We are going to continue discussing the factors that contribute to your Local Google Ranking per the study done for 2023. Today, we will discuss the second most important factor in getting you ranked highly in Google Local Search, and that is your On-page SEO signals which come in at 19% of the Google algorithm.
NAP - Name, Address, Phone Number
Let's discuss some of the most important pieces that you need to have in place to address this factor. First, you need to have the presence of what we call NAP. NAP stands for NAME, ADDRESS and PHONE NUMBER. You want to make NAP visible on your home page, your business name, your address, your physical street address and your phone number.
I understand some businesses can be remote out of a home office and you may not want to make that address public and that is okay. However, you want to have your NAP visible on your website. I tend to recommend to my customers to display it in the footer of your website, so that it carries across all the pages on the site, including blog entries. Other items that you need to spend particular attention on are keywords in your title tags, and to make sure that your Domain Authority is high.
Update Content
The process of optimizing your website has additional parts. Here are some additional items that you need to address. These updates will help you achieve a higher rank on Google Search and therefore get more traffic to your website. You should be updating the content on your website on a regular basis for example, changes in your industry or you may have new client success stories. You may be bringing in new products and or services to your customers. Plan to constantly be adding new content to your website. This will help signal to Google that you are a vibrant, alive and functioning business.
Website Structure
Make sure each page has a title tag, which includes the keyword for that page. The keyword is the relevant term that you want to communicate to the search engine for people to find.
You need create internal links within your website, meaning if you are on your homepage and you mentioned a keyword, you want to link from that keyword to the page that goes into more detail on that topic. You want to have accurate meta descriptions. A meta description is the summary of the page content that comes back in Google Search Organic results. You want to have the keyword included in the text and deliver a succinct, yet meaningful message to those who find you on Google Search.
Each page should be structures so that you have one H1 header, which is your primary header with the primary keyword, and then use your other header tags for subcategories. Google looks at this as a signal that these topics, these keywords, contained in your headers have a high level of importance.
You want to have keywords in the URLs of your pages, most websites just have an "/about us" in the URL. You should put something relevant to your business instead of "about us" in the URL. You still have "about us" on the page, but take advantage of that URL and include a keyword. Some examples might be "about roofing companies" or "about our dental practice", "about name of dental practice." Something like these examples will help signal to Google that this word, in these topics, are important to you.
You want to have images on your homepage and do not just stick images out on the site. You want to include keywords in what is called the "alt label" or "alt tag." When you add an image to your website, you will want to name the image with an appropriate term. Google can not see an image but it does read the tags in the title of your images.
You will want to make sure that your website is set up with the proper schema and that your page speed is fast. If your pages don not load quickly, statistically, it has been proven that people will click off your page and go to the next item that came back in the search results. You get what you pay for with website hosting. If you're paying $5 a month, $3 a month, you are not going to have good page speed. You need to have a good hosting service that can guarantee you good uptime and good page speed. You get what you pay for.
Keyword Research - Search Intent
The website content that you put out needs to match the search intent of what people are looking for with regard to your products and or services. You need to have some keyword research done to learn what people are looking for with regard to your niche. The higher the relevance of your content, the higher ranking that your web page will come back in search results.
That is a quick summary of the second most important factor in getting ranked on Google Local Search. The second ranked factor is On-page SEO and it comes in at 19%.
If you are interested in seeing how your business is doing in the eyes of Google, click here to receive a complimentary SnapShot Report.
