First, to clarify, let's answer this question: "What are local SEO ranking factors?"

This is the name given to all the technical work done to improve the rankings of the website in the organic results of search engines. Local SEO, on the other hand, allows a business to provide additional information about its location and make it more visible in organic searches. Your presence in local searches is vital for gaining new business and customers.

To search well in local rankings, you need to provide the location and other information on the website and add your keywords to your page. For example, it allows your business to be visible to a user searching for "Milan Pizza." In local rankings, users use rankings that determine their geographical location, such as province, county, or zip code. Google locates the geographic region the user is searching for and aims to deliver the best results "soon."

Local SEO is extremely important for regional service companies. A homeowner with broken plumbing is likely to find the plumber that he will get support from by searching on search engines, and if you are in these search results, he is likely to choose you.

*In a study by Forbes magazine, 95% of smartphone users use their phones to make local calls, and 60% result in a visit.

* Again, a review by SearchEngineWatch states that 70% of mobile users contact a business in the search results they perform on Google with their mobile phones.

These statistics show how important "Local SEO ranking factors" studies are. Internet usage is increasing day by day in every aspect of our lives, and people who want to get service on a subject prefer Google search engine as a reliable source. This situation continues to increase day by day. Being visible to your potential customers about the product you serve in your location means you will have a high conversion rate.

How to Do Local SEO? What are the Ranking Factors?

The inclusion of your business in local searches isn't just about being close by. Websites that rank high in local searches reach these positions through various studies.

First of all, you need to have a Google My Business (GMB) account.

Google My Business determines the ranking of businesses in local results based on some criteria. Now let's talk about the answer to this question "What are the most important local SEO ranking factors?"

1. Relevance

The Google algorithm determines relevance with GMB, and the account you create allows users to recognize how relevant you are to the product they're looking for.

Some Points You Should Consider When Opening Your Account:

*Category Selection: Google understands which service your business offers through the selected categories. It is important to set the "Primary Category" selection correctly. It is possible for you to offer other services that you offer in the "Additional categories" section.

*Job Description: It is possible to provide up to 750 words of information in the description field of your business while creating your business profile. Try to use all of this area and use your keywords related to your services in this area.

*Business Information: When creating your profile, make sure you have created your name, address, phone number, and all other information completely and correctly.

2. Distance

Google tends to show the closest businesses to the locations users are searching for in local rankings, and this is one of the most important ranking factors. Creating location-based pages on your website can increase your relevance. Consider the following criteria when opening these pages:

*First of all, identify keywords that are suitable for your target audience and have a high search volume and use these keywords. Use the "service area + city name" structure. For example, "Burger Shop Meats."

*Create keyword-focused pages.

*Include these keywords in the page title, content, and meta descriptions.

*Add your company name, address, and phone number to these pages.

3. Severity

It is the most important factor where you can gain a competitive advantage in local searches. To increase the severity, do the following:

*Photos: Adding a photo of Indoor, Outdoor, Team, Identity, and similar areas in your GMB profile will help your potential customers gain more confidence in your business. Be sure to offer more photos than your competitors.

*Comments: Comments are the most important! Both users and Google value comments very much. Ask your customers who prefer your business to rate you and comment on you. This will greatly impact users seeing your business for the first time and will contribute positively to your position.

*Links to Your Site: Links to your website from other sites are among the most well-known criteria that increase your page's authority and search visibility. Earn links about your company from other websites. At this point, search local news and content sites.

For example, if your location is in Baku, getting a link to Baku news from a web page will be more beneficial than other websites since it has a web page about your location.

Aim for Excellent SEO Using These Ranking Factors.

Ranking signals guide those who spend time on SEO to achieve excellence. Ranking on SERPs isn't about the latest and greatest tips and tricks. Being perfect means a more comprehensive, sophisticated SEO strategy for better performance now and going forward.

Local SEO Strategy

SEO or Search Engine Optimization includes very effective complex techniques and strategies for the long-term success of your company. All these will be reflected in your sales with a continuous upward momentum in the future. Most companies begin to understand the serious impact and importance of SEO at this time. Because he started not to observe the effect himself. If you want to get good results with your in-house work without spending too much, these local SEO Strategies to Increase local Rankings are for you. Let's examine the following;

1 - Have a Complete Description and Meta Tag on Pages

Description and meta tags always play an important role in SEO. Google has included title tags in this as well. Make sure these criteria are automatically added to all your content. In fact, check, especially when adding content. Having the same meta tag and description on every page would be a serious mistake because this is defined as duplicate content and causes your website to lose ranking. Content title tags, on the other hand, should be eye-catching and encouraging to read.

2 - Increase Your Website Speed

Increasing the page load speed is very important to ensure this when it comes to the performance of your website. Remember, it's always good to have a fast-loading website so that your site will load in 2-3 seconds or less. Speed ​​performance is a very important criterion that affects rankings.

3 - Latent Semantic Indexing

Suppose you want a website that can be easily found by Google bots and users and always pushes the top rankings. In that case, you should definitely use the LSI, Latent Semantic Indexing feature: it is a critical and effective method that detects the semantic relationship between the words the user uses in the search and similar word variations related to them and presents it to the user.

Local SEO Tips

Success in SEO work is measured by ranking high in search queries. The peak in SEO is to rank 1st in the relevant keyword search. Thanks to the following tips we will give you to get good rankings in Google searches, you can improve your rankings by making various adjustments. The main reason we do SEO studies focusing on Google is that 94% of searches made worldwide are made through Google.

Since there is a possibility of manipulation of search results, Google officials make an average of 500 algorithm updates per year. While informing about major updates, which are considered kernel updates, there are also many updates that it does not inform.

1. Get to Know the Ranking Algorithm

Knowing the update types in the kernel update class will ensure that the sorting algorithm is well known. Other updates will not be adversely affected if nothing is done against the algorithms included in the main kernel updates. The most important algorithm updates you should focus on are as follows.

Penguin: this is an update that we first encountered in April 2012. This algorithm change targets sites that buy unnatural links to get good rankings.

Panda: It is an algorithm change made to ensure that users access quality content. Panda update specifically targets websites with spammy content.

Mobile compatibility: An algorithm change was first made in April 2015. After the mobile compatibility update, the websites that were not opened for every device lost their ranking in the search results. It is an algorithm change made to increase the user experience.

Hummingbird: this algorithm change is undoubtedly more extensive than the others. It has been developed to understand the intent of the searcher rather than the search terms made. It was first held in August 2013.

2. Check Site Speed

With the algorithm changes made, site speed became an essential ranking factor in 2018. A website can't rank well if its loading speed is low.

Identify the factors that cause the website loading speed to be slow and work to ensure that the page load speed is under 4 seconds. You can find out which parts of your website cause the loading speed to decrease through the Google Lighthouse tool. 

3. Do Competitor Analysis

We will also use Google Keyword Planner when doing competitor analysis. This time, instead of entering keywords, we enter the article URL of the websites to rank in the main keyword.

When we enter the URL of the competitor content in the keyword planner, the system will inform us about the words and phrases from which the relevant article received organic traffic.

In line with the word suggestions made, we make article arrangements according to our competitors' keywords and increase our content and site quality score. You should know that this criterion will allow you to make the best ranking improvement among what we have discussed so far.

This article we have prepared about local SEO checklists will help you to improve your SEO strategy and get high results.