An excellent report on factors that affect rankings in local search was released today by David Mihm (davidmihm.com and @davidmihm). I was happy to participate as a contributor to the report, particularly with my interest in local search marketing and online customer reviews.
Please read the report yourself, but I wanted to just highlight the top 5 factors for ranking in local search, most of which had fairly good agreement between the contributors.
1. General importance of claiming Local Business Listing
2. Local Business Listing address in city of search
3. Proper Categorization of LBL
4. Product / service KWs in LBL title
5. Proximity to centroid
Two of these factors actually depend on the physical location of the business. The other three of these factors rely on getting and filling out a local business listing. Interestingly, none of these deal with on-page (website) factors!
Thanks David for an excellent resource for local search!
