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 from the most helpfull:

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.

About the Author

Business Local Listings
701 south howard avenue tampa florida 33606
Phone: 813-418 6188
Email: info@businesslocallistings.com
Website: www.businesslocallistings.com