Much of the work we do in SEO is trying to deconstruct the algorithms through competitive analysis. We research the attributes of the top ranking websites, evaluate what they have in common and then try to emulate the factors that we believe may have the greatest positive impact. This is what we must also do in optimizing for Local Search.  

Resolve Technical Problems First

Before getting too deeply into competition research, it's best to resolve any technical problems with the website to remove any obstacles that may be negatively impacting its rankings. We know that a business's website is hugely important in ranking in the local results that appear for organic web searches, so we don't want to skip this step.

Clean Up Data

In addition, in Local Search, it's imperative to clear up any discrepancies with the business' core data (name, street address, local phone number), since this can suppress rankings, even when everything else is done right. Seek out listings for the business across the web and update them to match the data on the Places page and on the website. Also, ensure that each business location has just one accurate Places page.

Get Your Places Listing Right

Some other ranking factors that may come into play are Places page optimization factors, which really don't justify any competitive analysis. These are things you should simply do as a matter of course and include following the Google Places Quality Guidelines, claiming and verifying the listing, the completeness of the information, acceptable keyword usage, etc.

Once these items are taken care of, it's time to roll up your sleeves and get to work on competitive analysis.

Categories

Categories are often overlooked, but wield significant influence in Local Search. Local business information has always been organized by category and the categories you choose for a business's Place page greatly impact its overall relevance for search queries.

Being in the right categories makes it much easier for the Search Engines to associate a business with what it does. Google knows, for example, that dentists clean teeth, plastic surgeons do nose jobs and plumbers repair leaky faucets, similar to the way that shoppers know habaneros are in the produce section, turmeric is in the spice area and brie can be found with the other cheeses in a grocery store.

Google requires each business to choose at least one category with which to associate its Places page. This should be that one overarching category that encompasses everything else you do, such as Plumber or Dentist. A business may then choose as many as 4 more categories to be in. These can be predetermined Google categories or you can create your own custom categories.

Try to use at least 2 more Google categories, if you can find 2 that are applicable to what you do. If there are 5 Google categories that apply to your business, it may be best to use all of them. However, it’s a good idea to see what categories the top ranking businesses for your best search terms are in, too.

Google makes this very easy by displaying a business categories right on its Places page:

Check the set of keywords you most want to rank for to see who ranks in the local pack for web searches for those terms and which categories they are in. Organize the information to learn if there are certain categories that all or most of them share. If so, it's likely that you would benefit from choosing those categories, as well.

Also use what you learn to see if there are any appropriate Google categories you may have missed and if there are any custom categories that may be particularly good for your business. For example, if you're a dentist who enjoys a high profit margin on Invisalign clear braces, and nearly all the dentists who rank for that term have Invisalign as a custom category, you may opt to use one of your 4 category options for that term.

Make your work less tedious by using a tool that will gather this information for you. Check out the free Local Search Toolkit for this purpose. Enter your search terms and it scrapes the categories of the top ranking business in the local results for web search. Then, you can either look at the categories chosen by each of those businesses or export the categories for all of the ranking businesses into a spreadsheet which you can organize in a way that works best for you.

Citations and Links

Citations are mentions or "cites" of your business made in conjunction with its address and/or phone number. Citations do not have to include a link to the business' website.

The effect of citations on Local Search is often likened to the effect of links on organic Web Search. And just in the way that all links are not equal, all citations are not equal, either. Some citations are more trusted and have more impact on rankings than others and their effect can vary by industry. By uncovering the citations of the businesses that rank best for the terms you want to rank for you can find the citations that can probably help the most.

Fortunately, there are several ways to find this information. First, by looking at the citations that Google publishes on the Places pages of the top rankers. Secondly, by searching for a unique business identifier and looking at the results.

To do this manually, look at the Details and More details of the businesses Places page, along with the More about this place section of the listing.

Compiling and organizing this information can point you to what should be good sites on which to get listed. Look for citation "hubs" where all or most of the top rankers are listed. Disregard low quality directories and scraper sites. Concentrate, instead on the sites most likely to be trusted sources of data for Google Places.

Again there are tools to make this process less tedious and time consuming - Local Search Toolkit and Whitespark's Local Citation Finder.

The citations from the Places pages of the top ranking business are automatically included in Local Search Toolkit results.

They can be viewed online by individual business:

And the citations for all of the business that rank for a term can be exported into a spreadsheet to be organized and evaluated.

A second method involves doing individual web searches for each top ranker's most unique identifier on the web, their local phone number. Then, look at the results, seeking quality citations that you can also obtain. This clever technique for citation discovery was developed by Garrett French of the Ontolo Link Building Toolset, in his post, Phone Number Co-Citation Analysis for Local Link Builders.

The Whitespark Local Citation Finder can completely automate this process for you. Simply enter your keyword and city, and it will get the top ranked businesses, search their phone numbers, and prepare a nice organized list for you.

Links to ‘submit your business’ are provided if the submit URL is known, and Pro users ($20/month) can organize their searches into projects,  export results to CSV, see the citations for each ranking business, and sort by SEOmoz Domain Authority and Majestic SEO AC Rank. You can also use the tool as a worksheet as you go through the results submitting your business. Check off “GOT IT!” when you have submitted your business, and check off “USELESS” if the source doesn’t provide a way for you to submit. If you’re a Pro user and you associated a search with a project when you ran it, then the tool will automatically tell you which citations you already have.

In addition to the keyword search, you can also search for a specific phone number. This can be useful for identifying which citations you already have, or, which citations a specific competitor has.

In the phone number search, the tool lists every URL discovered so you can see all the different pages that the citations appear on.

Pro users can also compare the results from different searches to see which citation sources appeared in each. This is useful when you’ve already worked through a previous search for, say, ‘denver dentists’, and now you want to see if there are any new citations to get on a search for ‘denver dental care’. Use the comparison tool, and you can see exactly which ones are new sources in the new search. The comparison tool is especially useful for phone number searches though. Search your own phone number, then your competitors’ phone numbers, compare them, and you can see exactly which citations your competitors have, that you don’t in a nice little chart:

In addition to citations, good local links can be found through both of these processes, as well as through traditional backlink analysis. Link opportunities that, by traditional linkbuilding standards would be considered poor, can be very good links for local business websites. Links that pass PageRank are obviously the best, but good local links can still contribute to Place Rank without it. Some things that can make an otherwise marginal link good for local:

• Links that convey location
• Links that convey products/services
• Links with the business name in them
• Links with phone/address in them

Other attributes that can make a link good for local businesses are links from pages with:

• Your location in the title tag
• Your business name in the title tag
• Your business address and/or phone number in title tag and/or URL

Reviews

Reviews are a known ranking factor in Google Places. Opinion differs as to what review factors, such as quantity, sentiment and source, are most heavily weighted in the algorithm. However, most SEO's agree they will continue to gain in importance as the biggest component of local sharing and "socialness".

The number of reviews made on Google's own recommendation engine, Hotpot, seems to be skyrocketing and you definitely want to encourage happy customers to leave reviews for your business there. What other review websites should you send customers to for a local rankings boost?

Again we look at the common attributes of the top ranking websites for our most coveted terms. Where are they being reviewed? And again, Google makes this easy for us to see. Look first in the search results. The sites listed in blue at the bottom of the local listings are the first ones to pay attention to. Those links show the sites that publish the most reviews for that business.

Then, look at the Places pages in the Reviews from around the web section looking for the sites where most of the top ranking businesses have been reviewed. The lists can get very long in some industries, like travel and dining, but Local Search Toolkit can help you out here, too.

You can look at the reviews for each individual business or download a spreadsheet that compiles all the reviews for the businesses ranking in the local results for a particular keyword.

While reviews do impact rankings, it's critical to keep in mind that getting plenty of good reviews is as much or more about the success of your business as it is about improving your rankings.

In Summary

Competitive analysis and the analysis of Local Search ranking factors as they apply  to your own business will evolve and mature significantly over the next year. Keep a close eye on these tools as they evolve and mature, as well. The time they save in gathering and organizing data becomes obvious as you use them and you'll appreciate their assistance in helping your business rank better in Local Search.