Which of the Listed Factors Are Important for Local SEO?

The three answers are mentions of your business name, address and phone number, links from local websites, and localized site content. The other two options in the usual version of this question, the total number of backlinks from trusted websites and the follow or nofollow property of a backlink, are general link topics that say nothing about where a business is or which area it serves. That is the test the question is setting: each correct answer ties the business to a place, while each wrong one would be just as true of a company with no location at all.

The question turns up in multiple-choice SEO exams, and the answer keys that circulate online attribute it to Semrush’s SEO Fundamentals exam. Semrush does not publish its key, so the answer above is the one those keys agree on, and it is also the only set of three that holds up once you look at how Google describes local ranking. Below is why each option is in or out, followed by what the quiz leaves out if you are trying to rank a real business rather than pass a test.

Mentions of your business name, address and phone number

Name, address and phone number, usually shortened to NAP, are the details search engines use to recognize one business across many websites. When the same name, street address and phone number appear on your Google Business Profile, your website and the directories that list you, those mentions reinforce each other. When they disagree, for example an old suite number on one directory and a new one on your site, they make it harder to be sure the listings describe the same business. Google’s own help page on local ranking says that “businesses with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up in local search results”, which is the profile-side version of the same idea.

Most of these mentions live in citations, and the guide to citations, the directory listings that carry your NAP covers how to find and correct them. For an exam, the point to remember is consistency rather than volume. Fifty listings with three different phone numbers are worth less than twenty that all match.

Links from local websites

Google’s local ranking help page lists three things it mainly looks at: relevance, distance and popularity. Under the heading it still calls prominence, it explains that how well known a business is draws on information such as links from other websites and the number and rating of reviews. Links help any website, which is why the quiz narrows the option to links from local websites. A link from a Calgary community association, a local business improvement area, a supplier in the same city or a local news story does two jobs at once, because it adds authority and it ties the business to the place where it works.

That is also the reason the competing option, the total number of backlinks from trusted websites, is marked wrong. A count of links from trusted sites is a general authority measure. It might be high for a national software company with no local customers at all, so it cannot be the factor that makes a business show up for a search like “furnace repair Calgary”.

Localized site content

Relevance, the first of Google’s three, is about how well a business matches what someone searched for. On the website side, that means pages that say plainly which services you offer and where. A plumbing company that serves Calgary and Airdrie and has a page for each service, with the areas it covers written into the text, gives Google something concrete to match against a local search. A single home page that says “quality service” and nothing about place gives it very little.

Localized content is not the same as stuffing city names into every sentence. It means writing for the people in that area: the neighbourhoods you cover, local conditions that affect the service, and the questions customers in that market ask. If you want the step-by-step version, the guide on how to optimize a website for local SEO walks through the pages, headings and structured data involved.

Why the follow or nofollow property is the decoy

The fifth option is the one most people are unsure about. Follow and nofollow describe a link rather than a business: the site that publishes a link can add an attribute such as rel=”nofollow” to tell Google how it relates to the page it points to. Google’s Search Central documentation treats these as ways for a site to qualify its outbound links, and it says that pages behind such links may still be crawled. That makes the attribute a technical detail of link building in general. It is set by somebody else’s website, it is not tied to any location, and it is the least local of the five options, which is why the exam uses it as a distractor.

What the quiz leaves out

Passing the question and ranking a business in the map results are different tasks, and the five options skip two of the biggest local factors. The first is distance. Google lists it as one of its three main inputs, and it means a search from the northwest of the city can show a different set of businesses in the local 3-pack than the same search from the southeast. You cannot change where your business is, so distance belongs on the list of things to understand rather than things to work on.

The second is the Google Business Profile itself. The Local Search Ranking Factors survey, which Darren Shaw of Whitespark (a company founded in Edmonton) took over in 2017, asked 47 local search practitioners to rate factors for its 2026 edition, published in November 2025. Their top three for the map pack were the primary Business Profile category, the proximity of the address to the searcher and keywords in the business title. For the regular organic results below the map, the top three were a dedicated page for each service, city or neighbourhood relevance of the content, and the quality and authority of links to the domain. Those last three line up closely with the quiz’s correct answers. The survey is expert opinion rather than Google’s own ranking formula, and Google says it keeps those details confidential, but it is the most widely cited attempt to rank the factors.

One survey factor needs a warning. Keywords in the business title only help when they are part of the real name. Google’s guidelines say the name on your profile “should reflect your business’s real-world name, as used consistently on your storefront” and that adding unnecessary information to it is not permitted. Adding “Best Calgary Roofing” to a profile for a company called Smith Roofing breaks that rule and puts the listing at risk. The same guidelines ask businesses to choose the fewest categories that describe the core business, which is why picking the right primary category matters more than adding extra ones.

Using the answer on a real business

The three exam answers make a reasonable checklist for a small business. As an illustration, a Calgary landscaping company could check that its name, address and phone number match on its website, its Business Profile and the main Canadian directories; look for a few genuine local links, such as a supplier’s list of installers or a sponsorship page from a local sports club; and make sure its site has a page for each service that names the parts of the city it covers. None of that is quick, and local SEO results usually take months to show, but each piece keeps working once it is done.

If you would like a second opinion on how your business shows up in local search, SEO Company To-The-TOP! has worked on search in Calgary since 2007, and one specialist does all the client work. You can read about its approach to local SEO in Calgary, or call (403) 308-5949 to talk it through.