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Local SEO: Ranking Factors Explained
SEO should be simple. In this email we break down the primary ranking factors you need to know.
Andy Walker
April 25, 2024
Local SEO: Ranking Factors Explained
Welcome to The Home Service Marketer newsletter.
In today’s newsletter, we will cover local SEO ranking factors.
It is approximately a 6-minute read.
Google Reviews & Why They Matter
What you need to know: As an owner-operator, your top priority should be generating Google reviews. This is the single most needle-moving activity you can do to help your rankings improve.
Why Reviews Matter: Good review generation alone can improve your rankings. Why? Google needs a way to identify businesses that are actively servicing the community. How can they identify that? By the frequency of review generation.
Think about it this way: There are thousands of dead profiles online. Google wants to optimize its user experience and ensure it shows businesses that are active and open. This is a key indicator for them to differentiate active businesses from dead businesses.
How to do it
Ask for Reviews: Implement a process where you ask for a review after service completion. This can be through an automated SMS/email sequence or in person.
Make it Easy: Give customers the direct link to leave a review. Even better, leave them a business card with a QR code that links directly to leave a review. The fewer steps it takes to leave a review, the better.
Monitor & Analyze: Analyze what generates the most reviews, whether in-person requests or automated flows and identify the winner.
Links of the day:
Generate review link: (link)
Scaling a Pest Control Company: (link)
Abandon Cart Email Flows: (link)
Inspiration: (link)
Deep Dive: Ranking Factors Decoded
From the ground up, your Google business profile being verified, active, and optimized is the minimum to get started. This is your base and should be the top priority when starting.
Relevancy signals are paired with the profile. These signals vary from the business's name, listed services, business description, and the content written in reviews. The more you have this content centered around your primary services and locations, the better.
Review signals, as discussed above, are equally important as all of these aspects play together. We have seen a junk removal in Indianapolis transform from an average map pack ranking of 15 to the top 5 after generating 90 reviews in under two months.
On-page signals are the content on your website. Your goal is to balance user experience and what is needed for local SEO. When Google crawls your website they will be looking for three things: the name of your business, the services offered, and the locations you service. Provide the algorithm with the information it wants.
Backlinks are how you build credibility and authority. This is the peak of the pyramid. This is how you increase competitiveness and separate yourself from competitors in the long run. But you shouldn’t do this with just any backlinks. You need to ensure that you are generating high quality contextual backlinks.
How I can help you:
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