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Search ranking factors in 2025 for national and local campaigns

Discover the main things that might impact your search rankings in 2025 for both national and local campaigns.
Published:
February 3, 2025
Category: SEO

In this blog we’re going to take a look at the main things that might impact your search rankings in 2025 for both national and local campaigns.

We’ll start by recapping why Search Engine Optimisation is important.

1. Benefits of improving your rankings on search engines:

  • Visibility and exposure: Even the best business ideas won’t mean much if people don’t know about them, and search engines tend to be the first place people look when they want a product or service.
  • Traffic generation: Studies have shown that a significant portion of clicks go to the top results on the search engine results page (SERP). Therefore, higher rankings can translate into more website visitors, potentially leading to increased sales or conversions.
  • Credibility and trust: Search engines like Google are always trying to present you with the best and most reliable websites first, so appearing at the top of the results can enhance a business’s reputation and credibility in the eyes of potential customers.
  • Competitive advantage: Higher search rankings can provide a competitive edge by making it easier for potential customers to find and choose the business over others offering similar products or services.
  • Cost-effectiveness: Compared to traditional advertising methods, such as print ads or TV commercials, SEO often offers a higher return on investment (ROI) simply because it targets users who are actively seeking information related to the business’s offerings.
  • Insights and analytics: By analysing which keywords and phrases drive the most traffic and conversions, businesses can refine their SEO strategies and better tailor their marketing efforts to meet the needs of their target audience.

2. Ranking for local vs national

The difference between trying to rank locally versus nationally lies primarily in scope and target audience.

Scope:

  • Local: Local search is especially important for businesses that serve a specific geographical area, such as restaurants, plumbers and hairdressers.
  • National: For businesses with a wide reach/those targeting customers across multiple regions, i.e. national brands, eCommerce sites and news outlets.

Target audience:

  • Local search is highly relevant for businesses that rely on attracting foot traffic within a defined local market.
  • National search is obviously important for businesses with a broader target audience. Customers may be looking for national brands, online retailers, informational websites, or resources that are not tied to a specific location.

3. Local campaign ranking factors

a. The quantity and average score of your Google Maps reviews impacts your visibility in search for a variety of reasons:

  • Relevance: Google aims to provide users with the most relevant search results based on their query and location. Businesses with a higher number of positive reviews — especially if they mention relevant keywords — are more likely to appear prominently in local search results for related queries.
  • Trust and credibility: Google’s algorithms take into account the overall sentiment and quality of reviews when determining a business’s ranking in local search results. Actual users will also base their preferences on reviews and overall star ratings.
  • User engagement: Google values user engagement signals, such as reviews, when ranking businesses in local search results. Businesses with a higher volume of reviews and active engagement with customers (e.g., responding to reviews and addressing feedback) are perceived as more relevant and valuable to users, which can positively influence their visibility in local search results. Find out why your business should be using Google Business Profile Chat here.

b. Google Maps proximity to searcher:

  • Google wants to show people making a local Maps search for ‘coffee’ a place they can actually get to easily.

c. Website authority score:

  • Backlink profile: Backlinks are just when one website links to another with an anchor text. Websites with a higher authority are more likely to attract quality backlinks from other reputable sites.
  • Content visibility: High-authority sites tend to rank better in search engine results pages, thus attracting more organic traffic.
  • Local citations: Local citations — mentions of a business’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) on other websites — are important for local SEO. Websites with higher authority are more likely to be trusted by search engines and users, leading to better rankings.
  • Competitive advantage: In competitive local markets, businesses with higher website authority will have an advantage in local search rankings.

d. Keyword targeting of pages on the website:

  • Relevance: KW targeting allows you to ensure that your content aligns closely with what users are actually searching for.
  • Geographic targeting: Including city names/other regional identifiers ensures search engines know what area you’re serving.
  • Local intent optimisation: Local search queries can often contain specific intent signals, such as “near me” or location qualifiers like city names or postcodes. By targeting keywords that align with these local intent signals, you increase the chances of your site appearing in local search results when users are seeking nearby businesses or services. Optimising content for local intent can help capture highly qualified local traffic and improve your conversion rates.
  • Content quality and optimisation: Keyword targeting helps you to produce high-quality and relevant content that addresses the needs and interests of your target audience.
  • Structured data markup: Incorporating structured data markup such as schema.org markup can provide search engines with additional context about your business, including its location, contact info, business hours etc.

4. National campaign ranking factors:

a. Site accessibility to search engines refers to how effectively search engine crawlers can discover, access, and index the content on your website.

Technical audits and fixes play a crucial role in making sure your site is accessible to search engines, and this can have a significant impact on your ranking in national search results. Here’s how:

  • Indexation: Technical audits help identify and address issues like broken links, crawl errors etc.
  • Crawl budget: Search engines only have a certain amount of resources allocated to crawl different sites. The easier they can crawl your site (without excessive redirects, bloated code, server errors) the better your chances of maintaining a high ranking.
  • Page speed (particularly on mobile): Site speed is a crucial ranking factor in search algorithms, especially for mobile search. Technical audits can identify performance bottlenecks such as large image files, render-blocking scripts, or inefficient server configurations that might slow down how quickly your website loads.
  • Mobile friendliness: Because most people use their mobiles when they search for something, search engines prioritise mobile-friendly sites. Technical audits can assess your mobile-friendliness and identify issues such as unresponsive design, touch elements that are too close together, or viewport configuration errors that may impact usability on mobile devices.
  • Structured data and schema markup: Technical audits can identify opportunities to implement structured data markup for rich snippets, breadcrumbs, product information and other elements that should enhance your site’s visibility and click-through rates in search results.

b. Keyword targeted pages:

  • Relevance to search queries: Keyword-targeted pages are optimised to address specific search queries that users enter into search engines.
  • Better indexation and ranking: Search engines rely on keywords to understand the content and context of web pages, so when you target specific keywords that are relevant to your business, industry, products, or services, you make it easier for search engines to index and properly categorise your pages.
  • Competitive advantage: By identifying high-value keywords with substantial search volume but relatively lower competition, you can create pages that have a better chance of ranking prominently in search results, giving your site a competitive advantage in national search.
  • Content depth and authority: By covering a wide range of topics related to your targeted keywords, you demonstrate expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (E-A-T) in your niche, which are important factors that search engines consider when ranking pages. What’s more, well-researched, in-depth content is more likely to attract backlinks, social shares, and other signals of quality, further boosting your site’s authority and ranking potential in national search.
  • User experience and engagement: Strategically targeting keywords requires crafting content that is valuable, captivating, and user-centric. Providing pertinent information that aligns with the user’s search intent enriches the overall browsing experience, encouraging prolonged dwell times, decreased bounce rates, and heightened engagement metrics. These favourable indicators will thus contribute positively to your site’s standing in national search results.

c. Longer form content:

  • Comprehensive coverage: Google likes it when you cover topics in greater depth and detail, addressing various aspects of the subject.
  • Keyword targeting: The longer the content, the more opportunities you have to add relevant keywords in organic ways.
  • Backlink acquisition: Longer form content tends to attract more backlinks from other websites and blogs. For example, scientific papers might be referenced by various blogs.
  • Dwell time and engagement: Rich, useful content obviously takes longer to read. If you manage to keep your users engaged, they’ll stay on your site longer and Google will favour your content.
  • Featured snippets and rich results: Longer form content is more likely to be selected for featured snippets, knowledge panels, and other rich results displayed by search engines.

d. Inbound links from high authority sites:

  • Authority transfer/boosted domain authority: You’ll get a share of the shine from inbound links from high authority sites.
  • Increased visibility: People might see your links on the high authority site which could drive traffic to yours
  • Improved crawling and indexation: Help search engine crawlers discover and index your content more efficiently.
  • Enhanced relevance: Search engines use factors such as anchor text, surrounding content and the authority of the linking domain to determine the relevance of backlinks.

e. Keeping your content fresh will also ensure:

  • Improved relevance
  • Increased crawling frequency
  • Expanded keyword opportunities
  • Enhanced user engagement
  • More opportunities for internal linking
  • More chances for social shares and external links, amplifying the visibility and reach of your content

. f. EEAT Experience, authority and trust leads to:

  • Better user experience
  • Demonstrated expertise
  • Established authority, measured by factors such as backlinks from reputable websites
  • Earned trust. Websites that are transparent, reliable and trustworthy are preferred by Google

g. Internal linking structure improves:

  • Crawlability and indexation
  • Page authority distribution
  • Topic relevance and semantic connectivity
  • Anchor text optimisation
  • User experience and engagement
  • Content silos and site structure

As you can see, there are many things to consider when you’re trying to improve search rankings for both national and local SEO campaigns. This might seem overwhelming if you haven’t built up any technical expertise in the area, but that’s where we come in!

If you’d like some help improving SEO for your business, get in touch with our team today to get started!

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