While the actual ranking factors in Google’s algorithm are widely opaque, through research we can draw conclusions that drive the strategy of our industry. Constant research is essential. I have set out to look at ‘traditional local SEO factors’ vs. ‘new local SEO factors’, in a large sample.

Recently, I conducted the following research.

Question:

Does a local SEO optimized landing page, associated with a local listing, impact ranking?

Method:

Crawl listing data for 350 listings, across 5 engines, analyze traditional factors associated with good ranking, ie: citations, photos, consistent NAP, also look at newer local SEO ranking factors such as ‘local optimized landing pages’. This was largely made possible by Collin Holmes at Chatmeter.com, we’ve been working very closely to gather and analyze upwards of 20k rows of data, in the last month (not all for this test).

Findings:

Completeness of Data: Match Score of 7, ‘exact match’ ranks higher and averages more citations.

While this shows that you need to have complete and consistent information, for Google this seems to be less important than it is for the rest of the group. Since Google is usually a leading indicator for change, lets dig into what is more important to Google.

While this isn’t a huge leap in ranking, it does suggest that having an optimized destination URL is becoming a more important factor for local SEO.

The lines between local and general search are blurred, and now on many searches, merged. Can we expect SEO not to integrate too; the answer is no.

In my next post I’ll be looking at the anatomy of a merged search engine results page, and how it’s making local searchers more social.

For more updates on things ‘local seo’ follow me on twitter @localsearchguy and as always follow DAC on Twitter to stay up to date on all things SEO. Or contact us to find out more!