A Few Tricks To Help You Master the Google Local Search Rankings

Getting Ranked Well in Google Local Results

Search for “Fort Myers plumber” or “Naples painter” in Google and the first thing you usually see is “Google local business results”. Because this is almost always the first thing that shows up when searching for a local business or service, it’s becoming critically important that a company be listed highly in the local results if they plan to capture leads.

Nobody except the Google Engineers know exactly how Google ranks local results or the organic results, making educated guesses is the best us common folk can do. Local search is still fairly new so there is no clear consensus amongst online marketing experts on how sites are ranked. However, there are some basic fundamentals that one should keep in mind when it comes to ranking well in local search:

1. Reviews – You’ll notice one thing about the results, all or most of them have reviews. Thing is, Google pulls reviews from many sites, not just the reviews on Google. For example, take a look at this. What you’ll notice is Google pulling results from a wide-range of review sources.

Moral of the story? Get reviews. Even if you have to offer your customers coupons or discounts, get those reviews!

2. Organic SEO – Many SEOs and online marketing experts believe that your organic search power also plays a role in the local search. The idea is that Google doesn’t want a site to be able to game the local results by using fake reviews. So by including natural rankings into the local search algorithm, Google is making it harder to game the local rankings.

3. Location – Location is very important and it’s something that can’t be controlled. When someone searches for something, Google knows where they’re at. It’s in Google’s best interest to show the searcher the listings which are the closest to his or her home.