Nowadays, most marketers and business owners understand how crucial SEO and Google ranking are for business success. To stay ahead of the game, it’s essential to keep up with the latest findings and strategies for local SEO.
This is where Whitespark, a leader in local marketing, comes in with its comprehensive annual report on the most important local SEO ranking factors. The 2023 report contains significant findings that can help businesses make informed decisions about their local SEO and ranking strategy for the year.
In this blog post, we’ll highlight some of the most critical findings from the report that can help you improve your local SEO and boost your Google ranking.
Local SEO: Be Aware
The businesses that use the Google Local Pack will appear alongside maps and other important information on the search results page when customers search for local businesses.
According to the Whitespark research, of all the ranking factors, some of the most important ones that can help get your business in the Local Pack include the business category, the name, and title of the company, proximity to the search point, and physical address in the city of the search.
The category of your Google My Business profile has a significant effect on the visibility of your company in the Local Pack. Make sure to choose a category that best represents your business. Also, integrating relevant keywords into your business name and title can significantly increase your visibility.
The closer your business is to the location of the search, the higher the chance of appearing in the Local Pack ranking. If your company doesn’t have an address in the city of the search, it will be challenging to appear in the Local Pack ranking.
Adapt Your Website
Above, we talked about the information you need to fill in Google My Business and in this topic we will focus on your website. The term organic, in the context of SEO, refers to traffic coming from search engines rather than paid ads or direct visitors. As organic searches are usually the most effective for businesses, the Whitespark study focused on understanding the factors most important for local organic search ranking.
Some key findings include the importance of having a dedicated page for services, internal links on the website, high-quality and authoritative inbound links, and geographic relevance of keyword content. These factors can help improve visibility in the local organic search ranking and drive more traffic to the website. However, it’s important to avoid overusing keywords and tactics like blackhat SEO that could harm the ranking.
SEO in Vancouver
So to sum up, to put all that we covered above into practice, follow the list below:
- Choose your Google My Business profile category carefully;
- Revam your website: create dedicated pages for each of your services and add more internal links to relevant pages;
- Incorporate geographical keywords into your content
- Earn high-quality backlinks
- Optimize your Google My Business profile
And if you need help with all these questions, as well as producing SEO-optimized content, please contact us. We serve several businesses in the Vancouver area and can help you with your digital strategy.