Does anyone have stats or know where I can find stats on searchers who use geolocated queries versus geomodified?
-
My client is a franchise business and they want their location landing pages to rank for every one of their 60 plus locations nationwide. They are performing extremely well for geomodified terms. The argument is that people rarely ever search using the city name. Are there stats to back up whether this claim is true, and if so, do you know where I can get a hold of such data (outside of searching in Keyword Planner... unless that's the answer!)
-
Hey Kevin,
Mike & Phil would be good guys to reach out to, for sure. I'm glad if my reply was somewhat helpful and I'd love to see more recent data on this. Good luck with your client!
-
Kevin, Thanks for this, I did call Stat and spoke to them. They are more of an enterprise SEO solution and were not able to speak to the search data that I'm looking for here particularly. But I appreciate the comment and the lead!
Miriam, thanks once again for your thorough response, and for the links you shared. I think this is ultimately a very important study for local marketers, seeing as geolocated terms are a completely different play. Our solution was to build article/informative content for the query in question, and then use the Google Geolocation API on the website to guide the user to their nearest location. That way, we rank for people who are searching for the general geolocated query (we'll say "plumbing repair" to run with your example) and in most cases, the second organic result is the franchise location page for that city.
We're trying to convince the client of the value in ranking #1 with the article content page—but they're not convinced. They want the location page as the first result for geolocated queries in every city. Then of course, they want multiple results for cities where they have multiple locations, which is another story.
I'm going to reach out to Phil Rozek and Mike Blumenthal about a recent study regarding geolocated versus geomodified search data for local businesses, because I think it raises an important distinction. I personally always geomodify my queries—I don't leave the work to Google. I find I get better results. But I don't know if I'm in the minority, or not. As I say, my client is #1 for every city when the geomodifier is added to the keyword. It would be great to have data to back up the importance of having that real estate.Thanks again for your great feedback!
-
Hey Kevin,
I don't find that Keyword Planner is terribly helpful with local terms. Now, obviously, if your clients are hotels or other distance-type businesses like that, people are going to be using a ton of geomodifiers because they are located in one city but then looking for lodgings in another, but if the industry is plumbing, or something like that, likely you'd see less use of city names, in queries, particularly on mobile devices.
Your question has made me go searching around for any recent statistics on use of geomodifiers and what I'm coming up with is pretty old:
marketing-blog.catalystemarketing.com/google-places-seo-geo-modifiers.html
http://www.ngsmarketing.com/the-two-types-of-local-search-and-how-local-seo-should-reflect-them/
If anyone in the community has done or knows of a more recent study, please do link to it.
A very good indication that users use geomodifiers in looking up all kinds of local businesses can be seen in the 'related search' results at the bottom of Google's SERPs. For example, If I just look up 'plumbers', the related search results are returning me 8 suggested terms 3 of which contain city names. So, that would be something to look into for your client
Sorry not to be able to turn up any really recent data on this. It would certainly be good if someone would do a new study!
-
I talked to GetStat at MozCon this year and believe that they can help you out on this. No guarantees though. Good luck!
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
-
How can I make a compelling financial forecast on how SEO will bring tangible value?
Hi all, I am currently doing keywords research and matching it to our sales data. With an input of resources, do you know if there is a good way to create a growth forecast as a result of SEO investment? How do I work out a strategy and align it to a compelling financial forecast? Your experience on this will be super helpful! Many thanks, Eric
Local SEO | | Eric_S1 -
Most useful things to do without developer resources on SEO
Hi fellow Moz users! I am managing SEO at our company. Perhaps some of you out there also have the problem of wanting to make SEO changes on your website but lack the developer resources to make significant changes? What are some of the things I can do in my power (can't do any backend work) to make SEO better? Currently, I have: Social media (including Moz local tips of business listings) Blog site Refining pictures Google analytics to see where we can improve Internal and external links Please feel free to expand on the above but ideally it will be new things that I could get on with! Many thanks,
Local SEO | | Eric_S
Eric3 -
Country subdomain versus ccTLD?
Hi all, I have a client that is debating changing their URL from www.example.co.uk to uk.example.com. I'm searching around trying to find an argument as to why they shouldn't do this, but I can't find anything concrete. I know the difference between a subdomain and ccTLD, but the push back I'm getting is that it will be better to switch to uk.example.com because the subdomain is country specific. Personally, I think that is bull. Does anyone have a good argument to help back me up? (or prove me wrong!) Thanks, Virginia
Local SEO | | Virginia-Girtz1 -
Please tell me why we can't outrank a competitor with such poor metrics
Hi ! New here I'm trying to help a customer rank in the 1st page on a low-mid competition term in a specific city. I did a comparison of both URL in MOZ "Compare link Metrics" & we beat them on 85% of the metrics. They are on the 1st page, often top-3, the closest position we can get is about 13-15. The only higher metric they have is Domain MozRank & MozTrust + equity passing link (??) We are running WordPress with Genesis, they are running a custom site. See attached printscreen of the report. Help ! b60HidT
Local SEO | | JohnF80 -
.ca for Canada-specific business currently using .com?
I work for a Canadian company and we are re-doing our website (corporate and branch sites) and the question has come up if we should change our current main domain from .com to .ca for local SEO benefits since we don't target an international audience. We own both versions but the .ca re-directs to the .com and we use .com in all our marketing materials. My understanding is that we can specify in Google Webmaster Tools that the focus of the site is Canada and I feel that switching to the .ca as the main domain isn't necessary, but I was wondering if there are real SEO benefits to make us seriously consider the change? Thanks, Taira
Local SEO | | ArborMemorial0 -
How Can I Outlink Web Designer Link Building from Their Clients' Footer
_I used open site explorer to view the backlinks for a competitor of an agency I work with. They have ten times as many links, if not more, than we do, and I noticed there were only a few more domains linking back to them. As I dug deeper I noticed these links were coming from the footer tag they put on their clients' sites like "Site Designed by __." If a site had 20 pages, they had 20 links back...weird and annoying that it counts. They have more clients for web design than we do, so their bulk linking could continue to outrank us. Any suggestions on how we can outrank them locally? We are in the midst of redesigning our entire site to build out more pages and have much better internal linking. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks everyone!
Local SEO | | Michael4g0 -
How can you perform productive local SEO when the company is moving?
I'm working with a brick and mortar store that is planning to move to a new location in a few months. All the citation information is going to have to be updated. Is there anything productive you can do in the interim to help their rankings when you know you'll be facing an update of all their citations?
Local SEO | | cakelady0 -
Using hreflang on multiple domains when one has been penalized
Hi, I have two sites. One is a new .co.uk site which contains duplicate information to a .ie site. Currently, if I do a search for the company name in Google.co.uk it returns the .ie site. The .co.uk site needs some localisation done and some links (really is brand new). I was going to place hreflang tags as follows on both sites:- The order would flip for the .co.uk site from the above order. However, just to make things interesting, the .ie site was hit by Penguin and it hasn't recovered yet (and won't recover for another few months while I fix the issues). So the question is, what should I do? Do I go ahead an let Google know for sure that these sites are linked despite one of them having been penalized? Or do I let Google think that there is a .co.uk site with duplicate content to another .ie site?
Local SEO | | Serpstone0