Local Search Ranking Factors 2020: What Affects Local Rankings?

Ranking for local searches requires focus on a combination of different local SEO ranking factors. With Google’s local algorithm relying on so many different signals, it can be hard to know where to spend your time to maximize your chances of ranking highly.

Getting a local business to rank highly on search engines is becoming much more difficult. Local SEO has become increasingly competitive as more and more businesses recognize that they need to optimize for local searches – both for the local pack, and for localized organic rankings.

At Whitespark’s Local Search Summit in September 2020, Darren Shaw announced the initial findings of his latest Local Search Ranking Factors survey. This near-annual survey was first created by David Mihm over a decade ago, and polls around 50 local SEO experts, asking for their opinions on which activities and factors impact local business rankings. The previous edition was published�on Moz in 2018.

Contents

In this article, we’ll explore the most important ranking factors for local pack and localized organic rankings in 2020, based on the expert opinions collated in Whitespark’s report. We’ll explore how these have changed over time, looking at which tasks the experts think you should focus on over the coming year.

  1. Google My Business
  2. Reviews
  3. On-Page
  4. Links
  5. Behavior
  6. Citations
  7. Personalization
The Top Local Ranking Factors for 2020
Local Pack Local Organic
1. Google My Business (33%) 1. On-page (32%)
2. Reviews (16%) 2. Links (31%)
3.= On-page (15%) 3. Behavioral (10%)
3.= Links (15%) 4. = Personalization (7%)
5. Behavioral (8%) 4.= GMB (7%)
6. Citations (7%) 6.= Citations (6%)
7. Personalization (6%) 6.= Reviews (6%)

In the table above, you can see what Whitespark’s expert survey respondents said they believed were the most important ranking factors to local pack and localized organic results.

See below for what’s meant by Local Pack and Localized Organic results.

We’ll go into the individual factors in more detail below, after looking at how trends have changed over time. It’s my hope that this won’t just give you a snapshot of what impacts rankings in 2020, but where things might be headed, too.

If you’re looking to improve both types of local rankings, it may be useful to see how local pack and local organic factors look when combined as an average:

1. On-page optimization (24%)

2. Links (23%)

3. GMB (20%)

4. Reviews (11%)

5. Behavioral (9%)

6.= Citations (7%)

6.= Personalization (7%)

When planning your local SEO strategy, always bear in mind that different factors will require very different time investments, so it’s not as simple as reading these results and saying, “Okay, I’ll spend X% of my time on Xâ€.

Link building, for example, is a time-intensive and ongoing task, whereas a lot of work with reviews or citations can be automated or outsourced, freeing you up to focus on other factors.

Local Ranking Factors 2013-2020

Over time, Google’s local algorithm has changed significantly. Ensuring you’re doing the right thing for your clients requires ongoing attention and vigilance. If you work with local businesses, understanding this changing local environment is crucial.

The many factors that can affect rankings in the local pack (AKA local finder) are some of the most critical to local businesses, so any shifts in importance must be closely monitored.

Local Pack / Local Finder Ranking Factors Over Time

Google My Business has shot up in importance in local pack rankings ever since 2017, taking up more space proportionally as time has gone on, while links, citations, and behavioral signals all saw dips over time.

It’s worth noting that this year’s survey, unlike its predecessors, doesn’t track the impact of social signals on local rankings. Social signals have always been seen as having a very minor impact on local rankings, so it’s no surprise to see these dropped from the survey, but please note that this removal has allowed the experts to shift their voting power elsewhere.

How these areas are ordered in importance has remained broadly similar to previous years, meaning every discipline should still be accounted for in your strategy.

Local Organic Ranking Factors Over Time



from My RSS Feed https://bit.ly/3iWEZUl
via gqrds

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

5 Compelling Reasons to Adopt a Simple Brand Identity

Image
What is brand identity? First and foremost, a brand identity is how your company presents itself to customers. Another way you can define brand identity is to think of it as all the components that help people differentiate your business from competitors. Things like a color scheme, tone, logo, tagline, font, or even your most popular, signature products can all help build a lasting brand identity. Why does brand identity matter? As a local business, you may be asking yourself, “Why does brand identity matter to me?”. Perhaps you’ve already reached your goal of ranking in the local pack. But once you’ve reached that oh-so-coveted number one spot, what are you doing to make potential customers engage with your business? Without a clear brand identity you could leave searchers confused, alienated, and simply not wanting to take action on your listing. As I’ll explain later, with Google My Business spam on the rise, it’s more important than ever to stand out in local SERPs. Simple vs
Read more

5 Compelling Reasons to Adopt a Simple Brand Identity

Image
What is brand identity? First and foremost, a brand identity is how your company presents itself to customers. Another way you can define brand identity is to think of it as all the components that help people differentiate your business from competitors. Things like a color scheme, tone, logo, tagline, font, or even your most popular, signature products can all help build a lasting brand identity. Why does brand identity matter? As a local business, you may be asking yourself, “Why does brand identity matter to me?”. Perhaps you’ve already reached your goal of ranking in the local pack. But once you’ve reached that oh-so-coveted number one spot, what are you doing to make potential customers engage with your business? Without a clear brand identity you could leave searchers confused, alienated, and simply not wanting to take action on your listing. As I’ll explain later, with Google My Business spam on the rise, it’s more important than ever to stand out in local SERPs. Simple
Read more

Should You Fight for Featured Snippets in 2020?

Image
Since Google introduced featured snippets in 2014, “position zero” has been considered one of the most coveted spots in SERPs.  Featured snippets allowed websites to vie for extra traffic by appearing both at the top of organic search results and again in the top 10 results.  Or that was the case, until Google rolled out a deduplication update on January 22, 2020, ending the era of featured snippets as so-called “position zero”.  In an attempt to declutter SERPs and improve user experience, Google now won’t surface the same URL twice on page one. The first page of search results will show a featured snippet plus nine search results (instead of 10), and the featured snippet’s URL won’t reappear on page one.  Given that featured snippets receive around 8.6% of all clicks, while 19.6% of clicks go to the first search results beneath it, many webmasters and SEOs aren’t happy with the update and have actively discussed the option of opting out altogether using Google’s nosnippet ta
Read more