Each year David Mihm surveys local SEO junkies from all around to get their take on what the top local search ranking factors are. The 2011 list saw some new factors moving up the list.
2011 Most Important Ranking Factors to Focus On
- Physical Address in City of Search
- Manually Owner-verified Place Page
- Proper Category Associations
- Volume of Traditional Structured Citations (IYPs, Data Aggregators)
- Crawlable Address Matching Place Page Address
- PageRank / Authority of Website Homepage / Highest Ranked Page
- Quality of Inbound Links to Website
- Crawlable Phone Number On Website That Matches Place Page Phone Number
- Local Area Code on Place Page
- City, State in Places Landing Page Title
A few factors that crawled up the list include having a crawlable address on your website that matches the Place page address, PageRank/Authority of Website Homepage/Highest Ranked Page, having a local area code on Place page and including the corresponding City, State in Places landing page title tag. A new addition to the mix altogether is having a crawlable phone number on your website that exactly matches the phone number on the Place page.
Places search is constantly changing and evolving – it will be interesting to see how top ranking factors shift over the next year.