Out of State Local Search
-
I've noticed when traveling that a local search (be it city, region, or state) yields different results depending on my physical location. This is very anecdotal, but with an incognito search in my clients city I'll get one result, in a different city about 30 miles away I'll get a slightly different result, in a different state but still only about 30 miles away I'll get another slightly different result, and many states away the result is different still.
This isn't very scientific data, but I think something is going on. Have people experienced this? Is anyone aware of research or has an understanding of what can bias a local search in different directions depending on the distance from the area represented by that local search? These don't seem to be fluctuations in ranking, the results are widely different, but mostly constant in their respective locations.
Any guidance would be appreciated.
-
Hi Oren,
Thanks for the great explanation. So, let me try to sum up the options I see.
Option 1: Legal firm with physical offices in Delaware and California
In this case, the firm can have a Google+ Local page for each physical office, linking to a website landing page for each physical office. Be sure, of course, that each physical office has a unique local phone number. In this scenario, the client has good hope of showing up in the local results for the cities in California and Delaware in which they are are physically located.
Option 2: Legal firm in with an office California that will send attorneys to Delaware to serve clients
In this case, the legal firm can have a Google+ Local page for their California, but not one for Delaware if they don't have a physical office in the latter state. They can, however, build content on their website to reflect the work they do in Delaware cities. In this scenario, the firm has a good chance of showing up in the local results for their California city, but not their Delaware ones. Instead, they must aim for organic visibility for their work in Delaware, and if we're dealing with the legal practice, this can be tough because there are likely to be a ton of lawyer in almost any major city. So, it's possible but very difficult to achieve good organic visibility with this content.
Hopefully, I've covered the two scenarios that might apply to your client. It pretty much all comes down to the cities in which one is physically located dictating in which cities one ranks locally.
-
Sure no problem. Many professional service businesses (doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants, etc.) are only licensed to practice in a specific state. These businesses have a physical location in this state, and deal with matters that occur in that state both in their offices and by traveling to clients, even to clients not in their local area. Although they are only licensed in a specific state, they can do business with anyone from any state, as long as the matter pertains to the state of their license (ex. If you run a business with offices in California, but you're incorporated in Delaware, you'll need the services of a Delaware business attorney, perhaps an accountant, etc. even if you aren't physically in the state, and said Delaware Attorney might meet with you in your office in California). Going on with this example, said Delaware attorneys and accountants would want to show up well on SERPs and Local Search for out of state searchers in California and other states, since those out of state searchers need a localized service, in a different state.
From what I can tell, this is one of those niche things that Google doesn't seem to do much about. What, if anything, would be different about applying best practice for local search to locations that are not nearby.
And as always Miriam, thank you for your prompt and well thought out responses!
-
Hi Oren,
Might need to see a bit more info here. Are you talking about a local business that:
-
has physical locations in these other cities/states that clients come to? (like a restaurant franchise)
-
or has staff that travel from a physical address in these city/states to clients? (like a wedding photographer)
-or-
Are you talking about a virtual business that isn't making face-to-face contact with clients but offers statewide or nationwide services/products?
Please, provide as much detail as you can about the specifics of the business model to ensure you receive the best possible answer from the community.
-
-
I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask but it's a followup question:
As a result of slight differences in localized results, if a business wanted to market towards out of local region customers (other city, state, county, what have you) would best practices be different? Would local landing pages be the way to go? Or should the same best practices apply.
-
Yes. We had a call form a client last week with the same question. Our response - each local business search is completely dependant on the users location settings. While we know this is completely true, it never filters results which are closest to you. Shouldn't this be how it's supposed to work? Maybe not!
One of our clients is a hardwood flooring company next to Tower Bridge in London. If am in the city and search for "Hardwood Flooring in London", they do not always appear. However, travel another 20miles out of town, and they'll pop as a local business. Just has me a little confused sometimes.
-
Not at all, Oren! You're very welcome.
-
Thank you for the response. Good to know I'm not losing my mind.
-
Hi Oren,
You are correct in the phenomenon that you have noticed. For quite some time now, Google has been localizing results to the searcher's geographic location. Thus, when you search from Boston for dentists in Chicago, you will likely be shown somewhat different results than will the dentist searching for himself from his location in Chicago. On mobile, this is often even more evident. If you search for a coffee shop while driving through the north end of town, you will be shown the cafes nearest to you. This will change to a new set of cafes when you reach the south end of town.
While I have never seen a serious study conducted of the exact degree of variance in the results, the important thing to understand is that every user is seeing different results, personalized to their geography. Gone are the days when a business could definitively rank #1 for a term, due to this type of personalization.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is there value in including a city name in my keyphrase if my target demo is searching from within that city?
If I'm located in Phoenix, and I search for "mobile app development" it automatically adds an implied "near me" to bring up local results first, right? Therefore, I would assume searching "mobile app development phoenix" would garner the same results. It seems targeting "mobile app development phoenix" as a keyphrase is only valuable if I want people outside of Phoenix to find me when searching for mobile app development. Is it correct that focusing on national keywords/phrases ("mobile app development") will improve my ranking nationally AND in my local market? Links to reputable articles support your answer are much appreciated
Local Website Optimization | | Kitely_Katie1 -
I want to rank a national home page for a local keyword phrase
Hello - We are a nationally available brand based in Denver, CO. Our home page currently ranks #8 (used to be 5) for "real estate photography in Denver" -- I want to improve this ranking, but our home page is generalized and not geared toward Denver, CO but to all of our markets. I'm trying to troubleshoot this and have a few ideas.... I would love advice on the best route, or a different route altogether: Create a Denver-specific page -- _will that page compete with my home page that is already ranked in the top ten? _ Add the keyword phrase in the image alt attribute Add keyword phrase into the content - need to make sure that viewers realize we are national I already updated the meta description to say "real estate photography in Denver and beyond"
Local Website Optimization | | virtuance_photography1 -
What more can be done to get Google to change the landing pages it uses for certain search terms?
For one of my SEO campaigns, Google is using the website's home page as the landing page for the majority of search terms being tracked. The website splits its products by region and so we want specific region pages to rank for search terms related to that region, rather than the home page. We have optimised each regional page to a reasonably high standard and we have ensured that there is a good amount of internal linking and sign-posting to those region pages, however, Google is still using the home page. The only complication is that for the first few months there were canonical tags on these pages to the home page. These were removed around 3 months ago and we've checked that the region pages are indexed properly. Is there anything we are missing? Has anyone had any success in getting Google to change its landing pages?
Local Website Optimization | | ClickHub-Harry0 -
Applying NAP Local Schema Markup to a Virtual Location: spamming or not?
I have a client that has multiple virtual locations to show website visitors where they provide delivery services. These are individual pages that include unique phone numbers, zip codes, city & state. However there is no address (this is just a service area). We wanted to apply schematic markup to these landing pages. Our development team successfully applied schema to the phone, state, city, etc. However for just the address property they said VIRTUAL LOCATION. This checked out fine on the Google structured data testing tool. Our question is this; can just having VIRTUAL LOCATION for the address property be construed as spamming? This landing page is providing pertinent information for the end user. However since there is no brick and mortar address I'm trying to determine if having VIRTUAL LOCATION as the value could be frowned upon by Google. Any insight would be very helpful. Thanks
Local Website Optimization | | RosemaryB1 -
Local food delivery SEO strategy
Hey guys, I'm working with a new company that doesn't have a brick and mortar storefront, they deliver. They basically deliver pre packaged smoothies in a VERY localized area (Vancouver, BC). I'm wondering how grandiose their goals should be re ranking for keywords that have non localized authority. What do I mean? Lets say their marketing pillars are "health education related to smoothies" "convenient veggies for smoothies" "(insert health benefit here) for smoothies". Should they be trying to compete for these keywords? Or should they really be trying to rank with keywords especially to Vancouver? Side note: What kind of effect does Country and Locality have on keywords that are generally used by content providers and not service related companies building out an inbound strategy? Thanks in advance!
Local Website Optimization | | Anti-Alex0 -
Need Help - Google has picked up an overseas company with the same name and put it in search on the right
Hi All, Google has picked up a competitors logo from overseas (same name) and input it with the wikipedia excerpt on the right hand side of search. What the heck can I do to get this removed as its a serious legal/brand issue. See URL - http://www.google.com.au/webhp?nord=1&gws_rd=cr&ei=GcMeVuS0CMq-0gSR7Lm4BA#nord=1&q=cfcu Hope someone can help !! Cheers Dave http://www.google.com.au/webhp?nord=1&gws_rd=cr&ei=GcMeVuS0CMq-0gSR7Lm4BA#nord=1&q=cfcu
Local Website Optimization | | CFCU0 -
How can i optimize my pages for local areas if we are not in that area?
Hi Mozers! So I watched a video about Matt Cutts he talks about creating multiple web pages just for one keywords is an absolutely no go. So I was wondering we serve a clients in NZ Australia and USA, If we target phrase like Psychic Readings California, Psychic Readings San Diego etc (USA) Psychic Readings Melbourne, Psychic Readings Sydney (AU) Psychic Readings Auckland, Psychic Readings Wellington (NZ) What is the best practice or right way to go about structuring my pages to do this without going against googles guidelines. Many thanks
Local Website Optimization | | edward-may1 -
Target broad keywords for local or broad keywords+local city?
Hi, Is it better to target broad keywords in a local market or target 'broad keywords + local city'? Or both? The sites I'm working with currently have landing pages for each 'local city/town + keyword' ... they each have about 5 services they offer and about 7 or more nearby towns they service. This means I'm tracking about 35+ keywords per client. That seems to be a bit much. Am I wrong? Would it be just as effective to target broad keywords and track them locally being that the local market isn't very competitive. Of course the broad keywords yield more search volume according to google keyword tool. However, the current setup is sending a worthwhile traffic volume to the site. According to Miriam's article http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide I'm working with a business model 2 - single brick and mortar location servicing many areas nearby. Thanks, Chris
Local Website Optimization | | LinkPoint0