Getting your business listed in the first slots for local search can help you achieve greater inbound traffic and visibility for your brand, but what does it take to get there?

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Open up your phone and search for a taco restaurant, or an orthodontist, or a vehicle maintenance shop. Chances are, you’ll see a short list of three entries above the “typical” search engine results, featuring a brief description of each business, along with links for directions, a website, and/or a phone number. These entries will be based on your current location, and represent the “local 3-pack.”

Obviously, getting your business listed in one of these slots can help you achieve greater inbound traffic and visibility for your brand, but what does it take to get there?

Local SEO Basics

The local 3-pack represents the top three local search results, which are found using an algorithm different from Google’s typical, national search algorithm. However, in some ways, local 3-pack rankings are determined using similar criteria to national searches, such as:

Keyword relevance (and onsite content). Google tries to find the best results for people, and that means finding sites that seem to address user queries specifically and directly. That means your site needs to be optimized with target keywords that are relevant to your audience.
Domain authority (and inbound links). You’ll also need high domain and page authority, which you can get by building more authoritative links pointing to your website from outside domains.
Reviews. Finally, you’ll need to collect as many positive reviews as possible on third-party apps, like Yelp or TripAdvisor, which Google evaluates qualitatively to determine the trustworthiness of your business.

Clever Tricks to Improve Your Rankings

Other than the most straightforward ways to boost your rankings, there are a few tricks that can help you improve your business’s local visibility.

Also read: Chatbots will change the way we do search

Get involved with local festivals. Local festivals, like Wisconsin’s famous beer-lover’s festival, tend to accumulate press and exposure on their own, driving local traffic to their affiliates and building links to their partners and sponsors. If you get involved in some of these festivals, as a participant, backer, or partner, you could easily get some new visibility for your brand in locally-specific circles—plus, you’ll get to enjoy the festival!
Co-author on local blogs. Local blogs, whether they’re hosted by community members, the local government, or even community businesses, are always good opportunities for exposure. They typically reach local audiences directly, are easy to write content for, and give you the chance to build locally relevant links back to your site. To start, you’ll need a small archive of content on your own blog; with those examples in hand, you can make a pitch to the local editors and hopefully get set up with a guest author account.
Actively post on local forums. For the same reasons, you’ll likely benefit from finding and posting on local forums. These may include things like community pages, neighborhood gatherings, or any discussion thread that’s relevant to your community. Get involved in these discussions regularly, and you’ll be seen with more authority; eventually, you’ll have an easier time getting featured on other participants’ blogs, and local news outlets may seek your input when they put together news stories about the area.
Cover more local news content. Speaking of news stories, press releases are still one of the easiest and fastest ways to build authoritative links to your website. You can use a service like PRNewswire to distribute your press release to thousands of different outlets (which could cost hundreds of dollars), or you could establish relationships with journalists from your local area newspaper and work with them directly in producing stories, even if they’re only peripherally relevant to your brand.
Get creative in attracting reviews. Yelp’s official policy forbids you from buying (or even asking for) reviews from your customers. Breaking that policy could get your site removed from their listings—and Yelp has even been known to go undercover to expose fake reviews. Other review sites have similar policies. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t make efforts to attract more reviews in ways that can’t be detected or cracked down upon. For example, you could advertise the fact that you’re listed on these apps (never mentioning reviews directly), or actively engage with customers who leave you reviews to encourage more participation from others.

Depending on your level of competition, it’s possible for your business to break into the local 3-pack within several weeks to a few months of your earliest local SEO efforts. Obviously, if your competitors have years of experience creating and cementing their positions, it will take considerably longer. Still, most of the efforts you make to improve your position will have a positive impact on your business, one way or another, and will secure you higher visibility with the customers who need your business the most.

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