Local pack organic ranking factors in 2023

There is no single magic factor that determines how well your clients will rank in local search. In fact, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of ranking signals that dictate where businesses show up in SERPs. ConvergenSEE has ways to help your clients in almost all of these aspects. By taking advantage of ConvergenSEE’s products and services, you can ensure that both old and new customers easily online find your clients online. We do all of this while also futureproofing your online listings as much as possible as ConvergenSEE adapts to the ever-changing local search ecosystem.

ConvergenSEE has found the following to be the most important local pack ranking factors:

Google Business Profile Signals – 32%

The largest single factor for your Search Engine Results Page (SERP) ranking is managing your Google Business Profile (GBP) listings. Formerly, an accurate name, address, and phone number (NAP) was all your GBP profile needed but now that simply isn’t enough to achieve a high ranking. Proper primary and secondary categorization, Google Posts, Google Q&A, proper nesting, photos, and much more goes into gaining proper GBP signals. If your clients are missing any fundamental NAP information or is not utilizing any of GBP’s auxiliary features at the location level, they could be missing leads and revenue!

💡 How ConvergenSEE can help

ConvergenSEE’s platform is designed to allow you to take advantage of every ranking feature of GBP. Along with improving your clients’ locations rankings, you will see the other benefits of providing a better customer experience for the users browsing your clients’ listings. Google releases new features for GBP almost every month. ConvergenSEE stays on top of these changes to makes sure you can utilize everything as it becomes available, allowing you to do what is needed to keep your clients ranking above their competitors.

ConvergenSEE’s Local Rank+ tool will also provide the world’s most accurate measure of your Google rankings at the location level. By taking proximity of the searcher into account, you will know the exact rankings of your clients’ locations for local customers and the rankings of their competitors surrounding each of their individual locations.

On-Page Signals – 19%

An amazingly optimized website with the content users need to convert is vital for search engines to identify the relevancy of your website to users. You would be surprised how many brands fail to make their websites relevant on the local level and only use keywords relevant on a brand wide scale. Without consistent and relevant information to the individual user being present on your website, search engines will disregard your listing as unimportant to those potential customers.

💡 How ConvergenSEE can help

The simple inclusion of a store locator and pages and specific keywords in your page titles will go a long way in boosting your rank on a SERP. ConvergenSEE can custom-build a store locator for your website using the information you’ve already provided for your LPM program. We understand that at your agency you have your own methods for SEO that allow you t bring great results to your clients, our pages create a foundation for success that your teams can work from.

Review Signals – 16%

Review signals have seen some of the highest growth for rankings. Google over the years has worked hard to become a primary review source and this is demonstrated by the value it puts into review signals. The quantity, velocity, and quality of your businesses reviews all factor into your SERP ranking. Text heavy reviews filled with keywords are key and responding to these reviews with text heavy replies of your own is just as important.

💡 How ConvergenSEE can help

The more reviews you have coming in the better but then you have the headache of managing them all. ConvergenSEE’s Reputation Management suite of products help you aggregate, monitor, respond, and analyze your reviews. Automatic review responses, manual responses, and other review management features are available through one convenient dashboard. ConvergenSEE also offers a unique machine learning product called Sentiment Analysis which can give you a wealth of business intelligence it automatically gathers from your reviews. Sentiment Analysis will let you gain even more value from your reviews than just the SERP ranking advantage.

Link Signals – 11%

Search engines primarily cross reference each other for corroborating business information but links from across the web boost rankings as well. This means factors such as inbound anchor text, the quantity of site linking to your business, and the domain authority of those websites.

💡 How ConvergenSEE can help

Other domains need a proper place to link to and with ConvergenSEE, we can make sure that local guides are linking to your local product pages rather than your general brand page, brand Facebook, or other scattershot links. Individually, these links provide very low-ranking value but when taken collectively and all aimed at the same store page or Google Business Profile URL, they will start to boost your rankings.

Behavioral Signals – 8%

Once users find you on a SERP, did they click on your website? How about calling your location or requesting directions? If you don’t standout in searches so that users want to interact with your business, then this can hurt you from a ranking perspective. If the search engine shows your listing and every user interacts with your listing the opposite is true, and you can see a ranking boost.

💡 How ConvergenSEE can help

ConvergenSEE’s LPM program optimizes way more than just your Name, Address & Phone Number. It’s this additional content like photos, Posts, Q&A, and amenities that will make your listings stand out from the competition, which in turn should increase your behavioral signals.

Citation Signals – 7%

Citations have been losing value every year, but they are a basic part of any local listings program. It is not something you can optimize past its basic necessity, but it is something you must do. Every major online directory from Google to Bing needs the same NAP information to increase your rankings. Corroborating citations boost your rankings and likewise, missing, or contradictory citations will decrease your rankings.

💡 How ConvergenSEE can help

The fundamentals of ConvergenSEE’s listing management program is standardizing and sending your business’s NAP information to all relevant tier-1 directories. The more listings you have to manage the harder it is for a business to ensure they do not have a skeletal or missing listing somewhere that hinders their rankings. ConvergenSEE’s distribution network covers every relevant directory for your business while avoiding the minor directories which either have no impact on rankings or are considered spam by websites such as Google and harm your rankings.

Personalization – 6%

Personalization speaks to how Google builds out its search results in a custom way for each user. If you’ve visited or clicked on a business previously, Google will likely show you that business again.

💡 How ConvergenSEE can help

By ensuring that every piece of conversion content is associated to your listings, ConvergenSEE can help you get as much engagement as possible. Once a user chooses your business, Google will be a lot more likely to show it again in the future.

By working with ConvergenSEE to improve all the ranking signals listed above, you will not only improve your rankings but your customer experience as a whole. Good rankings lead to more leads but then you need to convert that customer browsing your listings into one making a purchase. These ranking boosts are there not just to have you rank but to give further touch points to convert your leads into sales. The ConvergenSEE platform will allow you to fulfill this challenge on both fronts to make sure your customers find you and then your fully optimized, high-ranking listings have the highest conversion rate possible.

With ConvergenSEE knowing what makes you rank best today and what will make you rank best tomorrow, your business will be positioned with the best chance to secure a top spot on all search engines both now and for years to come!