Local Authority is a scoring system made up of five main components. These metrics averaged together decide your listing’s Local Authority score. The larger the number, the higher you rank, increasing your listing’s search visibility.

Make a big difference in your Local Rank by taking a look at the following key metrics and determine what you can do today to increase your search visibility.

The higher the number, the higher you rank, increasing your listing’s search visibility.

LISTING HEALTH- Measures your location profile accuracy

It’s helpful to have the right information on your profile for consumers to come across. Your hours, location, and contact information are some of the first things a consumer will see when searching for your business. To get technical, 80% of searchers lose trust in a company after finding that the listing information is inaccurate. To avoid this, Google and search engines like it, scan these inconsistencies and rank the business accordingly.

Make sure all of your information is up-to-date on your Google Business profile. Take it a step further and sync your profile information across 70+ other main directories like Apple Maps, Bing, Yahoo, and more. If that’s something beyond your call of duty, we include that as part of our SEO Services. Click here to learn more!

80% of searchers lose trust in a company after finding that the listing information is inaccurate.

BRAND HEALTH- Measures Photo & Post Content

Google’s mission is for the digital world to replicate the real world. Increase your profile footprint and the time that your future customer spends on your listing by posting quality, informative content. This builds trust with Google and will pay off with more calls, clicks, and higher ranking.

REPUTATION HEALTH- Measures Social Proof

It’s a given that feedback makes a big difference in the consumer’s decision-making process.  It’s also safe to say that no feedback at all can have an equal impact. Google rewards businesses that have strong social proof, so it’s important to seek out reviews regularly. Google also takes into consideration your responsiveness, so be proactive and show customers that you care about their opinion.

ENGAGEMENT HEALTH- Measures Responsiveness

Responsiveness is a key factor in search engine optimization.  Timely review responsiveness will not only increase your ranking on Google but builds trust with consumers.

When a customer posts a comment, review, or question to your listing, it’s important to show Google and consumers that you are relevant and available.  If you don’t respond, it decreases perceived helpfulness, and people are less inclined to interact with you.

INFLUENCE HEALTH- Measures Profile Interactions

By tending to the metrics mentioned above, you increase your profile footprint and the time a consumer spends clicking around on your listing. Google notices this. So, the more profile interactions you have, the higher you rank! 

What Not To Do

The algorithm detects if a website or listing is involved in artificially increasing its ranking.

The algorithm detects if a website or listing is involved in artificially increasing its ranking. Using unethical methods (intentional or unintentional) to make websites or listings rank higher in search results is referred to as “Black Hat SEO.” By using methods like link scheming, spamdexing, keyword stuffing, and content farming, you dramatically decrease your chances of ranking well in local search results.

Websites and listings built only to attract search engine traffic are referred to as “doorway pages”. The strategic goal of these algorithms is to display relevant listings and higher-quality websites at the top of Google’s search results. Get rewarded by creating honest, relevant content.

Google rewards you with link-based ranking when you link your site with another highly ranked website.

LINK SCHEMING

Google rewards you with link-based ranking when you link your site with another highly ranked website. Manipulating the number of links pointing to your page, or linking pages that aren’t relevant to each other to receive a higher ranking is referred to as Link Scheming or Link Spamming– Google will penalize you for this.

SPAMDEXING

The purpose of an index is to optimize speed and performance in finding relevant documents for a search query. Spamdexing is the manipulation of search engine indexes, involving methods such as link building and repeating unrelated phrases to manipulate their relevance or prominence. This will, without a doubt, detriment your ranking within search results.

A keyword can be any term that exists within a document.

KEYWORD STUFFING

Keywords are alternative search terms that people enter while looking for a similar subject online and capture the essence of a topic or document.  A keyword can be any term that exists within a document, however, words that occur in the title, words that reoccur numerous times, and words that are explicitly assigned as keywords within the coding, have priority. The objective is, with good precision, to generate a large number of highly relevant terms so the page is more likely to be found.

Use natural language in your listing and website, and avoid the temptation to appear more relevant to web crawlers by keyword stuffing. This will detriment your Local Authority Score.

SEO professionals use keywords to achieve better rankings in search engines and consider the optimum keyword density to be 1-3%. To calculate a document’s keyword density value, you divide how many times a specific keyword is repeated by the total words in the analyzed text. With the calculated placement of keywords within a page, you raise the keyword count, variety, and density of the page.

CONCLUSION

A lot goes into SEO strategy.  Get on top of the world’s largest search engines and grow like you never thought possible.  The more effort you put into optimizing your search engine presence, the more growth and popularity you’ll see.  Take it one step at a time and remember that with SEO, consistency is key.  Follow along with our blog for GBP tips and SEO strategies!

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