Will local optimization effect international ranking?
-
Lets say a company serves Canada and US customers regularly, but they are based in Canada. They currently have no local optimization or confirmation of their location on their website.
If I were to begin local optimization (google my business, local content, link building, schema etc), would Google recognize this website as a Canadian business and remove rankings in the US that it is currently appearing in now without any locational information?
-
Hi Miriam,
Thanks for your great reply. It is a fairy tricky situation. In this case, we're dealing with a B2B manufacturing company and currently the lions share of their business comes from the US. Rankings on important keywords are roughly the same in the Canada and the US.
We're currently trying to weigh the benefits of whether establishing the location of the firm and building that credibility would out out-weigh the potential risk of Google then penalizing ranking in the US.
Thanks again for your help!
-
Hi Aaron,
This is a bit tricky, actually. Let's say you are Whole Foods - an international corporation. Your corporate headquarters are in Texas, but you've got stores in the US and Canada. Being headquartered in Texas does not prevent your branch in Calgary from showing up in Google's local pack of results because you have a physical location there. No sweat!
What you are describing is a different situation. It sounds to me as if you are offering virtual services to US-based customers from your headquarters in Canada. Is that correct? If so, then there is some chance that strongly localizing your business to a particular city in Canada might in some way alter Google's perception of you business as a best answer for US-based-or-related queries. We're talking about organic queries here, presumably, rather than local ones, though, because if you don't have US offices, you're not ranking in the local packs for US-based-or-related queries. So, in the long run, if your organic content and authority are currently strong enough to show up for searchers in the US, chances are, they will continue to do so, but it is not out of the question that strongly localizing your business to a city in Canada might in some way impact this.
I'm afraid I've never seen a trustworthy study done to prove how much impact, if any, this type of marketing might have on a business in your situation. In your shoes, what I'd do is try to find a comparable business - one that is headquartered in Canada but also appearing for US-searches and see if they appear to be doing well both on the local level for their city and on an organic, international level with their general content. My gut feeling is that the impact would not be very big, but I wouldn't rule it out completely.
It would be great if a community member who has been in Aaron's situation could comment on their own experience!
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 won't a business show up in the local pack when all signs point to that it should?
Hello! I've been trying to figure out why a business won't show up in the local pack even though their GMB has more reviews, seems to be doing everything right, and just doesn't show. The business is "A Senior Journey", and should be showing up for searches relating to "senior placement services tucson" or "senior placement tucson", but no dice. Been doing a competitor analysis and they are doing better or on par with all of their competitors. The same businesses in Tucson that are competitors show up both times, even Phoenix locations, but not A Senior Journey...any ideas? Thank you!
Local Listings | | WebMO-Tech-Rep0 -
Google Local Listing Visibility for Regional Queries
I manage a variety of small local programs that are located in areas that are more known by the region than they are by the town (the Adirondacks and the Catskills to be specific). In the past, the local algorithm understood that when the query was related to the region, it would show a variety of results from that region. It seems that for the Catskills they have changed the algorithm to pinpoint the center of the region and only show results that are in the near vacinity of that pinpoint, rather than a variety of results from the region. The Adirondacks however is still showing a variety of results. For those of you not familiar, the Adirondack are 9,375 square miles and the Catskills are 5,892 square miles and are both very rural mountain regions and popular travel destinations. Google clearly understands that these regions are geographically oriented and shows a local pack for relevant results such as "Catskills Resorts" or "Catskills Restaurants", but over the past few weeks, they have started only showing 2 results for the query Catskills resorts, both located near Shandaken, NY becasue that is where Google has deemed the marker for the Catskills is (https://www.google.com/maps/place/Catskill+Mountains/@42.009289,-74.3996212,14z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x89dc665668f82f31:0x3b012376423b8efa!8m2!3d42.0092908!4d-74.3821116) In reality, there are hundreds of resorts within the Catskills. (Note there is a Catskill, NY within the Catskills, however Google is not even confusing this town with the region). Does anyone have ideas on how to get Google to understand that the Catskills are more than Shandaken, NY? I feel like we suddenly have no hope of ranking locally and most of the businesses I manage are located in very small towns that people are not specifically searching for.
Local Listings | | Your_Workshop0 -
Scoot local links
I've been approached from Scoot trying to sell me their local directory links.
Local Listings | | LaurenGT
Its a one-off price of around £80 to be listed on all of their 500+ directories and £20 a month to be able to do any changes and to keep the web links active.
The list of the directories are here - http://submittrackz.scoot.co.uk/directories The question is, are the links of much benefit for local seo?
I was thinking of reselling this so the cost is not the problem so much, its just the quality of the links in question.
Thanks
Dave0 -
Do business citations (without links) on penalised website have a negative effect?
Hi there I've been doing some research into directory sites that my clients are listed on and noticed that some appear to have flat-lined in organic search traffic indicating a penalty. I would like to know if clients with business citations on these penalised websites (without links to clients websites) will be having a negative effect on SEO? Thanks
Local Listings | | Kerry_Jones0 -
Is there any data about how user interact with the local 7 pack listing, do they scroll past it or use it like a normal SERP ?
Does any one have any data about how users interact with the local 7 pack listings in regards to position to CTR ratios, do everyday users tend to scroll past it to the normal SERPs as they might do with adwords ads (as the local pack is formatted slightly different to normal SERPs) ? bMvtUSe.png
Local Listings | | Sam-P0 -
Does anyone use Moz Local + Yext? How valuable is this for local businesses?
For brands that have a budget to pay $600 / year for valuable backlink directories, would you recommend Moz Local + Yext? I would like to hear some feedback on marketers that use Yext. Thanks,
Local Listings | | ColeLusby
Cole0 -
2 listings on Google Local....Need Help!
Hi All, One of our client have 2 business listings on Google Local for same business (same NAP but different website). Actually, their first website was under Google Penalty. They tried to remove the penalty but could not get rid of it so they bought a new domain and started working on it and listed the same business with new website URL. Now, their business is having 2 listings but with different URLs. How can we merge these two? Please advice. Thanks in Advance.
Local Listings | | sachin-sv0 -
Google vs. Google+ Local Rankings - How do they relate
I have a client who ranks #7 in Google+ Local for search term dentist Oxnard CA & Oxnard CA Dentist but for regular Google search results, they are not in the top 50. How is this possible? No penalties in Webmaster tools. I've been working on this client for over a year. All of the other pages on the website are ranking very well but the all elusive dentist Oxnard CA position is 0 How does regular Google search results relate to Google+ Local?
Local Listings | | Czubmeister0