Google Maps SEO: 12 Strategies to Get Found Locally

Read on to explore some of the most relevant facts and figures that show where SEO is in 2025 and where it may be going. They’re constantly tweaking their rubrics for assessing content—not to mention the many outside influences. From semantic search to featured snippets to AI results, the space keeps evolving. Imagine someone nearby searching “best your service near me.” They’re looking for a business just like yours, ready to book an appointment, stop by, or make a purchase. But if your business isn’t at the top of Google Maps, they won’t find you — they’ll find your competitors.

How to Use The SEO Ranking Factors List

Good quality links do still have an influence on ranking, and a lot of SEO professionals would say they do still count. This is why a page with no inbound or internal links can be difficult to rank, as it it’s not found by Google via links in order to be crawled and indexed. The potential for the absence of links highlights the importance of submitting a sitemap, which tells Google what pages you want indexed. In some circumstances, it’s not applied to ranking but is more critical when there are two pages vying for position. As an example, the query “London Zoo” serves desktop results with an emphasis on research with video and image carousels, while the mobile SERP has a focus on tickets, directions, and location. Most content will see some level of decay over time in search results if it isn’t updated.

Ranking factors are signals search engines use to sort the search results according to their quality and relevance to the particular query. Every two years, Moz surveys the opinions of dozens of the world’s brightest search marketers and runs correlation studies to better understand the workings of search engine algorithms. We gather this data to gain insight into the factors that may help—or hurt—a website’s visibility in search engines. When you do keyword research and create content, it is important to understand how personalization and locality will impact ranking and take this into consideration in your strategy.

Naturally, all of this data is still relevant, but there has been a shift in what goals to focus on. Search behavior has changed, and search engines are showing your content in many different ways. You need to focus on the overall perception of your brand and being present in the right places. This development, along with the pursuit of the optimum result, has culminated in the constant evolution of ranking factors.

Where the cTLD will count as a negative signal is if you have a Spanish domain but are trying to rank it in the Russian market. Some of them are indexing/crawling signals which are part of the overall search process. Making sure that your URLs are SEO-friendly is a quick way to draw crawler’s attention to your keywords when indexing your site. As technology and trends develop, so does the user’s idea of valuable content. For example, modern-day users are looking for quick, efficient results which offer instant knowledge, whether that be through a video, graphic or interactive slideshow.

What are the Google Ranking Factors?

Content creation plays a vital role BHS Links in SEO by delivering value to users while helping search engines understand your site. High-quality content answers user queries, boosts engagement, and increases the chances of earning backlinks. While all these local seo factors don’t directly impact your ranking, they do focus on a positive user experience. You want to provide users with a positive experience to ensure that they spend more time on your page. When users spend more time on your page, it can lead to positive outcomes. When you link to credible external sites, you help users find additional information that’s relevant to their interests.

Here are five essential SEO ranking factors to boost your web traffic in 2025. There is a lot of debate on whether social media signals impact Google’s search rankings. As search algorithms continue to evolve, it is also essential to stay informed about the latest ranking factors and best practices.

Focusing on the factors in the table above should help provide a useful starting point for the tasks needed to optimize for local searches. Though, with more than 100 individual factors to choose from, it’s highly advised to focus on a broader set of tasks – with some improvements necessary in most of the grouped factors. In the table above, you can see what Whitespark’s expert survey respondents said they believed were the most important ranking factors to local pack and localized organic results.

• Google still indexes desktop sites, and there’s no separate “mobile-first index” distinct from the main index.
• The more thought and effort you put into users’ experience, the more your SEO score will improve.
• Considering that Google’s index is now mobile-first, you definitely want to make sure that your site is easy to use on mobile devices.
• Don’t outright incentivize them to leave positive reviews, but ask that they leave their opinion of your business on the listing.

Content marketing is not a quick fix for SEO, but rather a long-term strategy. Keywords are the words or phrases that people type into search engines when looking for information, products, or services. Understanding and utilizing keywords is an important piece to having an effective SEO strategy. Websites that provide an easy navigational experience are more likely to reduce bounce rates and improve user experience. In contrast, backlinks from low-quality or spammy websites can send negative signals to Google and hurt your rankings.