Moz have conducted their 2015 local search rankings survey. The survey requests that industry experts share their opinions on local search and SERPS rankings. The survey hopes to give the most accurate insight possible into local rankings based on industry expert’s experiences.
The pie chart below is taken directly from Moz and offers a summary of the results found
https://moz.com/blog/local-search-ranking-factors-2015. You can find a full breakdown of results here also.
Google+
One important change from last year is the fact that most experts do not give much weight (if any) to a businesses’ Google plus page. Considering Google plus now only shows in results when you specifically search for a Google plus page and does not display as part of other results, it is not thought to be such an important factor, and there is less debate on this issue than perhaps there has been in the past.
On page
The top consideration, as you can see from the pie chart, was unsurprisingly on page factors. These include things such as meta titles and on page text, including data such as NAP (name address and phone number). Understandably your pages need to match up to search locations and be optimised as effectively as possible to deserve a high ranking position in SERPS.
Link signals
Taking a high percentage of the results, link building is still proving to be significant. Link quality ad diversity are deemed highly important.
Negative ranking factors
Experts were asked to rank what they thought were the most destructive or negative influences on Search Engine Rankings. Listing in the incorrect category came out the top choice for experts. Followed by the listing being detected at the incorrect address and mismatch of NAP data. The detection of malware on the site also came out high in the survey. Most of these are probably considered to be quite predictable and make perfect sense to local search results.
We have listed some of the most significant and interesting findings but there is a lot more to view on the Moz website. You may wish to take these findings into consideration when planning your next moves for local search campaigns. There may be a few ideas in there you would not have normally considered.