Local Business Ranking Factors: How to improve the rank of your local listing?

If you run a local business and want to grow your business's online presence, you must optimize your business's local listing. When a person searches for something like "salon near me," he or she gets listings of several nearby businesses. But the question is, which business will appear first and which will appear later? This ranking depends on several factors.

In this article, we will discuss the important factors that affect the ranking of your local listing and how you can improve your listing.

1. Relevance

Relevance is a major ranking factor. It simply means how relevant your listing is to the user's search query. For example, if a person is searching for a "male salon," salons that cater to men will be prioritized. If your salon only provides services for women, then your ranking will be after those salons that provide services for men.

What to do: Mention in your profile and description what services or products you offer. This will make your profile more relevant.

2. Complete Profile

A filled profile helps a lot in improving your ranking. When you create your profile on Google or any other local listing site, make sure that all the necessary information is filled, such as business name, address, phone number, and services.

What to do: Use your keywords at the right place in the profile and make sure that no information is incomplete. Your profile should be complete and updated.

3. NAP Consistency

It is very important to mention NAP i.e. Name, Address, and Phone Number correctly and accurately. It has also been seen that some people avoid sharing their phone number, but having a phone number is extremely important so that customers can contact you easily.

What to do: Mention the name, address, and phone number correctly in your profile. Always keep the phone number updated and make sure it is easily found.

4. Verified Listing

Google or other listing sites verify your business profile. This is another important ranking factor. A verified listing is considered more reliable and gets priority in higher rankings.

What to do: Make sure your listing is verified. Platforms like Google provide you with a process for verification, by following which you can verify your listing.

5. Popularity

Popularity also affects your ranking. It mainly depends on how many people are physically visiting your shop or business. Google can track your location to know how many people are visiting your business.

Apart from this, ratings and reviews play an important role in increasing your popularity. The more positive reviews you have, the better your ranking will be.

What to do: Try to get honest reviews from your customers and take care of their satisfaction so that they can give good ratings about your services.

6. Distance

Distance is also an important factor. If a person is sitting far away from your business, then your business will rank low in his search. Businesses that are closer to that person get priority first.

What to do: There is not much that can be done for this, but you can get ahead of close competitors by improving your business information and reviews.

Conclusion

Apart from the above ranking factors, there are many other factors, such as on-page SEO, backlinks, etc. But the most important thing is that you always keep your profile updated and verify your listing.

Pay attention to these factors to improve the ranking of your local listing and increase the visibility of your business. If you want to learn more about digital marketing, be sure to follow our Local SEO course.

Other useful tips:

• Use the right keywords in the profile.
• Manage ratings and reviews.
• Keep your NAP data accurate everywhere.

Note: The purpose of this article is to explain how you can improve your local business's online listing.