As you can see in the image below, instead of displaying the top 10 local business listings, Google is now only showing the top 7.

This makes it just that much more difficult for local businesses to show up on the first page of a local business search in competitive markets.

This change also re-emphasizes the importance of optimizing your business listing so that you can improve your business’ local search ranking position.

Make sure you use the appropriate categories and keywords in your local business center descriptions and try and get additional citations from local directories as well.

It looks Google made this change in order to free up real estate on the first page for their new Local Listing Ads service. For a flat monthly fee, Google will display your business ad in the sponsored search section as shown below.

This service is currently only available in San Francisco and San Diego.

You can learn more about the Google Local Listing Ad service in the video:

What are the Key Factors for Boosting Your Local Search Rankings?

Following a previous post on the overall basics of search engine optimization, I thought it might be relevant here to focus on local search rankings. What determines how well a website does in the search results when someone conducts a search related to their city or town?

A recent survey of search engine experts by David Mihm sheds some light on the key factors for ranking well for local searches.  27 experts were asked to rate a total of 49 factors in terms of their importance in determining local search rankings.

The top 3 factors that were ranked as being most significant in positively influencing local rankings were:

1. Having a local business listing within the city of search

If you look at the search results for “online marketing bethesda” in the image above, my company’s local business listing shows up prominently along with the local city map and location. Because Google is placing these local business listings first in the search results (i.e. before showing other web matches), it is critically important that you create your listing using Google’s Local Business Center. This service is free and should absolutely be a ‘must do’ for all business website owners.

2. Being cited by other local portals, associations, or groups

According to the experts surveyed, listing your business with local online directories, portals or associations can also help your local search rankings. Examples of such sites might be infoUSA, Yellow Pages, Yelp, City Search, Merchant Circle and even local chamber directories. These sites usually have high page rank and authority, so creating a listing which links back to your business website should give your rankings a boost.

3. Using proper categories and keywords in your local business listing

When setting up your Google local listing, be sure to select the right category for your business. In addition, inserting the keywords or search phrases that you want to rank for in your business listing (especially in the title) will also improve your search rankings.

The survey goes into negative factors affective search rankings as well. These include negative customer reviews, using an 800 telephone number in your local listing, and having multiple listings with the same business name and phone number. The full survey can be seen here.