5 Ranking Factors That Google Uses to Answer Questions in Search

By Steve Eastlack, Surefire Local.

According to studies, up to 97% of consumers search online for local businesses.

Your customers will be coming online to look for you, to see who you are, to see what previous customers have said about you and to see if you are right for their project. In addition, the search journey has become complex, multi-channel and multi-device with near endless touchpoints. Up to 73% of customer engagement happens off your website, so you will need to manage all the various ways that people will find you online. Each of these has a different strategy for ranking and making sure that your business will get as much visibility as possible.

In this post, we’ll provide an overview on the factors you need to focus on to make your business visible in a Google search. Our free webinar will provide more detailed information on these various factors and it will explain how to rank high on Google Local Service Ads, Google Ads, Google Map listings and organic search.

1. Recency

How often are you publishing new content on your website, social media and directories? Google wants to make sure that you have content that is as recent and as applicable as possible to the people performing the web search. Make sure to have consistent and relevant content.

2. Revelence

Is what you’re creating valuable and useful? Does it provide answers to the questions people are searching for? You need to provide information that is useful and related to the questions that people are searching for on Google.

3. Proximity

Where are you in relation to someone’s search. Does Google know that you service the area that person is searching from? Your business needs to provide Google with accurate and consistent information on your service area. Google will use this information to display local results when people search for particular services.

4. Prominence

Do others link to your website as a source for knowledge and expertise? It’s great if a lot of other high-quality sites link to you as a reference. This is one of the ways to show Google that your business is worth recommending to people performing a search.

5. Availability

Are your business hours set to open in the moment someone is performing their search? If someone is searching for services at a certain time of day, then Google will recommend them businesses that are open at that time of day.

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Get in touch with Surefire Local to learn more. Schedule a brief 15-minute demo and consult today!

Original article source: Surefire Local