To build a sustainable, profitable, scalable ecommerce business this year, you need to understand the ins and outs of managing inventory. Poor inventory management can be a complex challenge to overcome for any ecommerce entrepreneur, no matter your expertise, the size of your business, the types of products you sell, or the audience you serve.
As the year progresses and you work through plans for launching a new ecommerce business, you’re likely thinking a lot about how to approach and optimize inventory management.
Making the wrong choices when it comes to how you manage inventory can be incredibly costly. Making the right choices can be incredibly profitable.
So, what do you need to know to be successful in the year ahead?
This article will provide you with a brief overview of inventory management. First, we’ll highlight a few terms you need to know, then we’ll detail some of the challenges that ecommerce business owners face, and finally, we’ll wrap up by providing you with a handful of actionable best practices and recommendations that you can use to build or optimize an effective inventory management strategy for your business.
Glossary of inventory management terms
Before we dive too deep into how to optimize inventory management, it’s helpful to first understand some of the terms and concepts that you’ll encounter along the way. Here’s a list of 20 words and phrases to become more familiar with:
Inventory: tangible items, products or goods that you intend to sell to customers.
SKUs: a stock-keeping unit (SKU) is an identification code that you use to classify and organize products.
Variants: variations of the same product, such as different colors.
Units of measure: whatever you use to measure your stock (items, pieces, bundles, kilograms, ounces, etc.).
Supply chain: the processes and systems involved in producing, managing and distributing products.
Deadstock: inventory that you have in stock but can’t necessarily sell anymore.
Buffer stock: the amount of extra stock on hand that’s used to limit the risk if supply and demand are uncertain.
Minimum viable stock: the minimum amount of product you need to have on hand to keep up with consumer demand and fulfill orders without delay.
Reorder point (ROP): the pre-determined level to which inventory must drop before ordering additional inventory.
Lead time: the time delay between when inventory is ordered from a supplier and when it arrives.
ABC analysis: a method for prioritizing your existing inventory using three categories: (A) high-value products with a low frequency of sales; (B) moderate-value products with a moderate frequency of sales; (C) low-value products with a high frequency of sales.
First in first out (FIFO): Shopify defines FIFO as an “accounting method [which] assumes that sellable assets, such as inventory, raw materials, or components acquired first were sold first. That is, the oldest merchandise is sold first, with its associated costs being used to determine profitability.”
Just-in-time (JIT): a fulfillment method where inventory orders are made just in time to keep up with demand from consumers. This method allows you to avoid tying up money in unsold inventory but creates potential risk of not being able to fulfill a sudden surge of orders.
Dropshipping: a fulfillment method where you don’t actually store any inventory onsite. Instead, orders are fulfilled, and inventory is shipped directly from a third party to the customer.
Centralized inventory control: software that allows you to easily manage, track and control inventory across multiple ecommerce websites like Amazon, eBay and Etsy.
Inventory management software: tools that help you track inventory, streamline processes, automate tedious tasks, and leverage data and other insights to boost success.
Cost of goods sold (COGS): your cost of production. (This is especially important from a tax perspective.)
Carrying cost/holding cost: the cost of holding your inventory in a year versus the value of the inventory itself.
Inventory auditing: the act of manually counting or checking inventory to ensure that it matches the numbers that exist within your tracking and automation systems.
Inventory forecasting: making informed decisions about ordering and reordering products based on historical data, trends and seasonality in your business.
Understanding these terms and concepts will ultimately help you become more informed and strategic when it comes to managing and optimizing inventory management processes and tasks at your business.
Challenges with inventory management in ecommerce
Every ecommerce business owner encounters inventory management challenges at one point or another. Knowing what some of these challenges are ahead of time and how to address them are what separates good inventory management from great inventory management.
Here are some of the most common inventory challenges that can ultimately affect the growth and profitability of an ecommerce business as well as customer experience and retention:
Challenge #1: Overstocking & overselling
In ecommerce, a good grasp of your inventory and the shopping habits of your target audience will help you accurately stock and sell your products. If you underestimate your customers’ needs, your supply may not meet demand. If you overestimate how much product you need, you’re likely to spend more than you make.
Although it can be advantageous to keep a large supply of inventory on hand, especially as you approach a busy season, it can present some challenges:
It can be expensive. Unless you’re dropshipping inventory, you’ll need to store the products you order from manufacturers. As you can imagine, too much inventory and not enough orders can wreak havoc on your ability to come out ahead at the end of the month.
There’s potential for having too much dead stock on hand. As mentioned earlier, deadstock refers to inventory that you basically can’t sell because you have too much inventory and not enough demand. It happens when products perish or deteriorate over time, but it can also happen as trends and shopping behaviors shift.
On the flip side, not having a good pulse on your inventory can result in accidental overselling — i.e., letting customers buy products that are out of stock. When you oversell a product, you create customer service and reputation challenges that can take time to overcome and repair.
These days, consumers want transparency when it comes to working with ecommerce brands. They want to be able to know and trust that if you make a promise, you’ll keep your word. When you oversell inventory, you risk delaying fulfillment and potentially damaging the trust you built up with people who chose to order your product. A quick fix for this would be to flag products as in or out of stock online so customers can see available quantities for themselves.
Challenge #2: Manual management that doesn’t allow for scale
Another inventory management challenge that many ecommerce business owners face relates to scale. When you’re in the early stages of building your ecommerce business, it’s relatively easy — and tempting — to manually track and fulfill orders, even across multiple channels. But it becomes much more difficult as you work to scale your business to meet the growing demands of your customer base.
For many ecommerce business owners, scaling means selling products on additional channels, such as Amazon, Etsy, eBay and Alibaba. It also means working with multiple partners, vendors and manufacturers. It might even mean storing inventory at multiple warehouses around the country.
Taking such steps to grow your ecommerce business in this way is next to impossible when you rely only on manual management methods. With manual management, you also stand the chance of encountering data mistakes that affect inventory management. For example, this could lead to overestimating or underestimating the inventory available to customers.
Some examples of ineffective manual inventory management methods include:
Using offline spreadsheets to track inventory numbers
Using a suite of separate tools that aren’t integrated or synced with each other
Using an offline program that can’t provide you with automatic real-time updates
Using paper and pencil to manually track and fulfill orders
When you’re just starting in the world of ecommerce, it can be tempting to track and manage inventory manually to save money and keep a hand in every aspect of your business. To avoid and prepare for some of the challenges mentioned above, however, you must take the time to investigate and make plans to adopt more scalable inventory management processes, tactics and tools that support continued growth over time.
Challenge #3: Lack of visibility across multiple channels & multiple warehouses
Lack of visibility is another common problem that ecommerce business owners tend to face as product demand increases and inventory management becomes more complex. There are two main visibility challenges that can impact your ability to meet demand and grow your business:
Lack of visibility across multiple channels. As mentioned above, as you grow your ecommerce business, you’ll likely decide to start selling your products across multiple channels (Amazon, Etsy, eBay, etc.). The problem is unless you’re using inventory management software, it’s not always easy to keep track of the sales and orders that come in from each channel and how those sales and orders are impacting the inventory you have on hand.
Lack of visibility across multiple warehouses. As your business grows, you might find yourself partnering with more manufacturers and warehouses to meet the growing demands of your customers. Your goal is to have inventory on hand and accessible when demand suddenly increases. But again, without inventory management software in place, trying to keep track of orders, inventory and relationships across all warehouses, partners and manufacturers can be a dizzying process for anyone.
Without complete visibility across your entire inventory management system, it’s difficult to know which decisions need to be made and by when they need to be made to continue boosting sales and meeting consumer demand.
Also, keep in mind that a consistent brand experience across channels is key to maintaining customer satisfaction. For example, pricing and product availability should be monitored and adjusted uniformly across all channels.
Challenge #4: Lack of insights
The final inventory management challenge that many ecommerce business owners face is a lack of data insights. Data and data analysis will help your company find areas of improvement that can lead to an increase in your engagement and revenue.
To boost profits, support growth, and cater to the needs of your customers, use data to help you understand how your inventory is fluctuating over time and how demand is changing over time. Your insights can aid in forecasting what your inventory should look like in the future when to reorder products, when to scale back on products and where breakdowns in your processes are happening.
Oftentimes, you need to be able to access and act on inventory data within a day or even a few hours to capitalize on or fully understand an emerging opportunity.
Without a centralized system that pulls inventory information from every source on a real-time, 24/7 basis, it’s virtually impossible to leverage data to make these kinds of informed decisions about your business.
Getting started with inventory management
Now that you understand some of the concepts and challenges relating to inventory management in ecommerce, it’s time to take action. To build an optimized inventory management system for your ecommerce business, take the following steps:
1. Understand basic product category demand
The first step in getting a better handle on inventory management, especially if you’re launching a brand-new ecommerce shop, is to understand how demand fluctuates for your product category over time. You can achieve this by using Google Trends to look at how search demand and interest have changed over the past 12 months or even the past five years.
Here’s a dramatic example showing when people are searching most often for snowblowers throughout the year:
As you can see, interest begins to grow as early as October 2021 and peaks between January to February 2022. By understanding trends in this way, you can gain a better understanding of when you might want to order more or less of the products you sell.
If you have an established ecommerce site, another option is to use Google Analytics to see which pages and products your audience visits the most and how long they spend there. This insight will not only tell you what types of products attract your audience’s attention but also which products are popular and require more buffer stock.
2. Forecast future demand based on past sales
The second step in optimizing inventory management is to attempt to forecast future demand — including seasonal demand. To do this, simply look at past sales and determine when demand and interest were highest. Also, look ahead to find major selling opportunities throughout the year — like holidays and events — and plan for increased demand.
From there, order and store inventory accordingly to prevent any items from going out of stock during peak demand times. If you don’t have any sales history, refer back to the analysis you performed with Google Trends and Google Analytics.
3. Set initial minimum viable stock or minimal stock levels
If your ecommerce shop is already running, you should also take the time to set minimum viable stock levels for every product you sell. Remember: your goal is to determine the lowest possible inventory you can have in order to meet demand and avoid delays in fulfillment.
To land on your number, you’ll need to have a good understanding of demand and the amount of time it takes to replace out-of-stock inventory. When quantities dip below the number you designate, place a new order with your manufacturer or wholesaler. Think of this exercise as a starting place. Don’t be afraid to adjust this number over time as you experience growing or waning demand from consumers.
4. Prioritize products with an ABC analysis
To boost efficiency and save money, take the time to prioritize products using the ABC analysis. The ABC analysis is a method for prioritizing your existing inventory using three categories:
(A) high-value products with a low frequency of sales. For example, big-ticket items like workout and sporting equipment.
(B) moderate-value products with a moderate frequency of sales. For example, electronics and jewelry.
(C) low-value products with a high frequency of sales. For example, clothing and food.
ABC analysis is based in part on the Pareto Principle, which explains that 80% of your sales can be attributed to 20% of your customers. These customers buy category A products, which account for the majority of your revenue. Therefore, it’s more costly to your bottom line to lose these customers than it is to lose customers who buy category B and C products.
Your goal here should be to understand which products need the most attention from an inventory management perspective. For example, products that fall under your A category (the highest-selling products) may need to be ordered more often than products that fall underneath your C category (the lower-selling products).
5. Gear up for seasonality
If you’re running an ecommerce store that will take advantage of a particular shopping season — like holidays — or time of year — like summer — do what you can to be prepared.
Keep inventory levels low during slow months, but don’t wait too long to ramp up your supply. Near the end of a peak season, promote special offers to sell off the majority of inventory to avoid carrying too much dead stock.
Keep your operating costs down for as long as you possibly can, and while business is slower, use the time to make sure you have all the pieces in place — like partners, tools, warehouse storage, people resources, etc. — to ensure a smooth and successful sales period.
6. Implement inventory management software
To build and scale an ecommerce business today, invest in inventory management software. You can manually work through some of the tips outlined above, but using software will help maintain accuracy while saving you time and money.
The benefits of inventory management software include:
Helping you keep a pulse on inventory
Ensuring you’re never overstocked or understocked
Syncing inventory tracking across all the channels on which you sell products
Compiling real-time inventory data within one convenient system
Leveraging valuable insights
With more time and data added to your business, you can take advantage of new product opportunities, boost sales and successfully grow your ecommerce business.
Think about your inventory management strategy
As you think about improving inventory management for your ecommerce business, there are a few questions to ask yourself. How do you approach inventory management at your business? What challenges have you faced and been able to overcome? What have you learned that might help other entrepreneurs and business owners?
The answers to these questions will inform how you implement inventory management, how your business grows, and how you continue to meet the needs of your customers.
The facts are clear: Startups are finding funding increasingly difficult to secure, and even unicorns appear cornered, with many lacking both capital and a clear exit.
But equity rounds aren’t the only way for a company to raise money — alternative and other non-dilutive financing options are often overlooked. Taking on debt might be the right solution when you’re focused on growth and can see clear ROI from the capital you deploy.
Not all capital providers are equal, so seeking financing isn’t just about securing capital. It’s a matter of finding the right source of funding that matches both your business and your roadmap.
Here are four things you should consider:
Does this match my needs?
It’s easy to take for granted, but securing financing begins with a business plan. Don’t seek funding until you have a clear plan for how you’ll use it. For example, do you need capital to fund growth or for your day-to-day operations? The answer should influence not only the amount of capital you seek, but the type of funding partner you look for as well.
Start with a concrete plan and make sure it aligns with the structure of your financing:
Match repayment terms to your expected use of the debt.
Balance working capital needs with growth capital needs.
It’s understandable to hope for a one-and-done financing process that sets the next round far down the line, but that may be costlier than you realize in the long run.
Your term of repayment must be long enough so you can deploy the capital and see the returns. If it’s not, you may end up making loan payments with the principal.
Say, for example, you secure funding to enter a new market. You plan to expand your sales team to support the move and develop the cash flow necessary to pay back the loan. The problem here is, the new hire will take months to ramp up.
If there’s not enough delta between when you start ramping up and when you begin repayments, you’ll be paying back the loan before your new salesperson can bring in revenue to allow you to see ROI on the amount you borrowed.
Another issue to keep in mind: If you’re financing operations instead of growth, working capital requirements may reduce the amount you can deploy.
Let’s say you finance your ad spending and plan to deploy $200,000 over the next four months. But payments on the MCA loan you secured to fund that spending will eat into your revenue, and the loan will be further limited by a minimum cash covenant of $100,000. The result? You secured $200,000 in financing but can only deploy half of it.
With $100,000 of your financing kept in a cash account, only half the loan will be used to drive operations, which means you’re not likely to meet your growth target. What’s worse, as you’re only able to deploy half of the loan, your cost of capital is effectively double what you’d planned for.
Is this the right amount for me at this time?
The second consideration is balancing how much capital you need to act on your near-term goals against what you can reasonably expect to secure. If the funding amount you can get is not enough to move the needle, it might not be worth the effort required.
Elon Musk said Sunday he “somewhat agonized” over the font designs for his companies Tesla and SpaceX.
The billionaire businessman added he “loves fonts” and has tweaked the logos over the years.
He revealed the SpaceX logo also holds a hidden meaning, representing a rocket’s arc to orbit.
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In a series of Sunday tweets, Elon Musk said he “somewhat agonized” over his choice of fonts for his businesses and revealed a hidden meaning behind the SpaceX logo.
Responding to a tweet about serif and sans-serif fonts, the billionaire businessman took a break from posting cryptic memes and discussing politics to say he loves fonts and put significant consideration into how his companies are presented to consumers.
“I somewhat agonized over the Tesla & SpaceX font design (love fonts tbh),” Musk tweeted. “There are some similarities, particularly use of negative space. We’ve made many little tweaks over the years.”
The Tesla logo — a T-shaped design with a custom, sans-serif font spelling out the brand name — is meant to resemble a cross-section of an electric motor. The SpaceX logo, written in a similar font with an extended X, references the reusable rockets made by the company.
“The swoop of the X is meant to represent the rocket’s arc to orbit,” Musk tweeted.
Other business logos have also held hidden messages: Baskin Robbins, a chain that sells 31 flavors of ice cream, has a secret ’31’ hidden in the letters of its logo. Likewise, Amazon’s arrow logo is meant to represent a smile, while the circular ‘B’ logo for Beats by Dre represents a person wearing the popular headphones.
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The internet has revolutionized the business world and changed how we conduct business. Any business that aims to increase its visibility and boost profit needs to pay much attention to top ranking factors, including local SEO — which introduces the topic of the local search algorithm.
Local SEO is one of the top practices that help boost a business’s visibility and generates more sales.
However, achieving better local SEO rankings is not a walk in the park, especially due to increased competition. To appear higher on local results, businesses and marketers need to understand how the local search algorithm works.
Knowing this helps guide the steps for improving rankings in the local pack.
The competition gets stiffer as more businesses open and optimize for local searching. Besides, Google is updating its algorithm consistently, meaning only businesses that can keep up with these updates can appear at the top of local search results.
Luckily, you have come to this post as this article looks at everything you need to know about Google’s local search algorithm and what you can do to get that top spot in the local pack.
Understanding the local search algorithm
Google aims to provide the best results that match a specific local search query. It constantly updates the local search algorithm to determine which business to rank on top of local search results.
Ideally, Google wants to provide local content that is relevant and valuable to users. As with search engine optimization, keyword stuffing cannot give you that top spot in local search results.
SEO specialists and marketers should consider Google’s local search algorithm updates and make the necessary changes to rank higher. Failure to consider these updates means losing your local search presence, resulting in fewer leads and conversions.
Local algorithms check the Google My Business (GMB) listings to determine where to rank a business in local search rankings.
Ideally, Google’s local algorithm ranks businesses with information that matches a searcher’s query. And the higher a business ranks in local search results, the more chances a potential customer will click on it.
This post looks at the three major pillars that determine local search results to better understand the local search algorithm: proximity, prominence and relevance.
Of course, other factors make up Google’s local search algorithm, but since we cannot identify all of them, we’ll focus on the most crucial ones in this post.
By understanding these pillars, marketers can better position themselves for local search success.
1. Proximity
Proximity is one of the major ranking factors when it comes to local search. That means the distance between a business and a searcher is a ranking factor in local search.
When a searcher searches for something, Google considers how far the searcher is from the location of the term they use in the search. When a searcher doesn’t specify the location, Google calculates the distance based on the information they have regarding their location.
Ideally, Google aims to provide the most relevant results to a search query. For instance, why would Google provide a list of coffee shops in Los Angeles if the searcher is searching from Colombia?
That would be irrelevant local search results that won’t benefit the searcher.
Unfortunately, while proximity is a major local search pillar, it’s one of the factors that businesses have little control over. After all, you cannot change where your business is located, right?
You can only ensure your business location is as clear as possible, so that it appears for related nearby queries. Here are steps you can take to achieve this:
Claim and verify the Google My Business listing
Ensure local listings are accurate and optimized for local products or services
Get the Google Maps API Key and optimize for your location and routes
Set up your profile correctly (for Service Area Businesses) to avoid violating Google’s guidelines
Users can perform several types of local searches, including:
Geo-modified searches
Users will perform geo-modified searches when they are planning to visit somewhere. For instance, a searcher in Los Angeles planning to visit Toronto, Canada, may search for a “coffee shop in Oakville.” The results will differ from if they searched for “coffee” while physically in Oakville.
To be specific, geo-modified searches are mainly based on relevance and prominence as opposed to proximity when a user searches for something when outside the city included in the search.
Non-geo searches
Searchers perform this type of search when looking for something around them. For instance, a user in Los Angeles performing a local search for “coffee.”
Ideally, the user only needs to search for something and is shown results based on proximity. They will get the results that are closest to them.
“Near me” searches
“Near me” searches have been so popular in recent years. Although their popularity has significantly declined, users still perform this type of search when looking for something locally.
For instance, some users could add “near me” when searching for a coffee shop, hoping to get the most relevant results near them. As we’ve stated, this trend has lost popularity because when you perform a local search, you are searching for something near you.
It is not necessary to add “near me” to what you’re searching.
2. Prominence
Prominence refers to how important Google thinks your business is, which gets factored into the local search algorithm.
In other words, it refers to how well a business stands from the rest in various aspects, including directories, links, reviews, mentions, among other things.
If search engines view your business as trustworthy and credible, they will likely show it on top of related search query results.
The local search algorithm views businesses/brands with a stronger online prominence as credible and trustworthy. Some of the factors that determine prominence include:
Citations
A local citation is the mention of a business’s information online. The mention can include the partial or complete name, address, and phone number (NAP) of a local business.
Citations are an excellent way for people to learn about local businesses and impact local search results.
A business with high-quality citations can rank better in local search results, although businesses must continually manage citations to ensure data accuracy.
Inbound links
Backlinks play a crucial role in local business prominence. Gaining relevant backlinks from high-quality sites is an excellent way to build a business’ online reputation.
If you’re trying to outrank your competitors without much success, your backlink profile could be the reason.
In that case, you should check your competitor’s backlinks and compare them with yours. When doing this, pay attention to the number and quality of their backlinks.
As a rule of thumb, aim to have high-quality local backlinks pointing to your site to improve your page’s authority.
Reviews
Next, you need to pay much attention to reviews to improve local prominence. Many customers look at a business’s online reviews before deciding whether to engage more with the business or not. Besides, many positive online reviews can increase a business’ ranking factors.
Consider this scenario. A potential customer is looking for a pub around Oakville. When they perform a search, they are presented with two results: one with over 100 reviews and another with less than 10 reviews.
Which business do you think the searcher would trust? The one with 100 reviews, obviously.
As with search engines, customers need to trust a business before they decide to do business with it. Similarly, search engines can view online reviews and analyze them to determine a business’s online prominence.
That said, here are strategies you can use to boost your online review signals:
Have a strategy
You won’t have a strong online prominence if your products or services are not of a high standard. So, the first step to having many great reviews is to develop great products and services.
After that, develop a strategy to encourage your happy customers to leave honest but valuable reviews of their experience doing business with you to help boost your online reputation.
Monitor and manage the reviews
Having many reviews is one thing; you need to develop a plan to engage with your customers for better results. Responding to reviews shows people that you care and are genuine about your products and services.
People will avoid businesses that don’t respond to customer reviews (whether positive or negative).
Search engines, too, can tell whether you engage with customer reviews or not and will use the information to determine where to rank on local search results.
When responding to online reviews, pay special attention to negative reviews and how you respond to them. While no business likes getting negative reviews, how you respond to them can positively impact your business — respond positively to turn the negative reviews around.
3. Relevance
As earlier stated, Google wants to provide the most relevant results to a local search query. This key ranking factor will determine a business’s position in local search results — how well does a local business match a search query?
Even if your business ticks the above pillars (prominence and proximity), if the content on your page isn’t well structured and doesn’t cover the topics that a searcher is looking for, you won’t appear on top of local search results.
Here are factors that businesses should consider to create a relevant listing:
Local page signals
Local listing categories and attributes
Social posts and responses to online reviews
Local listing signals and categories
A business GMB listing and category can impact its relevance score for local searches. As such, complete your business profile carefully and continually add quality content to the web page to ensure it is relevant for proximity searches.
More specifically, ensure that all information on all listing pages, including Yelp, Bing, and Google, is complete and accurate. Aside from these factors, here are two crucial features you should pay attention to:
Category selection
Selecting the right categories for your local business listing is among the crucial factors for ranking locally. With over 4000 GMB categories, you want to choose categories that best describe your business — ensure they are relevant and specific.
Here are guidelines to follow when selecting a category:
Describe your business as opposed to your services
Be specific to minimize competition
Reduce the number of GMB categories to describe your business better
Business description
Without a proper description, users won’t know what your business is about. This section is about adding an introduction to your business so that customers and search engines can know more about your business.
However, don’t use this section for marketing your business. Just give users and search engines descriptive info that can help determine whether your business matches their needs.
Local page signals
Another way a business can improve its standing in the local search algorithm is by optimizing web pages for specific keywords. For multi-location businesses, it’s essential to have separate, localized pages for each location, with relevant information and contact details for customers to reach you.
Performing competitor research is advisable to determine what terms or keywords to use for a specific query. Here are top on-page signals to consider when trying to gain relevance for a given topic:
Keyword research — Before creating local content, you need to find keywords that matter to your business. Perform keyword research to determine highly relevant keywords with high intent. When finding relevant terms to use in your content, base your research on the customer perspective; think about what they search for and the type of content they are looking for.
Create local content — After finding the right keywords, it’s time to create your content. Google values the quality of content more than the length of the content, so keep this in mind when creating content. Another crucial thing to pay attention to is localizing the content. For example, you can create content on local news and events or use your city’s name within your content.
The goal is to create a connection between what’s happening in your local area and your business. Also, use pictures with your specific geolocation to increase your content relevance.
Creating quality and relevant content is only the start. You need to optimize your content for on-page signals so local search algorithms can discover and rank them better. Here’s how you can optimize your local content for on-page signals:
Meta descriptions — Include keywords in your meta descriptions to encourage searchers to click through and increase visibility
Title tags — Title tags are some of the factors that search engines use to determine where to rank content. Incorporating keywords naturally in your title tags can help boost local rankings
Image tags — Another way to improve local rankings is by including relevant keywords in your image tags. Including geotags also comes with an added advantage
Headings — Users and Google value pages with clear structures. Consider creating headings within your content to capture readers’ attention and encourage them to read on. However, ensure your heading tags describe the content that comes after them well. Also, include keywords in your heading tags to help search engines understand them and their importance.
Off-page local signals
Gaining high-quality backlinks is a great way to boost credibility and trust. Backlinks refer to external links from another website to your site. Aim to have more high-quality backlinks to boost your website authority.
Ideally, having many quality backlinks shows search engines that your website or page is credible and trustworthy, which boosts the chances of ranking it higher in search engine results.
Guest posting is one of the best examples of link-building strategies you can use. Finding great guest posting opportunities provides an excellent opportunity to share your content to a new but relevant audience, which helps boost your website authority.
Another strategy you can use is to create longer and better content than what is already available on the web. When your content is high quality and relevant, it will be easier to get high-quality backlinks.
Review and social signals
Online reviews can also help boost relevance for your local business. Aim to get as many positive reviews from your happy customers as possible.
Remember, when customers perform a local search, they get not only the relevant businesses but also reviews related to the search. The more positive reviews a business has, the higher chances a potential customer will do business with them.
Closing thoughts on the local search algorithm
Ranking on top of local search results can seem daunting, but it shouldn’t when you know the vital things to focus on. As you have seen above, the local algorithm is based on three pillars: relevance, proximity, and prominence.
Of course, other factors determine local search rankings depending on your industry and competition.
