Location and how it affects search results
-
I'm ranking in the top 3 for a keyword in Google but when I change my location to a state of city I'm at the bottom of the page. Can anyone help?
I made sure that the state I want to rank for is both in my title and body. The page has been up for almost a year and is a PR3. It is not my home page but a sup page under "areas we serve."
I'm looking for someone who can explain how I can optimize for a state or city.
Thanks
-
What I'm doing is going to google (clearing all pws) and setting my location to the city or state I'm trying rank higher in to find out where I'm ranking. If I set my location to the USA I rank higher but if I set my location to a state like Texas I'm not ranking as high as when I set my location to the USA.
I do have backlinks with both city and state in them. The keyword is "(product) prices."
The Keyword is a very generic.
I have not tried to get links form local or state websites. Have you used this strategy?
Thanks
-
Are you located in the city that you are trying to optimize? If not you should try to get someone to search from that city as a rank check.
Apart from that I would focus on getting links to your site that include the city & state name (not necessarily both in the same link). Also work on getting more citations with the city & state mentioned near your URL; this is a good tool: http://www.whitespark.ca/local-citation-finder/
You might also want to read / watch:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/one-dead-simple-tactic-for-better-rankings-in-google-local
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-basics-of-local-seo-whiteboard-friday
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/ranking-for-keyword-cityname-in-multiple-geographies
David Mihm's blog is a great resourece too: http://www.davidmihm.com/blog/
-
Hey, I believe your tracking your rank by just typing in the search term?
Have you tried using any ranking software where you could compare the 2 figures your getting?
Also see this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqKrRFEjI5Q
DD
-
I assume that you mean when you change your keyword to include a city+cate (city+state+keyword) it changes your ranking.
Without looking at your site and the keyword specifically, then its hard to tell. In myour case i would focus on getting inbound links with the city+state combo in the anchor text. Local business directory listings, local sites would be really useful place to start. Blogs are also still useful for local listings.
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
-
Flux in Bing/Yahoo search rankings?
Has anyone else noticed any flux in Bing/Yahoo desktop search rankings in the start of March? Our weekly MSN search traffic was steady and then starting dropping off around March 3 or 4. Weekly desktop traffic now down about 20% Anyone see anything similar or have any resources for learning more about this?
Algorithm Updates | | ted-zarceczny0 -
Your search - site:domain.com - did not match any documents.
I've recently started work on a new clients website and done some preliminary work with on-page optimisation, and there is still plenty of work to be done and issues to resolve. They are ranking ok on Bing, but they are not getting any ranking on Google at all (except paid) - I tried the site:domain.com search and comes up with no results... so this confirms that something is going on with the google search rank! Can anyone shed light on what can cause this or why this would happen? My next step is to look at their webmaster tools (haven't had access yet), but if anyone has any tips to resolve this or where to look, that would be great! Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | ElevateCreativeAU0 -
Why are organic search results vastly different on Bing, Google and Yahoo Search
We searched two words for a client so see how/where their site returned results. Depending on both the browser we used and the search engine, the results were so vastly different we were shocked. The site returned #2 or 3 on Bing and YahooSearch and not until the 3rd page for Google! And it also returned much worse on Chrome than any other browser, a Google product. I know this topic must be covered somewhere, or perhaps someone would be kind enough to chime in and shed some light? We have been working hard to optimize for Google and failing, but doing very well everywhere else. What gives?
Algorithm Updates | | jimmyzig1 -
Local SEO: 1 Location Covering Multiple Surrounding Cities
I am setting up local pages on our main site for each of our dealers. Some of them cover multiple cities. For example, one dealer in Santa Rosa, CA, but also covers San Francisco (50 mile drive). While I know that with Google+ Local I can add coverage radius or zip code/cities covered, what about on that dealer's local page on our site? Should I create local pages for each city covered or cram local optimization into one? Keep in mind I only have one address to work with for each dealer (P.O. Boxes or Virtual Mail Boxes are NOT a good solutions). Looking for any white hat tips before I implement for all 100+ dealers.
Algorithm Updates | | the-coopersmith0 -
Do search engines always pay heed to no index instructions?
Hi, I am currently working on a site that relies solely on it's images to attract traffic. My concern is that search engines will index our images, make them available through image searches and therefore allow our potential visitors to bypass our website completely. I know that there are a number of methods available such as disallowing images in robots.txt or using "noimageindex" tags in the HTML etc. but do search engines always pay attention to these requests? Does anyone have any experience with no indexing images? Or are there any methods that are guaranteed to work? Thanks in Advance.
Algorithm Updates | | BallyhooLtd0 -
How to search for popular press releases
I would like to research popular press releases in my industry. Ones that got picked up by many popular outlets, got a lot of coverage etc. Besides mindlessly searching the web for press releases, is there a better way? Almost looking for a service that ranks press releases in terms of effectiveness.
Algorithm Updates | | StreetwiseReports0 -
Changing the # of results per page in Google search settings displays totally different results. Why is this?
Curious what's going on here. This is the first time I've seen this before. What's happening is this ... In Google, I search for "mobile apps orange county" and get a standard list of 10 results. I go to Google's search settings in the top right corner of the page (button is grey with a gear) to change the number of results per page from 10 to 50 (also did 100). When I go back to Google and search again for "mobile apps orange county" I get a much larger list but with completely different results. This time around the top 10-12 are dominated by the same website (ocregister.com) What's going on here that Google would now show different results? Why is this one website all of a sudden dominating the first 12 results? Thanks everyone! ByteLaunch
Algorithm Updates | | ByteLaunch0 -
What determines rankings in a site: search?
When I perform a "site:" search on my domains (without specifying a keyword) the top ranked results seem to be a mixture of sensible top-level index pages plus some very random articles. Is there any significance to what Google ranks highly in a site: search? There is some really unrepresentative content returned on page 1, including articles that get virtually no traffic. Is this seriously what Google considers our best or most typical content?
Algorithm Updates | | Dennis-529610