks pages and which factor to prioritize will help you be more efficient and effective. In sum, if you are a new player in the business, lay down your citations as fast and as effectively as you can and then move on to getting backlinks, especially in competitive markets.

Having your business have a solid SEO mechanism will help you entice a larger audience, promote your products effectively, and open your business to new opportunities.

Read also:

I enjoy writing and I write quality guest posts on topics of my interest and passion. I have been doing this since my college days. My special interests are in health, fitness, food and following the latest trends in these areas. I am an editor at Content Rally.

View all posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related

cornerstone content

How to create cornerstone content for your website

If you’ve been running your website for some time, accumulating lots of different pages, tackling different angles and creating a rich variety of resources, you probably have a good idea of what your most popular pages are. The problem is, someone else landing on your site for the first time doesn’t. Could they get from the homepage to your top-performing pages in just one or two clicks? Or are they only going to find them through luck, clicking around randomly through your menus (which is unlikely with today’s fondness for instant results) or a Google search that directs them straight to that page?Letting your readers and Google know what the most important and valuable pages on your website are is what creating cornerstone content is all about. Here we take a look at what it is, why it’s so important for SEO, and how to implement a strategy to make the best possible use of it. Putting your best foot forward An excellent example of a high-value post that could get overlooked by a new visitor is a particularly informative blog post you wrote several years ago. If a new visitor lands on your homepage and clicks on your blog, they’d likely have to scroll down and click through to ‘older posts’ multiple times before they get anywhere near this page – and as the saying goes, ain’t nobody got time for that!These top performers are your cornerstone or ‘evergreen’ content. Like the architectural term, the cornerstone is the foundation that all other parts are positioned against and aligned with.The idea is to get all those top performers in one place where they can dazzle your readers and have them coming back again and again. By fleshing out your cornerstone content page into an unusually lengthy post, you're creating a veritable treasure trove of useful information for your readers which they can use to easily access all the other content on your site that may interest them. In just one page, it gives them an overview of everything your site has to offer, with enough information to brief them on what each section is about while leaving them hungry for more – which you will supply with just one easy click. A rose by any other name Cornerstone content goes by quite a few monikers. Evergreen content, long-form content, massive value posts, pillar articles… whatever you call them, they're the content that keeps on giving. It’s the kind of content that remains relevant (either because it covers unchanging facts, goes into exceptional detail, or because you regularly update it) no matter when the reader discovers it. And, of course, it’s the kind of content that gets you noticed and rewarded by Google because so many visitors find it useful and spend time reading it. Speaking of which… Why Google loves cornerstone content Google uses many metrics to measure the value of a particular page and decide where it deserves to rank in their search results. Which keywords are used, how often and where is just one of the factors their algorithms take into consideration. How much time a user spends on a page before clicking away is a good indication of whether that page answers their query or not. A page which consistently gets clicked away from in just seconds is clearly not answering the user’s question and will quickly see its ranking for that search term drop. Whether the page loads quickly and how it’s linked internally to the rest of your website are also considerations.Great cornerstone content can also help you take on keywords that have a lot of competition and would normally be pretty hard to rank for. Cornerstone content strategy When you're building a new website, structuring your site around a few major keywords (generally two to five, depending on the nature of your niche) is a good place to start. For each of those keywords, you want one fat, juicy cornerstone article that links out to smaller posts which discuss a certain aspect in more detail. If you're relatively new to SEO and aren’t yet sure what keywords you should be aiming for, get a good SEO company on board at this point to help you identify them.Whenever you write a new article, it should tie back to its corresponding cornerstone piece. Aside from making it easy for your readers to navigate to the topics they're most interested in, it also lets Google know this page is important and will increase its chances of ranking in searches.If you have an existing website, you can take the same approach and work backward. Pick the top three to five pages you’re the proudest of and want your visitors to see the most – those will become your cornerstone pieces. Going forward, make sure new posts tie back to their cornerstone piece and start updating older pages systematically to do the same.One of the awesome things about cornerstone content is that although it’s one of the best ways to improve your site’s SEO, it’s not very technical - so anyone who can build their own website can take advantage and get the rankings they deserve.Read Also:5 Things You Are Not Checking In SEO But You Should! 5 Inexpensive Tips On How To Scale Your SEO Business

READ MOREDetails
Search Engine Optimization

Vancouver Search Engine Optimization Agency Helps Your Digital Marketing and SEO Efforts

The technique of organizing the content of a website in accordance with the themes it covers in order to increase the chance of the website being shown in search results is known as an SEO strategy.Simply put, SEO is the process of enhancing a website's visibility in search engines in order to attract more visitors via unpaid, natural means.Developing an SEO strategy is essential since doing so keeps you on track when it comes to the production of content. If you follow your plan, you'll be able to provide content that more closely matches what people are really looking for than what you would assume they want.An SEO plan is crucial for internet marketing since it gets your content discovered, especially in SERPs (SERPs). Because of the material on your website, search engine crawlers will have a more difficult time indexing the site, finding out what your area of expertise is, and ranking the web pages.If your content is not well structured and scattered over several locations, it will be considerably more difficult for search engine bots to crawl and index it.Mobile Search Engine Optimization Tactic And StrategyWhen creating your overall strategy, allow iias Vancouver SEO to make mobile SEO a priority. Mobile optimization is the technique of making sure that your website and its content are readily available to anyone who accesses the internet using mobile devices. This lets mobile browsers participate like web browsers and earn the same benefit.Mobile search engine optimization is very necessary these days as a result of Google's emphasis on mobile-friendly content when indexing websites. 61% of U.S. Google searches are done on mobile devices. Your approach to search engine marketing will be unsuccessful if you do not give mobile optimization a high priority.Mobile SEO is not a stand-alone procedure, but it does include a lot of factors, such as tracking page performance, using an adaptable website builder, optimizing for search engines, and producing high-quality content that can be seen on any device.What Exactly Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?Search engine optimizers, or SEOs, work to boost a site's visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) and, in turn, the volume of free, organic traffic it receives.An SEO specialist is nothing more than a content strategist with a very high level of expertise that assists companies in locating possibilities to address customer concerns about their particular sectors. An optimizer for search engines works in a capacity similar to that of a content strategist (SEO).It Is Possible For An SEO Consultant To Choose To Concentrate On Any One Of The Following Three Aspects Of SEO:On-page Search engine optimization (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimiz) (SEO) is a kind of service that focuses on the content that appears on the web pages of a website and examines whether or not that content can be enhanced to raise the ranking of a website for certain keywords.Off-page SEO is a kind of SEO strategy that depends on links from other websites that point to a certain webpage in order to increase that webpage's search engine rankings. When it comes to search engine optimization, building trust may be aided by increasing the number of high-quality backlinks that lead to your website.The term "technical SEO" refers to a kind of search engine optimization that focuses mostly on the backend infrastructure of a website, such as a site code. You may learn more about the technical aspects of SEO and how SEO optimization is defined by clicking here. This position is very important for ranking since Google places equal importance on a website's technical framework as it does on the content it publishes.Please keep in mind that every business has its own unique goals and objectives, but it is the job of an SEO to evaluate the company's industry, determine the issues that are most important to the audience the company is trying to reach, and devise a strategy that will help that audience discover what they are searching for.The Content Strategy, Which Is What Makes Search Engine Optimization WorkTrace the various motifs and write them down.Construct a collection of long-tail keyword sentences using the aforementioned subjects as the foundation for your work.Make sure that each of the topics has its own separate page that is devoted to it.Start a blog about your business.Establish a regular schedule for the publication of fresh material on your blog and stick to it.Create a strategy for the establishment of links.Before you submit any media assets to your website, you need to compress them beforehand, particularly if you want to use them in any capacity.Always make sure you are up to speed on the most recent developments and best practices in the SEO market.Find out how well your content is doing, and make sure you continue to analyze its development.Create a list of every single one of the recurrent themes.The use of keywords is not the initial step toward achieving organic growth as much as it formerly was. Click here to read more about keywords. Keywords are an important part of SEO services. Instead, prepare a list of subjects you wish to cover. This should be the first step that you take.SEO ReportAn SEO report is a synopsis of your search engine marketing activities over a certain time frame. It shows your accomplishments and places where you may improve. Google offers various free SEO website checks to verify your site doesn't contain faults that might lose you revenue. Click here for Google's SEO Checker to learn how to improve your site's rankings.Additionals:The Top SEO Tools for 2021The Beginner’s Guide to Small Business SEOBest SEO Practices Melbourne Businesses Should FollowSEO Agencies Are the Experts at Improving Your Website Content

READ MOREDetails
Seo Auditing

5 Services Including Seo Auditing That You Should Know!

Running an SEO audit is essential, and it will flag any issue which your website has.Low speed and security issues are the two main types of issues you can face. An SEO Auditing service is an in-depth evaluation, and one can analyze the strengths and weaknesses of any website from a technical and a marketing perspective.SEO auditing is the first step toward creating an implementation plan that will have measurable and long-lasting results.Following are the five services, including the SEO Auditing service, that you should know-1. Technical SEO auditing service.The technical SEO auditing service is the one that helps optimize each webpage of your site for performing better in the organic search.Your site is a blueprint of your services and a complex web page network. Thus, the webpages should follow Google guidelines to help you improve the overall performance in the search. An SEO audit uses tools such as Google Search Console to find notifications, updates, and errors on your on-page SEO.2. Keyword research services.The process in which the user researches popular search terms people type into search engines is called keyword research. A keyword is a shorter set of words that SEO incorporates into your site to lure visitors. Targeting the right kind of keywords is very important. When you target the right keywords, it improves on-page optimization and also ensures that your content is aligned with the goals you have set for SEO.The keyword research services will highlight the company, competitors, and target audience. 3. On-page SEO services.On-page SEO is a thorough process of optimizing the website pages to improve ranking and user experience. The on-page SEO focuses on the website features you can control. One should always stay updated with all the latest and best practices for maximizing your visibility in search. It is very crucial to identify and correct the on-page factors as they will have a very significant and positive impact on your rankings.4. Penalty recovery services.When your website does not follow the search engine guidelines, website penalties do tend to occur. Penalty recovery services are a very important aspect of SEO Auditing services. Penalties happen for two main reasons- flagging your site in the process and because the search engine updated its algorithm.The backlink auditing services have the authority to determine the root cause of the penalty and find a remedy to get your website back on track. The links prove to be a very significant ranking factor, and when you receive a penalty, it can lead to a sudden and drastic drop in the organic search rankings. The SEO auditing service team will identify the low-quality links which come to your site.5. Traffic loss assessment and recovery services.When you encounter any kind of penalty, algorithm update, or technical issue, the SEO auditing service team will get to the main cause of the issue, and thus, you will win back the traffic you deserve; the service team checks the usability of the site and also sends a report based on the findings.Read Also:The Best WordPress Plugins For MarketersWhy Is An SEO Services Company Better Than Others?Utilizing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Boosting Web Traffic

READ MOREDetails