Some of the most common include excessive ads that interfere with organic content and interstitials that make it difficult for visitors to navigate the site. To check a query for local intent, Google it and check the results. If that isn’t the case for your services, it’s not a local SEO opportunity. This is probably the case whichever city we’re in, so it’s an excellent way to prioritize keywords. You can do this with a keyword research tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer. For that reason, checking the relative popularity of keywords at the national level tends to be more productive.
Keyword in the URL
Certain topics, such as medical and financial queries, can be especially challenging to rank for in Google. In truth, there are thousands of articles, guides, and tutorials published about SEO every year. Most of these guides are either very introductory or broad, or go to the opposite end of the spectrum and cover a very specific topic. The majority of real businesses have physical brick & mortar premises. I have used positive social velocity to bring Penguin penalised sites back to the #1 spot. Domains that have a low click-through rate across their pages will have less visibility.
Off-page SEO and link-building statistics
Although social signals (such as likes, shares, and comments on social media) are not direct ranking factors, they do influence SEO indirectly. A strong social media presence can drive traffic to your website, increase brand visibility, and help earn backlinks, all of which can contribute to higher rankings. We’ve discussed content in this guide to Google SEO ranking factors. That’s because it’s one of the most important search ranking factors (right up there with user experience, links, and RankBrain, which we’ll get to in a while). A local rank tracker tool is a specialized software designed to monitor and analyze the search engine rankings of local keywords for local businesses.
Refer to our dedicated tutorial on keyword research to explore keyword research techniques and strategies. With most web traffic now coming from mobile devices, mobile-friendliness is another aspect of page experience. Choosing the right image format (JPEG, PNG, WebP, AVIF) is essential for optimization. JPEGs are typically better for photographs due to their balance of quality and file size, while PNGs are suitable for images requiring transparency. Refer to our dedicated tutorial on link-building techniques to build quality links for your website. Anchor text, the clickable text in a hyperlink, should vary naturally to reflect how people genuinely link to your content.
Tell search engines how to crawl your site
Additionally, using structured data (Schema markup) alongside the map can further enhance your local SEO by providing search engines with precise business location details. The more active and engaged you are with your reviews, the more trust you build with both Google and potential customers. A strong review profile will boost your rankings and make your business the obvious choice over competitors.
Using LSI keywords would be one way of making sure your restaurant ranks for both sets of questions. The more help you can give to Google to understand your content, the more likely your page SEO rank will increase in your niche. One negative SEO ranking factor to be aware of is duplicate content. And if you have similar content, tell Google which one should be ranked as most authoritative using canonical URLs. As our keyword research guide said, Google’s search algorithm relies on keywords.
There are various tools and ways to check your rankings on Google. They enhance user experience by offering deeper insights or related information on the topic. They’re crucial for SEO because they signal credibility and domain authority. Ensure that your site is responsive, with easy navigation, fast load times, and content optimized for smaller screens.
High-quality content answers user queries, boosts engagement, and increases the chances of earning backlinks. While all these local seo factors don’t directly impact your ranking, SEO Anomaly they do focus on a positive user experience. You want to provide users with a positive experience to ensure that they spend more time on your page.
- But again be careful you don’t trip Google Panda by offering duplicate content and keyword stuffing.
- More requests for directions could signify a stronger interest from potential customers and positively impact your local results.
- Understanding and utilizing keywords is an important piece to having an effective SEO strategy.
- While search engine algorithms are constantly evolving, it’s important to keep a pulse on which ones have the most impact each year.
- Reviews refer to the quantity and quality of reviews on your Google Business Profile and elsewhere online.
- This includes strategic placement of primary and related keywords in titles, headers, and body text to enhance relevance without overstuffing the content.
No matter how optimized your webpage is, if your content is not valuable, then you can’t expect higher rankings. Some website owners may be tempted to optimize for every ranking factor when it comes to getting higher rankings. It dominates other search engines like Bing and Yahoo, with more than 8.5 billion searches each day. LowFruits can help you with this last point, which is critical for staying on top of your most important keywords. It has one of the best rank tracker tools and is super easy to use.
Most of the time, search engines don’t care about the WHOIS info of your domain name. That’s because they don’t have access to all WHOIS data, especially for ccTLDs, and that makes it unreliable. Whether you’re looking for a quick overview or an in-depth analysis, this guide on how search engines work serves both purposes. Below, you’ll find an overview of how search engines work, along with the option to explore crawling, indexing, ranking, and penalties in depth. Our database for the Ranking Factor analyses are always the first three organic search results pages.