Research by Local SEO Guide has revealed the most important local SEO ranking factors on Google. Links were found to be one of the key ranking factors, both in terms of their number and their quality. Majestic Trust Flow, Citation Flow and AC Rank were all in the top 10 link metrics. Putting keywords in the link anchor text was also found to have a positive impact. Website factors were also very important. A website's organic ranking was strongly correlated with its Google My Business ranking, as was the number of words used per page on the website and keyword usage. Looking at Google My Business, it seems that reviews, photos and having an owner verified profile all have a positive impact on rankings. Surprisingly, citations did not have a large impact on local SEO. Whilst it is still desirable to have some citations, the number and strength of these citations does not seem to have an impact. Therefore, SEOs are advised not to focus too much effort on these. Putting city and state names in the titles, URLs and in the on-page content itself also seemed to have very little effect on how those pages ranked in those cities.
