National Company Needs Local (7 Box) Rankings in Test Metros
-
A lot of pressure on me for this one...
I have a national client with excellent naturals, and a huge PPC budget. Getting killed locally, forcing use below the 7box. I need to find either a definitive way to get into the 7 box in dozens of metro areas, or HIRE a consultant who knows this landscape better.
Any thoughts?
The client serves all 50 states, by phone and online, in a very competitive market. I've killed it for 12 years, and volume has slipped so we need to grab more local.
Complimenting matters, we are currently migrating their main site to CMS (Umbraco).. a little busy! -
Hi Jayt,
Very good question! Step one is to explain to the client that inclusion in Google's local results is based on the business having:
-
A physical address in the target city (not a virtual office, p.o. box or shared address)
-
A local area code phone number in the city of address (not a toll free number, call tracking number or shared number)
-
In-person transactions with customers, face-to-face, either at the company's offices (like a lawyer or doctor) or at the customers' locations (like a plumber or carpet cleaner).
From your description, your client's business is virtual (serving customers over the phone and online) and therefor, is not eligible for local inclusion. Share the Google Places Quality Guidelines with the client so that can see Google's own explanation of their policies:
http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528
Because of your client's virtual, national business model, building visibility on a local level via Local SEO is out. Rather, your client will need to rely on organic SEO in an effort of gaining secondary organic visibility for service+ geography terms (not primary organic visibility via the local packs of results). Realistically speaking, unless the client is in a non-competitive market, this will be an uphill battle, because it is Google's current preference to show mostly true local results for queries they believe have a local intent. If Google already has plenty of businesses that meet the above 3 criteria, your client will need some incredible SEO work to convince Google to show them organically for queries relating to geographic regions where they have no physical presence.
I hate to sound negative, and I'm not saying this goal is impossible, but the client needs to be given the education that will help him understand how and why Google operates the way they do in relation to local data so that the client can make the smartest investment of time, money and effort. Organic SEO may be able to take the client part of the way, but don't forget about PPC. That may have to be a large part of the mix for any company seeking this type of national dominance. Hope this helps!
-
-
If I were you I'd want to bring in someone with specialized Local expertise. Especially if you are handling the other aspects of their web presence, you probably don't have the time to research how to handle their entire Local presence in that market. Local has its own guidelines and rules and if you start without some knowledge of what you're doing you could make it worse. However, if you can put in the time to properly research this you can go that route too. Since it's a big client for you it might be good to bring in someone as backup.
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
-
Ranking with subdomain - Urgent
Does anyone have any experience if it is possible to get a website ranking on a subdomain? I'm trying out a business idea and need to keep costs to an absolute minimum. I have a site which I designed in wix.com they give a free subdomain and I want to know if there's any chance of getting it to rank Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Ranking drop
Hello there, Based on Moz's rank tracker our keywords ranking have been dropping in ranking. Does anyone know what might be the cause? We have been building quality "white hat" links which are very relevant to our niche Thanks, Robert
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | roberthseo0 -
Tools to test meta descriptions?
Hey does anyone know of any tools which can test your meta descriptions against competitors meta descriptions for specific keyword terms. I know one tool called SERP Turkey which uses mechanical turk, i was wondering if there is any others on the market? Even a tool which can automatically score your meta description against others on the SERP results page. E..g optimised, keyword, call to action, etc. Cheers, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
How to improve my rankings?
Hi guys, I'm targeting a specific country NZ to start off with as my site is only new 3months old - whilst I'm trying to rank for various keywords such as - psychic readings, online psychic readings, love psychics, clairvoyant, astrology, tarot card readings etc I can see I'm slowly ranking around 18, 20,30,40 through my blog page, but nothing from the site. I know the site is content thin and were currently working on improving this, is there anything else you can suggest that perhaps I might need to be aware of? Or any tools I could use to go about getting information that could help put me ahead lol Thanks all!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edward-may0 -
3 Pages Ranking Beside Each Other | How do I consolidate so one ranks better?
An ecommerce website I own called backyardGamez.com sells outdoor games, for example cornhole boards, bags, etc. One such product is a cornhole board carrying case. If you search the above phrase, my site has three pages that rank on the first page. The term isn't high volume, so I'm assuming that is part of the reason. Is this a good, normal thing or does this mean I have inadvertently broken up my ranking power from one powerful page to 3 OK pages? Does anyone know how I can take two of these pages and use them to make the 3rd page more powerful? For example, I would prefer 1 page ranks higher on page 1 in the serps and the other two fall a bit from supporting the other. Thanks, Adam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Soft-Lite0 -
Content Marketing for Local Businesses
Hey guys! As someone who works with a number of local businesses (with localized target markets) I find that developing ideas for content marketing can be VERY difficult. I like the idea of creating local guides, local event info etc, but what other ways can we create content for a localized target market? For example: I have an OBGYN client that we'd love to create content for that is related to their niche (women's health), but don't want to promote or create content for national audience. That would seem incredibly wasteful. Would love to hear ideas on how to create targeted content for a local audience! Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Internal page ranking
If I have a domain: Example.com I want this domain to rank for several keywords. I build a page on the domain called Example.com/glasses If I SEO the page Example.com/glasses with backlinks etc... will that URL come up on google or will it simply bring Example.com up on the SERPS. If I have three keywords, should I make a subpage for each page and SEO that page? Will that make the domain rank for all three keywords?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JML11790 -
Suddenr Ranking Drop
Hello all . Im experiencing a sudden ranking drop for one of my websites . Keyword = Green Tea Search Engine = google.lk URL = www.eswaran.com/greenTea.html This page was at 7th on 1st page . Since coupe of weeks back its moving backwards . I didn't even do any link building for this page other than doing little changes to titles tags . What would be the reason for such a issue ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Osanda0