The folks over at Whitespark has published there 2023 local ranking factors study, where they asked dozens of local SEO experts to rank what they think are the most important ranking signals for local pack and organic local search rankings.
Of course, most SEOs know by now that these ranking studies are controversial, but I love reading them, so maybe you like reading them too?
The top factors according to this study and the experts, specific to local pack rankings, are:
- Primary Google Business Profile category
- The keywords in your business name/title
- Proximity to searcher
- Physical address in the city of search
- Removal of spam listings through spam fighting
There is a whole list of data you can expand and see more.
And for the top factors for organic local rankings in general:
- Dedicated pagr for each service
- Internal linking across website
- Quality/authority of inbound links to domain
- Geographic keyword relevancy of content
- Keywords in Google Business Profile landing page title
You can check out the full study over here.
Forum discussion at Local Search Forum.
