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Local SEO is a fickle beast. Not only do you have to worry about traditional SEO around a businesses website, but you also have to worry about a search engine’s local signals like Google My Business, citations, and reviews. This creates a real challenge:
This problem is particularly acute with multi-location national brands and Local SEO agencies. While we love Moz’s ranking factors survey (Andrew and I have been participants) and think industry experts have much to say about the future of search, we wanted to provide an empirical look at a scale relevant to national to local brands as well as Local SEO agencies.
We took a page out of the quantitative analysis that Moz and Search Metrics perform around traditional organic ranking factors and teamed up with Places Scout, one of the best local competitive intelligence tools around, to get the data that made all of this possible.
We looked at three variations of eight keywords across 100 different cities. We think this type of query-set encompasses the core of the most common local searches. More details on our methodology can be found on the Methodology page.
To bring real academic rigor to the Local Search space, we partnered with The University of California Irvine’s Center for Statistical Consulting to conduct an objective statistical analysis with rigorous academic. We are honored to partner with statisticians Megan Smith and Marija Pejcinovska who performed the statistical tests and endured countless discussions on SEO strategy and local search optimization.
Remember, these factors aren’t the “Truth” of how Google orders local search results. Rather they show the factors that high ranking GMB pages tend to have. This data, combined with a working understanding of Google search and Local SEO, can hopefully lead SEO’s and business owners to better prioritize their most precious resources, time and money.
“Dan and the team at LocalSEOguide have done some great work attempting to bring some clarity & discipline to an otherwise opinion based and myth rife topic, local search ranking factors. While correlation studies can never elucidate causal affects, particularly in an era of machine learning, they can provide real and solid clues where to look.”
– Mike Blumenthal
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Since Pigeon rolled out in 2014, Local SEO’s have been saying that traditional SEO signals, like links, rather than traditional local ranking factors like a business listing, will become more important in the Local SEO space… And now we have the data to prove it! It looks like links are the key competitive differentiator even when it comes to Google My Business Rankings. Interestingly, of all the proprietary metrics we looked at, Majestic’s are killing it. The data shows that AC Rank, Trust Flow, and Citation Flow are all top 10 link metrics, so if you need to look at the domain authority of a website we would recommend giving Majestic a try.
Several website signals showed a strong likelihood of influencing Google My Business performance. Keyword Usage and Words on Page, very traditional organic ranking signals, show that, despite claims that Google is moving to new and more sophisticated ranking methods, keyword usage and user engagement still matter. While we’ll always recommend relevant, well-written landing pages, it may be that just piling on more words could be enough to push you up.
The relatively poor performance of Citations may seem controversial, but we think it makes a lot of sense. Business listings aka citations are more or less a commodity at this point, so for competitive searches and in competitive markets, they are a poor differentiator between businesses. We have done studies that show citation consistency can be a key factor to getting you into a local 3-pack – so don’t ignore them – but the “strength” or volume of citations sources just doesn’t seem to matter as much. Get your business information aka NAP (Name, Address and Phone Number) cleaned up and move on as fast as you can to higher value work.
Google My Business (GMB) signals had a strong showing. Things like native Google Reviews and Photos and having an Owner Verified (OV) profile correlated with positive GMB performance. Despite Profile Views being a big winner in the data, we think it underscores that correlation is not causation. After all, if you are ranking well, it’s likely more people will view your profile. Next year’s version of the study should be able to better demonstrate the myriad ways in which positive reviews, and their content, may or may not influence GMB rankings. That said, the Categorical Variables below show some interesting correlation data for GMB factors.
We couldn’t resist taking a look at the effect of Toolbar Page Rank. Here’s what Google’s flak said earlier this year when they deprecated TBPR:
“As the Internet and our understanding of the Internet have grown in complexity, the Toolbar PageRank score has become less useful to users as a single isolated metric. Retiring the PageRank display from Toolbar helps avoid confusing users and webmasters about the significance of the metric.”
Funny how Google has gone out of its way over the years telling you to ignore TBPR yet the data shows it’s one of the top correlating link metrics. And if Google hasn’t updated TBPR in years, what does this say about the state of Local Linkbuilding?
Categorical variables show how often a factor fit into one of two categories (primarily yes and no). For example, a Google My Business profile either had the keyword in the business name (yes) or it didn’t (no).
Far and away the most powerful factor in this list is Organic Rank. If you rank 1-10 in organic Google search results, you are much more likely to rank 1-10 in Google My Business results as well. If you were unpersuaded by the link data, hopefully, this section will convince you that the organic results, and the organic algorithm, plays a heavy role in ranking GMB results. Another interesting note, having your physical address in the city of search seemed to impact rankings much less than I figured it would, whether this is because of the increase of proximity as a ranking factor or not, we will have to dig in deeper.
While it’s been a fact that having a keyword in your business name will help you rank higher in GMB searches, the data shows that Keyword in Business Name is the #2 most influential factor. In fact, if you have the keyword in your business name you will rank about 1.5 spots higher. It underscores the problems the Local algorithm has with keyword in name SPAM and sheds more light on why Google would want to incorporate more traditional organic ranking signals.
It is noticeable how poorly City & State in Title correlated with Google My Business search performance.
It has long been an assumption that using of city and state in <title> tags, in URLs and on page copy would influence how you ranked in those cities, but the data shows there is no statistically significant correlation with this tactic and increased Google My Business performance.
Since the link data was so overwhelming, we also wanted to look at if just having optimized anchor text (for both keyword and city) would have any impact. Lo and behold, it did. That means if you can just get one good link with optimized anchor text you should do it. Go on, what are you waiting for?
As mentioned before, a critical question that people often ask us is:
We think the data presented in this study offers a good starting point.
One of the things we wanted to do is attempt to roll-up all the data at the category level in order to understand what might make the most impact were you to invest in it.
If it were up to me, this chart is how I would prioritize my SEO time and dollars.
Make no mistake, there is some number voodoo happening here. Specifically, we double counted both Links and Website. We did this because we feel it’s pretty conclusive that both play a large role in influencing your Google My Business Rankings and they also affect your organic search rankings. The same cannot be said of Google My Business or Off-Site Local signals.
In case it wasn’t clear already, links dominated the quantitative analysis of local SEO ranking factors. When it comes to Local SEO in 2016, if you are not invested in links and your website, and instead focus predominantly on traditional Local SEO areas like Google My Business and citations then you are going to be at a competitive disadvantage. This may seem obvious to many Local SEOs, but when trying to justify large budgets the anecdotal evidence of a Local SEO practitioner won’t always get the check cut. We have been there, and so likely have you.
Now don’t misunderstand, in markets and verticals with less competition you can likely do fine with just the basics… For now. However, given this study it seems like Google is working on expanding the scope of what it takes to rank in local search.
– Houston Jayne, Marketing Director, Walmart.com
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Thanks for asking Houston! We are already in the process of planning for the 2017 Local SEO Ranking factors, and are planning to bring you even more data to help shed some light into Google’s black box. Also, we went an entire ranking factors post without talking about Possum 🙂
– Dan Leibson, Vice President Local & Product