Scottsdale SEO: Everything You Need to Know ABout Local SEO Factors

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Local SEO is incredibly valuable for small businesses everywhere. While the main organic listings may be out of reach for many businesses, the map listings are available to every business who has their local SEO in order.

The trouble is that local SEO has experienced tremendous change over the last few years. Ranking factors have changed considerably and there are a host of new features for business owners to get their hands on. Understandably, this has left many business owners feeling lost and confused. Here at Scottsdale SEO, we are experts at local SEO. We have helped dozens of businesses get excellent rankings and we can help you do. Today, let us explain what’s important when it comes to local SEO and what you need to focus on.

There are several major ranking factors when it comes down to local SEO. Here they are in order of importance:

  • Google My Businesss
  • Links
  • Reviews
  • On-page SEO
  • Citations

The weight that Google gives to each of these factors is constantly changing, so make sure to optimize them all if you are serious about ranking locally.

Google My Business

If you’ve looked on Google My Business recently, you will have seen that Google has added a host of new features. You should use as many of these as you can. But whatever you do, make sure that you have every single field in your Google My Business profile filled out and that the information on your profile is accurate and up to date. If you don’t do anything else, do this. It is the single biggest thing you can do for your local SEO.

Reviews

Reviews are getting more and more important as time goes by. That means that getting more reviews, better reviews, and more Google reviews, in particular, is very, very, very important. If you’ve got your Google My Business page sorted, the next thing you should focus on is getting more reviews for your business. Don’t be scared to try and get other reviews such as Yelp and Tripadvisor reviews, if applicable, too. Finally, make sure that you are responding to every review that is posted about your business, good or bad. This is a great way to build rapport with your customers and it also shows Google that you are an engaged business worth ranking.

Links

Just like normal SEO, links are very important for local SEO. Today, they are more important than ever. They are hard for small businesses to get but the good news is that very few small businesses are trying. That means if you can get just a handful of good links you can get a real boost to your rankings.

Get the help you need

Local SEO may seem straightforward but it can be very tough. There are all sorts of complications and issues that can arise during optimization. You need an expert to troubleshoot any issues and make sure you are on track to getting great local rankings.