That’s because Google customizes the search results based on your computer’s location, as well as your previous browsing and searching history. In other words, my Google search results will likely be different from your results unless we’re using the same computer.
For this reason, it’s critical to use a tool like Rank Ranger to track your search engine rankings.
4. Is Your Business Set Up to Rank High in the “Map” Results?
When you search “nearby dentist” in Google, then you’ll see a map on the first page, along with information about dental offices near you. These are the “map” results where Google is displaying Google My Business profiles instead of websites.
Did you catch that? When people search for local businesses, Google displays the map with Google My Business account information on the first page, which is different from your website.
That’s a key distinction because ranking for these local searches requires “Local SEO” tactics. One of the biggest factors for local SEO is what’s called “citations.” A citation is simply a mention of your name, address, and phone number (NAP) on another website online. The most common citations are business directories like Yelp, Bing Local and even Facebook business pages.
To check whether or not your business is set up properly to rank high in the “Map” results, use the Moz Local tool. This is one of the best tools available to quickly audit your citations. You’ll see if your information is consistent across all directories, if you’re missing any important directories, and if you have duplicate listings that could be dragging down your rankings.
5. Is Your Website’s Domain Authority Increasing?
Google’s mission is to organize all the information online and rank it based on two core criteria:
- Relevance — All the webpages Google displays for any search must be 100 percent relevant. If the results are not relevant, then the search engine is basically useless.
- Authority — Assuming all the webpages for a given search are relevant, then the next criteria is authority. Google’s goal is to display the most authoritative, highest quality webpages at the top of the results so that searchers are satisfied as quickly as possible.
The next logical question then is how do you measure authority? The truth is nobody outside of Google knows with 100 percent certainty.
However, through a lot of trial and error, marketers have isolated a few key variables. One of the biggest variables that impacts your website’s domain authority is the quantity and quality of links from other websites. As your website gains more and more links from other relevant, trusted websites, then your domain authority will increase, and in turn, your rankings will increase as well.
To measure the number and quality of links to your website, use a tool like Ahrefs. Simply type in your domain name and Ahrefs will show you the websites linking to your website, as well as their own rating of your domain authority.
Want more SEO Tips? Click here to get the Ultimate SEO checklist. And don’t miss today’s webinar “5 Rules for Winning in the New World of Search” where I’ll explain what you need to do (and what you need to avoid!) to get your website ranking high in Google.
Your seo list is so great.It will be help to improve Social Marketing
Nice article Phil! Is RankRanger any good? I haven’t used but I heard a couple of good things about it.