Localised results always been returned for a query, how do you handle this?
-
I've got an interesting issue relating to geo-location and I'm not sure how to go about solving it. The site: http://www.onlinecoal.co.uk according to the Moz rank tracker is currently ranking 12th for the term "coal merchants" but has been as high as 5th in recent weeks.
However, I've tried the search out in a number of locations (cleared caches, not logged in, different devices etc) and it always seems to returns results with a bias towards local business. The only way I see the results that Moz reports is by using this string: https://www.google.com/?q=coal&pws=0#pws=0&q=coal+merchants&safe=off&start=10
I know from the visits report by analytics that my experience is typical of that potential visitors are finding, Google always returns localised results for the term "coal merchants"
My question is two pronged:
1. What causes google to decide that a general search term is best served with localised results?
2. What is my best strategy to deal with this?
-
Thank you everyone, lot of interesting information. We'll take the approach suggested by Miriam of building up organic authority slowly and we're already on with Adwords (this site is only 5 months old so it was the obvious choice over the winter). I'm also going to follow Rob's advice and focus on a few local areas based on Analytics to try and get a bit more visibility until we build up some domain authority.
Thanks again,
Rodney
-
Sorry, had to go away a bit.
The Omskirk is being returned due to proximity. You are near there, you get to see Omskirk. If you went into Google Search settings and made the location London, you would see London showing more.So, someone in Liverpool, won't be seeing a bunch of Omskirk.
Your question was: How do you handle localised results being returned for a query? You don't. In the eyes of search engines (Google in this case), search results are impacted by the searcher who makes the queries. If you and I are in the same room and we both search on Home delivered coal, we will likely get a somewhat different result (you search on that type term more and click on specific results that modify what you see.) If we both are on non personalized search and in the same room, 99% we will get the same SERP.
So, we probably got off track a bit with the way we all answered. If not, then Miriam's direction is as solid as can be. She knows local back and front. You can either grow slowly or you advertise for a faster result.
The only way YOU will impact Local terms is to use them. Now, DO NOT GO OUT AND CREATE A BUNCH OF LOCAL LISTINGS. Not yelling, really emphasizing. You could have a page for London coal and other larger cities, etc. but take care with duplicate content.
To learn where the traffic is coming from, I would do this. Go into GA, Audience, Visitors Flow and isolate the traffic to city. In my screenshot you will see what I am speaking of. This will show you what city the traffic is coming from. (You need to first click on the UK and View only this segment). Now you see where your city traffic is coming from. That can show you where you can improve or change to meet your business desires.
Let us know if this helps,
Robert
-
Hi Rodney,
What you are experience is pretty much what all non-local businesses have been experiencing since Google began displaying local packs for queries even if they don't include geo-terms. There is nothing you can do to influence whether Google feels your search terms have a local intent or not. If Google has decided that they do, then the local pack is probably here to stay for your core search terms. As you are not a local business, your best hope lies in the following:
-
Building up enough organic authority so that you are ranking alongside the local pack - but not in it
-
Paying for visibility via Adwords
Option one will likely take a great deal of time an effort. Option two can be instantaneous, but will require an outlay of money. Hopefully, you can find a feasible strategy that combines both of these efforts and gets you as much visibility as you can achieve without being a truly local business model.
-
-
Hi Robert,
Thank you for your detailed reply, the results are focused on towns and cities rather than broader surrounding areas. I've uploaded an image of an example result, here: http://www.onlinecoal.co.uk/images/coal-merchants---Google-Search.jpg the 7 pack above and the serps highlighted in red below with lots of local elements being returned e.g. Ormskirk (which is a very small town, 3 miles away from where I currently am). This localized serps is my real problem because Google is returning them in all areas and never appears to be showing a UK serps. I know from my adwords campaigns the power of the phrase "coal merchants" as a traffic driver but if Google always returns localised serps for this term I've got an issue.
My traffic is coming from a very broad range of locations (12.5k locations are identified in Google Analytics, most with only a few visits).
Regards,
Rodney
-
Rodney,
My first question when you say local is you are speaking of a city or region around a city or a "neighborhood" as we would call it in the States, is that correct? (I am trying to differentiate between local being the UK or Great Britain and you are wanting to go beyond those borders.)
If so, I would suggest a couple of things that could assist you. First, understand that in local (with very rare exception) you will not have a page that is in the 7 pack also show in the organic for that SERP. You need to think about that if Local is important to you. So, you want the Local traffic, but you also want to broaden your market beyond "London" for example. You will need to be sure that you have a page that is "set up to rank for Local" (this is a loose phrase) and one that is more for the organic. For example on a service business you might have a contact page that is resolving in the 7 pack and a services or homepage that resolves in the organic. I have had clients with three organic pages (all different) and a listing in the Local 7 pack (also different from the other three) a couple of times - not by our design; it just happened they had strong pages.
If you look at the landing pages you are seeing traffic to, if you look at visitor flow in analytics, etc. there will be clues as to what is happening. Have you looked at where your traffic is coming from in terms of geography?
LMK if you have other questions,
Best,
Robert
-
In that case your best bet is organic rankings. To rank for local seo you need a local presence in the area, this would not work in your case. Unless you open local business locations that would represent your company.
-
Hi Vadim,
Thank you for your quick response. How would you go about "local seo" for a site which supplies nationally from one point of distribution?
Thanks,
Rodney
-
Hi Rodney,
-
This is up to Google, it is open about some categories such as web design; however most results are up to Google, and it can vary for different people and different locations viewing. This brings me to my main response:
-
Best is to rank for local results and organic results (general search as I assume you are referring to). This way you give Google two options to serve your amazing page, as Google feels best fit
Hope this helps!
-
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
-
Why does Google's search results display my home page instead of my target page?
Why does Google's search results display my home page instead of my target page?
Technical SEO | | h.hedayati6712365410 -
Https problem on google result.
Hello everyone. My problem is SSL certificate... Send all links to google, after google shows https link no problem. But a few minutes ago my home page link not have an SSL..
Technical SEO | | dalapayal
Please check this page : https://www.bodrumtransfermarket.com Where do I make a mistake? Thanks for all...0 -
Best way to handle URLs of the to-be-translated pages on a multilingual site
Dear Moz community, I have a multilingual site and there are pages with content that is supposed to be translated but for now is English only. The structure of the site is such that different languages have their virtual subdirs: domain.com/en/page1.html for English, domain.com/fr/page1.html for French and so on. Obviously, if the page1.html is not translated, the URLs point to the same content and I get warnings about duplicate content. I see two ways to handle this situation: Break the naming scheme and link to original English pages, i.e. instead of domain.com/fr/index.html linking to domain.com/fr/page1.html link to domain.com/en/page.html Leave the naming scheme intact and set up a 301 redirect so that /fr/page1.html redirects to /en/page1.html Is there any difference for the two methods from the SEO standpoint? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Lomar0 -
Should we handle this redirect differently?
So our question is should we handle page redirection/rewriting in php or in .htaccess (with a specific problem we are running into outlined below). We have an ecommerce store in a subfolder of our site (example.com/store/). In the next folder down we have a group of widgets(www.example.com/store/widget-group1). Recently we put a .htaccess redirect in the top level folder (example.com/store/.htaccess), in order to re-write some URL’s and also 301 a page to another page. This seems to be negatively affecting our /widgets-group1/ subfolder however (organic traffic to example.com/store/widget-group1) took a nose dive 3 days after putting the .htaccess redirect in place on the /store/ folder and it has not recovered 8 days later). *Nothing appears outwardly wrong with the current setup to the eye when viewing the pages or requesting as googlebot (the only issue being the nose dive in organic traffic lol) *both subfolders are setup in apache config file to allow local overrides of .htaccess as follows: <directory store="" widget-group1="">Options -Indexes FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
Technical SEO | | altecdesign
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all</directory> <directory store="">Options -Indexes FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all</directory>0 -
Do Google Always Tell You About Penalties?
Hi One of my clients has recently suffered a big decline in rankings on some of their keywords, going from positions in the top 10 to sub 50 for some of their keywords, but not all. Their website is still indexed and there is no link warning from Google. Some of their links from a previous link builder are dodgy and we have already tried to contact the other company for removal but to no avail. Any ideas where I start? So far I planning to increase the branded anchor link and add some content as the site is fairly light on content. Is it worth doing a reconsideration request and mention the bad links incase this is the problem. Has anyone seen any particular good resources on what to do when it appears you have a penalty. None of my other clients have been effected by Panda or Penguin and although I have done some general reading I need to know what action to take and get up to speed FAST! Thanks in advance. Kind regards Karen
Technical SEO | | Karen_Dauncey0 -
Robots.txt query
Quick question, if this appears in a clients robots.txt file, what does it mean? Disallow: /*/_/ Does it mean no pages can be indexed? I have checked and there are no pages in the index but it's a new site too so not sure if this is the problem. Thanks Karen
Technical SEO | | Karen_Dauncey0 -
Why isn't Google pushing my Schema data to the search results page
I believe we have it set up right. I'm noticing all my competitors schema data is showing up which is really giving them a leg up on us. We have a high ranking website so I'm just not sure why it's now showing up. Here is an example URL http://www.airgundepot.com/3576w.html I've used the Google webmaster tools tester and it all looks fine. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | AirgunDepot0 -
I'm getting a Duplicate Content error in my Pro Dashboard for 2 versions of my Homepage. What is the best way to handle this issue?
Hi SEOMoz,I am trying to fix the final issues in my site crawl. One that confuses me is this canonical homepage URL fix. It says I have duplicate content on the following pages:http://www.accupos.com/http://www.accupos.com/index.phpWhat would be the best way to fix this problem? (...the first URL has a higher page authority by 10 points and 100+ more inbound links).Respectfully Yours,Derek M.
Technical SEO | | DerekM880