David Himm, who is a website designer and an online marketing consultant, has compiled and released the 'Local Search Ranking Factors Guide'. In this compilation, David has emphasized on a variety of optimization techniques, including how experts weigh in on the importance of city or state in title tags, address and phone number in contact page, location keyword in website URL, participation in local Pay Per Click, and much more.

According to David, “It is my hope that this study will help small business owners confused by Local Search, or those strapped for time, to prioritize their marketing efforts.”

For the survey, David took the assistance of 20 experts in the field of Local Search Marketing for this particular study. The intent was to search and locate the factors that would be most helpful for ranking well in the Google and Yahoo Local Search algorithms and also the practices that should be avoided.

About the Survey:

Participants were asked to rate the importance of 47 criterias with respect to their influence on rankings in the Google and Yahoo Local “Universal” search algorithms using the scale featured below:

David added about survey stating, “Though the survey attempted to aggregate factors applicable to both the Google AND Yahoo Local algorithms, in some cases respondents felt that these factors were treated differently depending on the engine. These factors are marked by a (*); you may want to read the written responses for a deeper understanding of these factors.”

The importance of a factor is indicated by the first number listed to the right of each factor. The higher that number, the importance of that factor increases as well. Negative numbers indicate factors that could lead to penalties or lower rankings, depending on how they are used.

To view the comprehensive results of the study, please visit http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml#9

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