How to Outrank 99% of Local Businesses on Google (SEO Tier List)

do you feel like you've done everything right but you're still not showing up where you want in the Google Map Pack local competitors who shouldn't be out ranking you are and every day you're not showing up right here you're losing out on a lot of money well in this video we're going to change that I'm going to rank the biggest local SEO ranking factors to show you exactly what you should be focusing on the most what's a waste of time and the number one thing that you can do to land yourself at the top of the map even if you were to ignore everything else and we're going to have some fun with this and put all 20 ranking factors into a tier list with these categories that I created must dos should dos good to haves do when there's time and wastes of time and trust me most business owners have the must do and the wastes of times completely backwards okay let's start with our first ranking Factor keywords in your business name so let's say say you're a small law office and you want to be found here for the phrase family law so this ranking Factor says you would have an easier time ranking if the name that you put into Google business profile was Walker and Associates family law rather than if your name was Walker and Associates legal the question is how much Edge does this change give you as it turns out it's pretty high so I would be tempted to put this in the a tier except for one thing you technically do have control over this but it would involve a legal name change of your business including on signage your website all those places because Google's rules are pretty clear that you can't just game the system and put whatever business name is going to help you the most has to be your real name or you can get penalized so I'll actually put this one in B tier and say you should do this if you can commit to doing it the right way and if it doesn't make your business name sound weird or spammy okay sticking with keywords this next one is putting your keywords in your landing page title so Google lets you link your business profile to your website usually that's going to be your homepage so that page you link to is called your landing page and if you include your keyword in The Meta title that shows up right here that's good for some ranking power and this one's pretty high too and since it's on your website under your control and it's pretty easy to take care of literally you just add the keywords after your business name I'm going to put this one in the a tier must do okay so next up we have positive Google reviews specifically we're talking about the quality of the star rating here not the number of reviews so now this would be really easy to say that you can't really control it so don't worry about it but the truth is you should be working to get five star reviews as much as possible in your business not only do people need to see them before they're going to you know choose to work with you but Google does does use the average number of starss you get as a fairly big ranking Factor so encourage customers to leave a review or at least just a star rating preferably right after you've worked together that's when they're the most likely to do it so you can't control the reviews you get but you can definitely stack the deck in your favor so I'm putting this one into B tier okay so now let's talk about the quantity of reviews with text it's the age-old question of quality versus quantity the good news here is that the quality of your reviews meaning how high the average star rating is is a slightly higher ranking Factor than how many reviews you get but you should still be shooting for as many as possible and as many five stars as you can get so this one also gets a b from me but slightly under the last one okay so now let's talk about your physical location specifically how close your address is to to the center of the city that you want to rank in Google generally likes to show people the businesses that are either closest to them or closest to the city center so let's say you run a sushi restaurant in Seattle if I'm here at home in Chicago but I know I'm planning a trip to Seattle and I search sushi in Seattle I'm not close enough to any of the restaurants for them to show me what's closest to me so they default to showing me what's closest to the center of the city and in case you're wondering where the center is just Google the city name and the center is where that city name shows up on the map so in terms of how valuable it is to be there I won't lie it is a factor but it's one you can't really control unless you literally move there so just from a practicality standpoint I'm giving this one a c okay how about this one social signals so if you post a lot on Instagram or you have a ton of engagement on Facebook does that help you you rank unfortunately this is a really common myth not that social media is a complete waste of time it definitely has marketing value right but it won't help you rank so for that reason it is going in the f-tier all right next up so Google Business lets you put services in your profile but should you also have a dedicated page on your website for each service you provide I certainly would not just to be able to be found for each service in organic non-map Google searches but as it turns out having these pages also helps your map rankings too it's just an above and beyond signal to Google that helps them line up what you put in your profile with what you say you offer on your own website so I will be putting this one in B tier and we definitely still have some of the most important stuff to take care of coming up that a tier is looking a little empty right now so let's keep going okay so let's just knock out the next couple of location factors first we have how close you are to the Searcher so remember Google likes to show people businesses closest to the person searching for it and this is a really touchy subject right especially if you're more of a service business like a plumber that travels out to your customers or you just work remotely at home like if you're a graphic designer and you know it shouldn't matter how close you are to your clients unfortunately Google still treats every business more or less like a restaurant and just wants to show them their closest option all else being equal and you really have no control over this one right so with City Center you could in theory move closer to that area but there's just no way to be closest to every single Searcher so this one is a true C tier for me so let's say that you're in that service business category you know they do let you set up your service area where you can list out all the city or zip codes or even states that you serve your clients in now this should help you rank within that area right this is a really common myth so here's the deal you should set this because it tells your clients who find you that you can work with them where they live but unfortunately it does not help you rank within the area you specify not even a little bit so this one gets an f and the next location factor is just being physically located in the city that you want to rank in so this comes up as an obstacle a lot when a business is in a suburb like Aurora but they want to be found for you know House Cleaning Denver this one's a little more in your control because you could move to the city you want or more realistically you could choose to just double down on trying to rank in the city that you're actually in so I'll give this one a b actually all right now we have keywords on your landing page headings so so remember we're talking about the page on your website that your business profile links to and this specific tactic is about putting your keyword phrase in at least one headline on that page I'll say this can be pretty valuable especially if you put it in the top headline also known as the H1 header putting it in a sub headline further down the page will still be good but less effective than if you put it up top but for the most ranking power I would say to put it in your H1 and an H2 if you can as well and it's really important but there's definitely things you should do first so I'm putting this in B so what about the idea of a complete and verified Google business profile sounds simple right just fill it out as completely as possible and get your address verified as basic as it sounds you wouldn't believe how many businesses drop the ball here and do the bare minimum which is actually a huge opportunity for you to do more and it's not hard either just go Section to section and get it done this one is super high priority we've definitely got another a tier here okay and when we talk about having a complete business profile how do your keywords fit into that so we know they help having them on your website but what about putting keywords in your Google business profile like in your description or in your services areas it's a good thought unfortunately it doesn't do anything for your rankings you know use them when they make sense to use them to properly describe your business but don't shoehorn them in where they don't fit this one's an enough and next we have consistent citations so a citation is just any mention of your business anywhere online and usually this is going to include what they call the nap name address and phone number and where do you usually get citations is on those business directories review sites and your social media profiles and a few years ago one of the biggest ranking factors was how consistent each citation was to the next like if this one says your address is on Oak Street and this other one said Oak St it was a mismatch and that hurt you these days Google's a lot smarter and the consistency isn't as important but you should still have citations when you can get them it is less important than a lot of the other stuff we talked about so I'm going to put it in D tier just do it when there's time next up we have city name in your website content so city name neighborhood whatever area you're trying to rank in just including that in the written content on your linked website help it actually does but that doesn't mean put every neighborhood and every suburb that's in a 50m radius that's not going to help you rank there this means the city that you're actually in that you're trying to rank for so include that city name throughout your website including in page titles headlines subhe headlines and body text wherever it makes sense but don't overdo it just do it in a really natural way but this is really powerful and easy to do so it gets an a for me okay so no SEO list would be complete without talking about links so let's just talk about them first up we're going to talk about backlinks from other websites these have always been a really strong ranking factor for SEO and even for the local map pack the thing is though they're a little less powerful than they used to be and they're pretty hard to get it's a lot of strategy involved and usually it's you know writing articles for other websites and then they'll link back to your site in the author bio super timec consuming stuff so what I'll say here is you want to prioritize backlinks first from other websites that are relevant to your location than websites that are relevant to your industry and you want to try to get them to link to the same page that your business profile links to for the most power if you're going to do it again it's usually the homepage but overall I put this in the D tier if you have time to do it later go for it but only after you've maxed out the higher tiers first and we do have the number one most important thing you can do coming up in just a bit next what about links that you can much more easily control you know internal links from one page in your website to another I'd actually prioritize this above getting external backlinks much easier to do and almost as powerful so it's a much better bang for your time and the best thing you can do here is prioritize links from various pages on your site to the landing page that your business profile links to again that's usually going to be your homepage but don't just link to that page have a good variety but just link to that page a little bit more than you're link to the other ones so I'm putting this in B tier okay so this one is a biggie I've seen so many videos over the years here on YouTube including from myself back in the day that talk about geotagging images so the idea being you take the photos on your website or on your business profile and you add a bit of invisible code to them that tells Google that that photo was taken in a certain location and this used to work as you know like extra credit that could help put you over the top and help you rank but it hasn't been a thing for years now probably the biggest waste of time on this list this one is definitely enough now we have your Google business profile category so this one's divided into two parts your primary Google business profile category and your additional Google business profile categories so Google has over 4,000 business categories to choose from and you want to find the one that's closest to your business and that's closest to the words that people use when they ser SE for you for example if you're a dental office and you want to rank locally for dentist Kansas City you'd want to choose the category dentist over dental clinic which you know probably gets way fewer searches anyway so that's your primary category but then you still want to max out your additional categories to get even more ranking power for more searches so just pick as many that apply to you as you can but don't start reaching for categories that are a stretch you know that can actually confuse Google about what you do and that can hurt you so these two ranking factors together are not only going in the a tier they're actually the most important thing you need to get right to help you rank in the map and being found in the map is great for business but when we talk about being found online there's a huge shift happening that you need to know about so this video is a must see if you want to stay ahead of your competition both in the map rankings as well as in or organic searches underneath the map so I'll show you what's changing and more importantly the huge opportunity that it's going to open up for you in your business so click right here and I'll meet you over there in just a second

Channel: Wes McDowell

Views: 123,861

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Id: zrJ6qOWGPfk

Length: 15min 12sec (912 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 09 2024