A recent study done by David Mihm among 27 prominent bloggers and practitioners of local search engine marketing showed the following factors that positively affect local search rankings in Google and Yahoo, beginning with the most helpful:

1. Having the local business listing in the city where the searcher is in
2. Having citations from the major data providers
3. Being associated with the proper categories in local business listings
4. Having claimed the local business listing
5. Having the product or service keywords and key phrases in the local business listing title
6. Having off-page criteria such as directory listings
7. Having a high volume of customer reviews
8. Having high quality customer reviews
9. Having strong on-page website criteria, such as domain strength and landing pages strength
10. Having the full business address on the contact page
11. Being near the centroid, meaning “downtown”, as defined by a local search engine
12. Having high quality inbound links
13. Having citations from hyperlocal and web crawls
14. Having the product or service keywords and key phrases in the local business listing description
15. Having location keywords and key phrases in inbound anchor text
16. Having customer reviews right at the search engines
17. Having location keywords and key phrases in the local business listing title
18. Having the product or service keywords and key phrases in inbound anchor text
19. Having the name of the city and state in the title tags
20. Having customer reviews in third party websites
21. Having location keywords and key phrases in the local business listing description
22. Having a high quantity of inbound links
23. Having the name of the city and state in the contact page title tags
24. Having the product or service keywords and key phrases in the URL of the website
25. Having the product or service keywords and key phrases in the local business listing custom fields
26. Being associated with marginal categories in the local business listings
27. Having location keywords and key phrases in the URL of the website
28. Having a local area code in the phone number listed in the local business listing
29. Being associated with local business listing videos
30. Having a local phone number on the contact page
31. Having user generated content such as customized Google My Maps
32. Having a homepage with a high pagerank
33. Being associated with local business listing photos
34. Having created a keyhole markup language (KML) file
35. Having positive ratings from customers
36. Having location keywords and key phrases in the local business listing custom fields
37. Having the business address in hCard Mircroformat on the company website
38. Having a high page rank for the landing page of the local business listing
39. The age of the local business listing, with older listings ranking higher
40. Including coupons in local business listings
41. Paticipating in local pay per click campaigns

On the other hand, these are the factors that negatively affect local search engine ranking in Google and Yahoo, starting with the most harmful:

1. Having multiple local business listings with the same business address
2. Having multiple local business listings with the same telephone number
3. Having no physical business address and using only a post office box
4. Having multiple local business listings with the same business name
5. Having only the Internet 800 Directory number on the contact page
6. Having negative ratings from customers
7. Having multiple business addresses on the contact page
8. Using the Internet 800 Directory number in local business listing

Make sure to use this checklist in evaluating your own local business listing.

Tags: local listings, local map, local search management, local search marketing, local search ranking local search ratings, local seo, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, SEM, SEO Social Media Marketing, web development, website design

This entry was posted on Friday, July 24th, 2009 at 1:53 am and is filed under SEM, SEO, Social Media Marketing, local listings, local map, local search management, local search marketing, local search ranking, local search ratings, local seo, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, web development, website design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.