Local SEO or Local Search Engine Optimization suggests a method or strategy used to make your business visible and reachable on Google. Also, done so to increase the visibility of the local search results.
A particular business of a specific area or geographic location can benefit by making their business easily visible on Google search results through local SEO. For example, suppose if you have a hotel in a particular area, you can add the details of your hotel on Google My Business. It will be visible on Google search results, thus making your business more reachable.
Google entities
According to Google, entities happen to be unique, singular, distinguishable, and well-defined concepts. Therefore, the entity can be anything in Google. A person, an object, a location, business, or anything remains considered an entity in Google.
When people on Google search about these entities, Google shows the search results of these entities. For example, suppose you search India on Google. In that case, it will show all the consequences related to India, starting from Google location and Wikipedia and all the latest news about India on the first page.
How are the entities ranked in Google?
Google ranks its entities on their relatedness, notability, contribution, prizes. Google ranks entities in consideration of these four factors.
· Relatedness
There is a mechanism called Word2Vec that allows Google to understand the concepts and words. This lets Google understand the interconnections of concepts and words. These concepts are understood through a vector graph, and their relations to one another are also determined.
Therefore, entities are a set of relations and not independent concepts.
· Notability
Another factor that determines the rank of entities is notability. An entity’s relative importance is notability. Since the popularity of the niches are different, one cannot compare links, mentions, and other global popularity metrics of entities in various niches.
Hence, a standard comparison metric can be received by dividing the entity’s popularity by the importance of its specific niche while adjusting the calculations.
· Contribution
The contribution emphasizes only a particular niche as it shows how much hold an entity has in its industry. External factors like reviews and ratings determine your entity.
· Prizes
Prizes or achievements such as awards make an entity a more valuable one. Thus, entities with more prizes are ranked higher in Google.
Local SEO ranking factors 2022
· Google My Business
Google My Business has been one of the top local SEO ranking factors, and it continues to be in 2022. Here your business is your entity which you can add on Google through Google My Business. For example, your business is Restaurant. You can add the details of your Restaurant, including the location, on Google. This will help the people searching for a Restaurant in your location, and it will help you expand your business as well.
However, make sure to add Keywords in your business title to make your business more visible and reachable to the audiences. Besides, make sure to enter the physical address of your location as well. Adding specific locations will be helpful and convenient to audiences, and your business will be more reachable.
Upload posts and photos and allow Q&A section also. Besides, keep the reviews and rating options open as well.
Verification in GMB is essential as it certifies your business as a credible one. Fill in all the necessary data and details about your business in the info section.
· Reviews
Google Reviews are crucial for any business type of services as maximum people come to Google to give and check reviews of any business or service. More reviews add more popularity to your business, thus making it rank higher on Google. Besides reviews and ratings, keywords on the review text are also a ranking factor.
· On-page Optimization
On-page SEO is another crucial factor for organic ranks or website ranking. The quality of the content is a significant factor for website ranking. To ensure the quality is maintained, the content must contain keywords. The frequent occurrence of keywords is a determining ranking factor as well. You can search the relevant keywords through keyword searcher software.
· Local Links
Local links are also very much a necessary factor in local SEO ranking. For local SEO, you need to get backlinks from other entities in the exact location. Other entities of your same location can be other businesses, partners, providers, customers, etc.
Besides, you can boost your entity with anchor text optimization as well. You need to build links with the anchor text optimization. The anchor texts are critical in reinforcing all the entity relations.
· Citations
Citation is also a very much necessary factor for local SEO ranking. Citation is when your business is mentioned on platforms other than your websites, such as social media, relevant business directories, and other such things. The mentions on other platforms eventually help to increase the rank of entities.
· Personalization
SERP personalization is still considered to be one of the local SEO ranking factors by Google. SERP personalization means the user’s language, location, and search history. These factors are meant for keeping track of your results. SERP results vary for different clients, and the visibility is also different among clients. To see the results on an average scale, you need to allocate your optimization efforts reasonably.
· Social Signals
Social signals are not as important as other factors for local SEO ranking. It has also been removed from surveys as other factors such as Reviews, Keywords, and GMB have acquired much importance over the years and continuously dominate the SEO ranking factors. However, though of very little help, it is still helpful for local SEO. Therefore, make your business active and reachable on social media.
· Behavioural signals
Behavioural signals are also believed to help improve your local rank. CTA buttons like direct call clicks, direct bookings, directions are some of the factors to make your entity easily reachable. The brand traffic is also increased with CTA.
· Proximity
Audiences get search results according to their location. Even if one searches the same entity from a different location in a city, the search results will vary location. So you need to track the results from different locations. Knowing the expectations of people location-wise will help you make your business more convenient for them.
Final Takeaway
These factors mentioned in this article are crucial for determining the local SEO rank of entities. Therefore, we can assume that local SEO ranking is based on entities and their relations.