How Population Density Affects Local Rankings

If you’ve done everything right with SEO yet haven’t seen the promised impact, you may be wondering what else you can do. Unfortunately not all factors are in your control and that includes company location and local population density. See how the population density affects search results and what to tweak to rank well in local searches.

How Does Population Density Affect SERP?

Several factors go into local searches, chief among them:

• Relevance – how well your business matches a search, which is based on keywords
• Proximity – how far away your business is from the searcher’s location
• Prominence – how well-known a business appears to search engines based on data from directories, rankings, or links

Search results can change within a city, which may be why a viewer sees different results when searching from home vs. an office or local cafe. A user will even get different searches if they connect directly to wifi when searching from a mobile device.

If you have few competitors in your community, you will benefit from the lack of competition with prominent placement in search; conversely if you are one of many service providers in a neighborhood, you may dip in SERPs if you lack prominence or relevance.

While it can seem like much is out of your control, there are ways to boost your placement in SERPs by getting more links, maintaining a Google My Business profile, double-checking your keywords for relevance, and building a consistent presence online.

If you aren’t seeing the traffic boost you crave from your SEO, maybe it’s time to partner with an experienced digital marketing agency like Upright Communications. To speak with our SEO mavens about your needs and get advice tailored to your unique circumstances, reserve a discovery call today.