Local SEO, located just outside major city

[kadesmith]

I have never had a local website, but I have a friend who owns a company that would be strictly local so it made wonder:

If a company is located just outside a major metropolitan area, is it possible for this company to compete with companies that are located within the actual city.

Here's an example.  A construction company located in Plano, Texas wants to rank for Dallas Construction Companies.  Plano is 15 mins from downtown Dallas.  Does this company have much of a chance ranking on the map for Dallas Construction companies when they have a business address of Plano, Texas?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Kade,

Good question and one that comes up frequently, because so many businesses are just outside the borders of major cities. The simple answer is - Google considers a business as being most relevant to its city of location. So, if you're in Plano, Google views you as a good answer for searches containing the word 'Plano' or for searches from Plano-based devices. Google does not consider you as primarily relevant to Dallas.

Some businesses have actually taken the rather drastic step of relocating just to get into those big cities, or have even moved within their city of location to get closer to the city centroid and improve their chances of rankings. Chris Silver Smith recently published a very good piece on this potentials and pitfalls of this approach:

http://searchengineland.com/relocation-relocation-relocation-a-new-local-ranking-tactic-135325

So, where does that leave a company like the one your friend owns? If you can't outrank Dallas businesses in the blended-local pack is their anything you can do?

The one path many businesses explore taking is to create city landing pages on their websites for their service radius cities. For example, if your friend does a lot of construction work in Dallas, he could have a page on his website showcasing his work there. And, he could back this up with an ongoing stream of blog posts highlighting his work in Dallas.

Will this enable him to outrank Dallas-based competitors? It's unlikely, and pretty much out of the question when it comes to his blended local rankings, but he may be able to get some secondary organic rankings for Dallas-related searches, driving some targeted traffic and leads.

I would discuss this idea with him, once he understands how Google views his business as being relevant to Plano because of locale. This isn't a dead-end situation, by any means, but it's definitely a challenging one, and calls for much creativity and effort.