David Mihm released an important report on Local Search Ranking Factors today. I was happy to be a contributor to the report, among many others in local search.
The top 10 factors with moderate to high agreement among the contributers were:
1. General importance of claiming Local Business Listing
2. Local Business Listing address in city of search
3. Proper Categorization of LBL
4. Product / service KWs in LBL title
5. Proximity to centroid
6. Validation with third-party providers
7. Number of inbound links to website
8. Location KWs - anchor text
9. Number of customer reviews
10. General importance of on-page criteria
Certainly the local business listing (LBL) plays a huge role in local search rankings, along with the location of the business, and then basic SEO things like links and on-page optimization. The report is a great read, especially the comments from the contributors. I’m sure you’ll learn something interesting!
Local Search Ranking Factors Report
Thanks David, great job on putting that together!

