Theory: Local Keywords are Hurting National Rankings?
-
I've read a good amount here and in other blog posts about strategies for national brands to rank locally as well with local landing pages, citations, etc.
I have noticed something strange that I'd like to hear if anyone else is running into, or if anyone has a definitive answer for.
I'm looking at a custom business printing company where the products can and are often shipped out of state, so it's a national brand. On each product page, the client is throwing in a few local keywords near where the office is to help rank for local variations.
When looking at competitors that have a lower domain authority, lower volume of linking root domains, less content on the page, and other standard signals, they are ranking nationally better than the client. The only thing they're doing that could be better is bolding and throwing in the page keyword 5-10 times (which looks unnatural). But when you search for keyword + home city, the client ranks better.
My hypothesis is that since the client is optimizing product pages for local keywords as well as national, it is actually hurting on national searches because it's seen as local-leaning business.
Has anyone run into this before, or have a definitive answer?
-
Thanks for the response Chris. My assumption is the same as yours in that doing some type of local SEO for just one distinct city shouldn't hurt broad national rankings. The interesting thing about this situation is the competitor site makes no note of any locality at all, they're not trying to scale local rankings nationally - they just don't mention it. While my client's site and a 3rd competitor focus on 1-2 cities and don't do as well as the non-local company. Thanks for your input and hope to continue to hear from others!
-
Thanks for your input Miriam, good to hear from your experience of having clients that double as a local shop with ecommerce not being demoted on national rankings. Good to have your input as another data point!
-
It's always hard to say for certain without inspecting to the two domains but it may be that your client is optimised for that one city while the other site is more broad and suggests they have or regularly deal with multiple locations.
Local SEO won't inherently hurt your national search results but if you only have a single location and the entire site seems to focus around that and surrounding suburbs, it would make little sense for search engines to rank you for locations in other areas, especially other states.
Even if the client is limited to a single office, there are plenty of ways to spread their digital presence and begin pushing them up for other locations.
I was going to describe in more detail until I remembered that Rand did a great Whiteboard Friday on this topic about 12 months ago that does a better job of explaining it than I could in a comment. Hope that helps!
-
Hey Joe,
I won't call this a definitive answer in any way, but, in short, no - I don't believe Local SEO harms national SEO if both are being done with enough strength. I can say, for certain, that I have seen clients with both local shops and e-commerce departments rank well both in the local packs for their physical location and nationally for their products. Neither effort should preclude the other, in my view, and I'm inclined to think there are other factors influencing why your clients is being outranked nationally, but again, I can't say that for certain. I hope you will get more feedback on this, Joe, but wanted to share my own experience with this. It seems to be that if both the local and traditional SEO are strong enough and clean enough, it's quite possible to rank well locally and organically at the same time.
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
-
US rank worse than the UK
Hi, Can you please advise? We have been focusing on the UK traffic, but this year we are expanding to all English speaking countries, primarily focusing on the US market. Our SEO efforts are not equally fruitful in the US, but they are really good in the UK. Can you please suggest what seriously impacts rank these days? our main domain that we use in the UK is domain.com. The US version uses sub-directory domain.com/us. Is this a problem? we have about 3 times more traffic from the UK than the US, and we have only UK backlinks. Do they still impact SEO significantly? can our poor US rank be related simply to a larger market? Any ideas on how we can improve? Technical suggestions, page organisation etc, I'm open to any suggestions. Many thanks. Katarina
Local Website Optimization | | Katarina-Borovska0 -
How to Rank Local Website in Search Engines?
Hello, I'm the owner of a rubbish removal company based in London - Frank Rubbish Removal and trying to optimize the website of the company for search engines. Until now, I have hired a couple marketing companies but without success. What I want to achieve is to rank for local keywords in the rubbish removal niche, for example, Rubbish Removal Chelsea, waste clearance Hackney, waste removal Harrow...and similar local keywords. I have spent a lot of money on marketing companies and the website still can't go on 1st page of search engines in the UK. Can you tell me what I can do or who can hire to bring my website on 1st page for the local keywords?
Local Website Optimization | | korado112 -
How to Get 1st Page Google Rankings for a Local Company?
Hi guys, I'm owning a London removal company - Mega Removals and wants to achieve 1st page rankings on Google UK for keywords like: "removals London", "removal company London", "house removals London" but have no success so far. I need professional advice on how to do it. Should I hire an SEO or should focus on content? I will be very grateful for your help.
Local Website Optimization | | nanton1 -
City Pages for Local SEO
Hey Mozzers, I have a local SEO question for you. I am working with a medical professional to SEO their site. I know that when creating city pages, you want to try and make each page as strong as you can, showcasing testimonials from people who live in those towns, for instance. Since my client is in the medical profession, i was going to include a list of parks from that town and say something about how, "we want to encourage good health, etc." However, i began to wonder whether i should just create one, large resource for the surrounding towns having to do with parks, dog parks, and athletic activities and link to it in the top nav. thoughts? Nails
Local Website Optimization | | matt.nails0 -
One of my man pages is not ranking and does not seem to exist.
One of my main pages is not ranking and does not seem to exist. I have gone through every tool on webmaster and yoast. I cannot find an error, but every metric I know of says my page should be on the first page of my target search term. Moz graded it as an A, but It is not ranked on any page. Can someone please help?? my target search is "Jekyll Island Wedding Photographer" my home page shows up on page 2 but this page http://saintsimonsphotography.com/jekyll-island-wedding-photographer/ is my page that does not seem to exist. I have never had this problem with any of my other businesses. Jekyll island is the next island over and I need this term to rank. Thank you for any help.
Local Website Optimization | | krivec80 -
How to approach SEO for a national umbrella site that has multiple chapters in different locations that are different URLS
We are currently working with a client who has one national site - let's call it CompanyName.net, and multiple, independent chapter sites listed under different URLs that are structured, for example, as CompanyNamechicago.org, and sometimes specific to neighborhoods, as in CompanyNamechicago.org/lakeview.org. The national site is .net, while all others are .orgs. These are not subdomains or subfolders, as far as we can tell. You can use a search function on the .net site to find a location near you and click to that specific local site. They are looking for help optimizing and increasing traffic to certain landing pages on the .net site...but similar landing pages also exist on a local level, which appear to be competing with the national site. (Example: there is a landing page on the national .net umbrella site for a "dog safety" campaign they are doing, but also that campaign has led to a landing page created independently on the local CompanyNameChicago.org website, which seems to get higher ranking due to a user looking for this info while located in Chicago. We are wondering if our hands are tied here since they appear to be competing for traffic with all their localized sites, or if there are best practices to handle a situation like this. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | timfrick0 -
Call Tracking numbers effect on Local SEO
Hello Mozzers! With the importance of homogeneous NAP information on Local SEO, could using Call Tracking numbers have a negative effect? Is it better to use Javascript to place the number, or to hard code it? Thanks in advance!
Local Website Optimization | | FrankSweeney0 -
Drastic changes in keyword rankings on a daily basis
Anybody ever seen keyword rankings for a site change drastically from day to day? I've got a client, a local furniture store, whose local keywords (furniture + city) rank consistently well without much change, but when it comes to broader keyword rankings (like "furniture" or "furniture store") in their zip code, they'll go from ranking at the top of Google one day to not being ranked at all the next (at least according to Raven Tools). My best guess is that it's just a reflection of personalized results from Google, but such a dramatic change day in and day out makes me wonder.
Local Website Optimization | | ChaseMG0