Many people struggle with understanding exactly how local SEO works and what Google’s strategy behind top search results is. However, although there’s a science and pattern to it, that doesn’t mean it’s difficult to grasp the concept.
In this blog post, we’re going to break down the algorithm that drives Google’s local ranking so that any of our readers, regardless of their experience with local SEO, can easily understand it. There are three basic things that you should know that will give you a better idea of what goes into local SEO.
However, before we dive into those things, I think it’s best if we quickly cover the basics of local SEO.
Local SEO is an advantage that allows businesses to promote their products and business to prospects and customers in a unique way. Search engines, to provide users with the correct search results, take many factors into accounts, such as links, local content, and more.
Many people don’t take the time to learn about local SEO and see what it can do for their business, and this is usually the biggest mistake they make with their company. Local SEO can be extremely beneficial for companies and be exceedingly useful in helping gain customers and prospects.
People are continually looking for businesses, and, usually, when they need something, they first turn to Google for help with finding it. If you can ensure that your business is the first one that pops up in their list of options, then you will have opened up a new door of opportunities for your business.
Trust me, if you want to get anywhere in the business world, you’ll need to take advantage of local SEO.
Relevance, proximity, and prominence are the three basics that make up local SEO.
Relevance is Google figuring out what businesses are most relevant to the search. It asks if the company is relative to what the searcher is looking for and if it has the attributes or sells what the searcher is looking for. So that means that Google is giving us all the businesses that are local and might be relevant.
This next part tends to be what confuses people: proximity. However, all proximity is ensuring that the business that is shown will be in a specific radius of where the searcher is. This is really what makes up the entire local SEO algorithm. If you search for something near you, Google will favor the businesses closer.
Now for the last factor that goes into local SEO: prominence. Let’s say that you want sushi. So, you pull your computer out and do a quick Google search: sushi near me. Now, if that were the case, Google would use the proximity to give you the closest sushi restaurants near you, based solely on location.
However, let’s say that, instead, you chose to search for sushi and then chose a specific location, maybe a town near you. Then Google would choose to favor the businesses in that particular location, even if they were further away from you.
There are many other variations of this search that can cause the algorithm to differ. If you were to search for the best sushi, you could get all the different restaurants at all different locations.
Local SEO is dependent on many different parts, and these all come into play to give you your search result. Local SEO is not always solely dependent upon location, and it’s essential always to remember this.
It’s always important to keep in mind as well that Key Medium and Running SEO always take into account local SEO factors.
We hope that this blog post has helped you to have a better understanding of not only what local SEO is but also how it works.
