Keywords Ranking Varies When Search changes Location/City (Not Google Places)
-
We have a client that are ranking well on most Australian cities for competitive keywords except Google Sydney. If you toggled the cities on the search field when you search for a keyword, their places are almost exactly the same except for Sydney on which they can't be found at all in the Top 100 results. The keywords are not city specific, they are general commonly searched keywords about health.
This is not a Google Places issue. The search result shows the right landing pages of the site for their respective keywords.
Any ideas or experience on this kind of situation.
Much appreciated
Louie
-
Hi Louie,
It seems unlikely to me (which doesn't mean it's impossible) that they have a city-specific penalty. Can't say I have ever heard of that before either, and I would say it would be hard for Google to decide on something like that, manually or algorithmically. The idea that it could be a large number of links from the Sydney region honestly seems like a stretch: that should really just result in a link-based penalty that affects the site nation-wide. Where this could have happened, however, is if someone abused directory links with way too many links using "sydney" in anchor text but I'm sure you'd have seen something like that already. Even then, I haven't heard of that hurting all rankings in that region alone, but rather just for queries including "sydney".
Have you tested this searching from IPs in each region, i.e. I just wanted to make sure it's 100% confirmed that the site does rank well and receives traffic from Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth etc. and that you are not seeing personalised results in those locations and not in Sydney. I know it seems like grasping at straws but it's a really weird case for a non-geo-specific query.
-
HI Jane
Thanks for your interest. There is a slight improvement but maybe just 10%, and the rankings are still fluctuating in Google Sydney. Others are fine. The keywords are Page 1 on Google Brisbane, Perth, Melbourne etc but not showing up at all in Google Sydney. The competition level of all affected keywords are almost the same in other cities I would say.
We have inherited the client fro another SEO provider and the previous SEO work that was done aint pretty. They used to rank well in all Google Cities, but for some reason they have lost their Page 1 rankings only in Google Sydney about 3 months ago when we have inherited it.
Yes they have all their Sydney addresses in the website along with their addresses in other cities. So I am thinking, could they have a penalty in Google Sydney? I haven't seen that before, I would think that if a site is penalized or flagged it's not geo-specific.
Cheers
Louie
-
Hi Louie,
Has there been any improvement to this? If not, could it be possible given the query and the sites that do rank in the Sydney region, that the query is particularly competitive in Sydney as compared to other cities, and that the ranking sites have put any extra effort into that location?
I understand that it isn't a city-specific query, but is the service / product something that might be considered a more profitable query to rank for in Sydney?
Google doesn't support city-specific geo-targeting so it won't be something they've set up incorrectly in Webmaster Tools.
Is there any address or contact information on the client's website that might specifically indicate that they serve areas that are not Sydney?
Cheers,
Jane
-
And second one you are saying when you change location (city) then search any keywords ranking coming different in Google.
-
thats half of the story, you didnt understand the other half that is why your answer is very far from the question
-
I understood your point. You are simply saying your keywords ranking in google except Google Sydney.
-
please make sure you understand the question before you even reply..
-
Thank you, you've got a valid point. I will take that into consideration as I continue to do my evaluation.
-
Hi Louie,
Yes you are correct if you search any keywords in Google then Google prefer location where are you searching from.
For ex. you are searching any keywords in Sydney location then Google mostly prefer to will show you Sydney results.
This is not applicable for all website Yes but applicable for around 70-80% results.
You can open Google.com.au then put your keyword which you are searching then you will look
Web Image Maps Videos News More Search tool
You click Search Tool then you can set your location to find results.
If your client located in Sydney and Google Showing Sydney results i think will be better for your client.
Thanks,
Akhilesh
-
My first guess would be that they have a lot of spammy backlinks with the term Sydney in them. It's really hard to give good advice based on generalized information, but that's something that I would look into. I would look at their backlinks and anchor text with majestic seo and ahrefs.
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
-
Best approach to rank for this keyword?
Hi i want to rank for the keyword "white sandals" on Google Australia. Currently, the top 5 ranking pages are not optimised and specific to white sandals. See screenshot: https://image.prntscr.com/image/WenSRHqTTFSqYNg2MHvH1A.png To rank for this keyword, would you create a page dedicated to white sandals even though it looks like it doesn't matter and you could rank the broader sandals page (not colour specific). Any recommendations? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | crazy4seo780 -
Silly Question still - Because I am paying high to google adwords is it possible google can't rank me high in organic?
Hello All, My ecommerce site gone in penalty more than 3 years before and within 3 months I got message from google penalty removed. Since then till date my organic ranking is very worst. In this 3 years I improved my site onpage very great. If I compare my site with all other competitors who are ranking in top 10 then my onpage that includes all schema, reviews, sitemap, header tags, meta's etc, social media, site structure, most imp speed, google page speed insight score, pingdom, w3c errors, alexa rank, global rank, UI, offers, design, content, code to text raito, engagement rate, page views, time on site etc all my sites always good compare to competitors. They also have few backlinks I do have few backlinks only. I am doing very high google adwords and my conversion rate is very very good. But do you think because I am paying since last 3 year high to google because of that google have some setting or strategy that those who perform well in adwords so not to bring up in organic? Is it possible I can talk with google on this? If yes then what will be the medium of conversation? Pls give some valuable inputs I am performing very much in paid so user end site is very very well. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pragnesh96390 -
Google Search Console
abc.com www.com http://abc.com http://www.abc.com https://abc.com https://www.abc.com _ your question in detail. The more information you give, the better! It helps give context for a great answer._
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brianvest0 -
Checking keyword rankings
I have 2 questions: 1. To check keyword rankings with firefox, i am choosing: Tools>Options>Privacy>"clear all current history" Timerange to clear: Everything Check Boxes: Browsing and download history, form and search history, cookies, cache, active logins Is there anything else I need to be doing? 2. Search results in my Niche are heavily localized. Is there any way to check rankings in another area? Ex: By default, our rankings are for Northeast NJ. Is there any way to check Baltimore, for example?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CsmBill0 -
Why is this page not being delivered for Google search result?
Hey folks, Figured I would try to get an experts insight on this. On google search result for BLACK TITANIUM RINGS + TITANIUM-JEWELRY.COM the page that I "think" should show up is this one: http://www.titanium-jewelry.com/black-titanium-rings.html However, it does not. Imho, this page is highly relevant. I used Rank Tracker here on seomoz.org and the page is not even in top 50 of search engine results for google. Our 'About Black Titanium Rings' page ranks #2 (http://www.titanium-jewelry.com/about-black-titanium.html) but the /black-titanium-rings.html page doesn't even rank. Any suggestions on what I could look at to figure out why this page is being penalized? We are not under a manual penalty (anymore!). Thanks! Ron
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yatesandcojewelers0 -
Blog/Shop/Forum site structure - are we right to make these changes?
We run a fairly large online community with a popular blog and Europe's largest online shop for drift-specific motor sport parts and our website has been around since 2004 I believe. Since it was launched, the blog (or previous CMS system) has been at the domain root, the forums have been located at /forum and the shop at /shop (or similar) but we have decided to move things around a bit and would like some comments as to whether we are doing the right thing or if you would make any addition or different changes to us. Currently the entire website gets around 3m page views per month from 500,000 visitors, but this is split roughly 75% to the forums, 10% to the shop and 15% to the blog (but remember the blog is at the root so anyone who visits our homepage "visits" the blog). We plan to move the shop to the domain root (since the shop provides the income for the business - surely it should be the 1st thing visitors see?), the blog from root to /blog and the forums will stay where they are at /forum. We have read Steven Macdonald's post here, and have taken notes to help minimize traffic loss and disruption to our army of users and hopefully avoid too many penalties from Google and plan to: 301 redirect old URLs to new ones where they have changed. Submit new site maps to search engines. Update old links where we have control (such as forums where we are paid traders etc.). Send out a newsletter to our subscribers. Update our forum members. Fix errors via WMT before and after the re-structure. Should we be taking this opportunity to actually set each of the three sections of the site to it's own sub domain? Our thoughts are that if we are disrupting things, it's surely best to have lots of disruption once rather than a little bit of disruption several times over a 3-6 month period? OSE shows us to have roughly 1500 inbound links to /shop, 2100 to /forum and 4800 to the root / - if we proceed with our plan and put 301 redirects in place this seems to be the best plan to retain the value of these links but if we were to switch to sub domains would the 301s lose most of the link values due to them being on "different" domains? Any help, advise or suggestions are very welcome but comments from experience are what we are seeking ideally! Thanks Jay
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DWJames0 -
Impossible to review a google places (plus) location from iOS???
So it seems with the recent shift to google plus for all local listings, it is no longer possible to leave a review for those locations from an iOS device. Is this true? has anyone found a work around?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adriandg0 -
How to show country name in google search result
I have a site with tld .com but my target country is United kingdom so i want to show United Kingdom in SERPs.How can i show it ? I have already set target country United Kingdom in Webmaster tools but still it is not showing.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alick3000