How to compete against search terms that use geo-modifiers?
-
I should start by saying we are new to SEO.
We are introducing new “cycling tours” in new destinations and we are looking for a strategy to combat geo-modified keyword searches.
When people search for “cycling tours” they will anchor their search with a geo-modifier such as “cycling tours France” or “cycling tours Italy”.
Based in Australia we are keen to communicate to Australians searching for international cycling tours there are new Australian options that they may wish to consider.
The geo-modifiers required to find our tours (“eyre peninsula” and “carnarvon gorge”) are currently not on the cycling communities radar.
For example to find one of our new tours you need to use “cycling tours eyre peninsula” or “cycling tours carnarvon gorge”.
Currently the only solution we have found to let people know about our new tours is by word of mouth.
Is there an SEO solution?
-
Glad the reply was helpful, Chook1. You're in a tough spot and I wish there was an easier answer to give you, but know that I'm wishing you good luck in this venture. May your as-yet-unknown beautiful places for bike tours become world-class destinations in the future!
-
Thanks Miriam
You have a been a great help. You have understood our circumstances perfectly and your suggestions fall in with our general gut feelings. So there is a lot more networking ahead of us to build the awareness.
-
Hi Chook1!
From reading this thread, I'm understanding a couple of things. Please confirm that this is the scenario you are describing:
-
You offer cycling tours in parts of Australia that no one seems to be looking for.
-
You wish that when people search for something that they are looking for, like "cycling tours Italy", your pages about your tours in Australia would come up in the results.
If my understanding is correct then, in response to the above two points:
-
You have a demand problem rather than an SEO problem. Selling a product/service people aren't yet asking for (cycling tours in Carnarvon Gorge) means your initial focus has to be on creating awareness and a demand for this. It's like you've built a new invention that no one has ever heard of before. In order to turn your invention into a household word, you're likely going to have to advertise it via social media and other channels until the demand becomes real and people are actually searching for what you offer.
-
Google has no incentive to show Australian bike tours when people are looking for Italian bike tours. Anything outside of Italy would be irrelevant to the searcher, so this is not really a goal you should waste time on trying to achieve. Google Maps, mentioned in the ongoing discussion on this thread, will be of no help to you in Italy if your business and your tours are located in Australia. Google Maps is for local search marketing - not International marketing. So, rather, your best strategy is likely to be what I've described in #1 around building awareness/demand for what you offer. If you are trying to get Australians to take bike tours in little-known spots in the country, you will need to advertise in Australia. If you are trying to get travelers from other countries to come to Australia, you will have to advertise wherever those audiences congregate. As far as SEO goes, you'll likely want to try to develop relationships with whatever websites publish the most trusted info on bike tours for your target audience and see what you can do to start getting some press and links from them.
Does this help? If I've in any way misunderstood your scenario, please feel free to provide further details.
-
-
Hi Nigel
Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions the page structure you describe is something we are currently working on.
It is a pity there is not a way to recreate the traditional brochure stand that you find in a Visitors Information Centre where sometimes you discover an experience you would not have thought of asking for before walking in the door.
You mention that maps help the pages rank. Are you talking about Google Places or the general use of a Google map on a page? Currently we use Google maps to display a .KMZ file that shows the route we will be taking. Is this the same?
Thanks again
Mark
-
Hi Mark
If you are trying to get your Cycling Tours Carnarvon Gorge into SERPS for a Cycling Tours Italy search then you are barking up the wrong tree. Of course, they are going to add the place (Geo Modifier) because that is what they want.
I would have a drop-down menu which had a link
Cycling Tours South Australia>
Queensland>
Carnarvon Gorge
Tambourine Mountains
Etc...and all of the other places in Queensland where you run tours. Then build out each page fully with photos and local information.
Don't create pages with links, to links - put them in a logical menu structure otherwise the pages will be too many clicks away & people won't follow them.
You cannot do this so forget it:
“cycling tour Carnarvon Gorge” which is in Australia into the SERP when someone searches for “cycling tour Italy”
MAPS on the tour pages will help them rank.
Regards Nigel
-
Hi Joe and Nigel
I think I must be missing something.
Currently our tour to Carnarvon Gorge is near or at the top of the SERP if someone searches for “cycling tour Carnarvon Gorge”.
The problem we are trying to solve is that we are finding that no matter where a searcher is in the purchasing funnel for a “cycling tour” they seem to be adding a geo-modifier ie “cycling tour New Zealand” or “cycling tour South Australia”.
It would appear that people only search for cycling tours in locations that they have heard others have been to. As a result no one is looking for a cycling tour in Carnarvon Gorge or Australia as this location is nowhere near the usual cycling destinations.
If I understand you both correctly you are suggesting that if I am trying to get our “cycling tour” to “Carnarvon Gorge” into the SERP I should create a page about Queensland which has a link to another page about Carnarvon Gorge which then includes a link to our detailed tour page. Is this correct?
So what I do not understand is how creating the suggested page structure will help us get our “cycling tour Carnarvon Gorge” which is in Australia into the SERP when someone searches for “cycling tour Italy” which is in a completely different country. I do not think this is possible or am I missing something?
How will Google maps help with this?
As I mentioned previously currently the only solution we have found is to use word of mouth to let people know about our new tours. Am I wrong and is there an SEO solution?
Thanks
Mark
-
I would crate SEO locations pages siloed by state > location, take the effort to create unique content for each page. As Nigel Carr highlighted - images & AV will help drive traffic & engagement, Google maps have worked well for me in that past; also.
-
Thanks Nigel
Our issue is that we do not offer tours in the countries where people are looking.
Rather we are trying to open up new touring routes where both Australians and international travellers do not traditionally look. So our problem is that when people anchor their search with a geo-modifier such as "cycling tours England" we do not get a look in.
We run local tours in our home town and in this instance a local page as you describe including the geo-modifier works perfectly.
The down side of geo-modified searching stops people from finding options they had never thought of and serendipitously finding our new offerings.
Regards
Mark
-
Hi Chook1
I would set up 'City pages' or in your case 'Country Pages' which target the different places you offer cycling tours.
For example:
websiteurl/italy-cycling-tours
Then fill the page with highly detailed content and alt texted photos & maybe videos of the tours you offer in that country.
Make them local specific and you will see traffic. It works like a dream.
Simple to implement and highly effective.
Regards Nigel
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
-
Load Balancer issues on Search Console
The top linked domains in search console are coming from our load balancer setup. Does anyone know how to remove these as unique sites pointing back to our primary domain? I was told Google is smart enough to ignore these as duplicate domains but if that was the case, why would they be listed as the top linked domains in search console? Most concerned....
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DonFerrari21690 -
Not showing up in search results for non-branded terms
Hello! Can anyone see any glaring reasons why this post: "98 Book Marketing Ideas That Can Help Authors Increase Sales" isn't on page one of Google — or even page 10! — for the term "book marketing ideas"? Many other sites with lower domain and page authority — even ones linking to this article — are ranking on the first ten pages for this term, and I can't figure out why we're not appearing anywhere. The same thing is happening for ALL of our other blog posts, and the keywords they're optimized for. According to GA, the only terms we're getting clicks from are branded keywords. This subdomain is now 2 years old, and the domain bookbub.com has been around for 5 years. Our domain authority is 61. We have the Yoast SEO plugin installed and are following all the standard SEO best practices. We have enough external links to at least be ranking within the first 10 pages of this Google search. I feel like there's something technically wrong, maybe in the code or backend, but nobody here can figure it out, and our hosting provider WP Engine has no ideas. Moz is returning crawl errors on our site, mainly "Error Code 804: HTTPS (SSL) Error Encountered" and "Error Code 803: Incomplete HTTP Response Received." I have confirmed with WP Engine that everything is set up correctly on our end, and that this is a known Moz issue. I've reached out to Moz's support team about this, and am awaiting a response. But what else am I missing? There's got to be something — I've been blogging for 10 years for different companies and my own personal websites, and I've never come across anything like this before. I'm completely stuck! I'd appreciate any insights you can offer. Thanks in advance! 🙂 EDIT: I heard back from Moz on those errors. The 804 errors are a Moz-side issue — their crawler isn't equipped to be able to handle SNI. They're looking into a resolution, and this wouldn't affect search engine crawlers. Regarding the 803 error: "When you see an 803 error, that means your site closed its TCP connection to our crawler before our crawler could read a complete HTTP response. You don't see this error when you go to the page in your browser because content-length is an outdated component for modern browsers and they will disregard this error, but the intention of our crawler is to report any errors that might be occurring. So the crawler is configured to detect and report such errors." The only thing I can think to do here is go back to WP Engine with this information, but other than that, I'm not sure what this could mean or how to fix it, or if this might be the underlying technical issue keeping us from ranking.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bookbubpartners1 -
Google Search Analytics How to Get Search Keywords for a Page?
How do I get the keywords coming into a page on the new Google Webmaster Tools Search Analytics? Used to be there in the old version. You would just view your most popular urls and when you expanded the urls you would see the terms driving the traffic. How do I see the most popular keyword queries for a given page in the new tool? Alternatively can I still use the old tool somehow?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | K-WINTER0 -
How did my dev site end up in the search results?
We use a subdomain for our dev site. I never thought anything of it because the only way you can reach the dev site is through a vpn. Google has somehow indexed it. Any ideas on how that happened? I am adding the noindex tag, should I used canonical? Or is there anything else you can think of?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
An improved search box within the search results - Results?
Hello~ Does anyone have any positive traffic results to share since implementing this? Thanks! MS
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MargaritaS0 -
Rankings and search traffic fell off a cliff
Hi Moz community, One of my clients has a beast of a website built in ASP.NET (which causes me problems cos I don't have much experience in that) It is a job-site that aggregates job opportunities from other job-sites and provides a job matching service by email etc. They used to have great presence on Google naturally for thousands of job searches. Since Penguin and Penguin 2.0 (I think) their traffic has fallen off a cliff. I have been doing some "off-page" experimentation, seeing if we can fix a lot of issues by re-sculpting their backlink profile (seeing as it was after penguin). but what I have found is that some pages respond to this off page work but some just do not at all, despite how we approach it, such as disavowing previous links building fresh new top quality content links with natural anchor text etc.... Which has lead me to the conclusion that the wider issue is on-page and potentially site structure. Unfortunately as it is ASP.NET I am not so comfortable diagnosing the issues. I think also some issues will be related to dupe content etc.... but I would LOVE to get some input from my learned Moz colleagues. The website is http://www.allthetopbananas.com/ - any tips on how to recover from this dramatic loss of traffic would be massively appreciated. Kind regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | websearchseo0 -
Page indexed but not showing up at all in search results
I am currently working on the SEO for a roofing company. I have developed GEO targeted pages for both commercial and residential roofing (as well as attic insulation and gutters) and have hundreds of 1st page placements for the GEO targeted keywords. What is baffling me is that they are performing EXTREMELY poorly on the bigger cities, to the point of not evening showing up in the first 5 pages. I also target a page specifically for roof repair in Phoenix and it is not coming up AT ALL. This is not typically the results I get when directly targeting keywords. I'm working on implementing keyword variations as well as adding about 10 or so information pages (@ 700 words) regarding different roofing systems which I plan to cross link on the site, etc. I'm just wondering if there is a simple answer as to why the pages I want to be showing up the most are performing so poorly and what I would need to do to improve their rankings.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dogstarweb0 -
Local Searches done from outside of local area better than searches from within local area
Here's a strange one: I am working on a site for a local business and targeting local searches. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. Various keyword position tools show the site ranking very well for searches like "Anytown Widget Store". Doing the same Google search from a browser in Anytown, the site shows up much lower. So I tried changing the location in Google to other cities, using a variety of browsers and it comes up much higher out of town than in town. I have seen plenty of geographic discrepancies before, but usually they went the other way - searches from the actual local area did slightly better than the same searches done elsewhere, which would make sense. Any thoughts on why this would happen?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nick_Ker0