Research on industries that are most competitive for SEO?
-
I am trying to see if there is a reputable / research-backed source that can show which industries are most competitive for search engine optimization. In particularly, I'd be interested in reports / research related to the residential real estate industry, which I believe based on anecdotal experience to be extremely competitive.
-
For sure, Kevin! Real estate is definitely one of those verticals (like hotels) that has long since been chiefly taken over in the SERPs by directories and rich features. Hard-to-impossible to outrank TripAdvisor if you're marketing a hotel, or Zillow if you're a realtor. Likely, you'll just have to make sure you're listed on the directories, go after the longer tail organically, and then rely on social, WOMM, etc. to bring in those leads.
-
Thanks, Miriam. I'll look around. In the meantime, I thought it was interesting that, for the given example in the article you shared ("Glendale Homes for Sale"), Google's top ten results are all aggregators. That goes with my experience as well.
-
Hi Kevin!
I'm so sorry, but I'm not aware of a preexisting study of this kind.
I see things like: https://www.bruceclay.com/blog/real-estate-seo/
But as to a study stating "It's gotten 10x harder to rank for 'house for sale' in San Francisco in the last two years" - no.
If you're in the real estate market, Kevin, are there any bloggers in that space you follow? Any targeted publications? Maybe they would have some statistics that would prove/disprove your theory that real estate SEO is harder than it used to be?
-
Great to hear from you, Miriam! I understand what you mean about the difficulty. I'm particularly interested in data I can present that will show the increasing degree of competition in the area of residential real estate nationwide, but I could focus on a single city if that sort of research is available. Ideally, this would be a pre-existing report, as time constraints won't allow me to compile this research on my own.
-
Localizing this makes it a bit more difficult, Kevin, as competition varies so widely by geography. There are 41,000 Chinese restaurants in the US (sounds ultra competitive), 400 in San Francisco (ouch! competitive) but only 1 in Valley Springs, CA (zero competition).
-
Thanks for your response. I had come across that link as well, but as you pointed out, the content is over a decade old, and, unfortunately, the link to the thread is also not working. Still on the lookout for a fresh source if one exists!
-
This resource poll is a little dated (2005), but I believe it is still relevant & is from Barry Schwartz's Search Engine Roundtable, which is considered a credible source in the search industry- https://www.seroundtable.com/archives/002785.html.
Pulled directly from the SE Roundtable article, and in no order the most competitive industries for SEO are-
- Real Estate
- Mortgages
- Travel
- Web Site Design & Hosting
- Insurance
- Gifts & Gift Baskets
- Travel
- Pharma
- Porn & Sex Toys
- Any Popular Affiliate-Driven Industry In General
If I were to add one, I would say Home Remodeling/Construction has become fairly competitive in local SEO. Using Moz's Keyword Explorer can give more insight on this if you type in an industry term and then look at the difficulty score.
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
-
International SEO - How do I show correct SERP results in the UK and US?
Hi, Moz community. I hope you’re all OK and keeping busy during this difficult period. I have a few questions about international SEO, specifically when it comes to ranking pages in the UK and the US simultaneously. We currently have 2 websites set-up which are aimed towards their respective countries. We have a ‘.com’ and a ‘.com/us’. If anybody could help with the issues below, I would be very grateful. Thank you all. Issues When looking in US Google search with a VPN, the title tag for our UK page appears in the SERP e.g. I will see: UK [Product Name] | [Brand] When checking the Google cache, the UK page version also appears This can cause a problem especially when I am creating title tags and meta descriptions that are unique from the UK versions However, when clicking through from the SERP link to the actual page, the US page appears as it should do. I find this very bizarre that it seems to show you the US page when you click through, but you see the UK version in the SERP when looking in the overall search results. Current Set-Up Our UK and US page content is often very similar across our “.com” and “.com/us” websites and our US pages are canonicalised to their UK page versions to remove potential penalisation We have also added herflang to our UK and US pages Query How do I show our US SERP as opposed to the UK version in US Google search? My Theories/ Answers US page versions have to be completely unique with content related to US search intent and be indexed separately - therefore no longer canonicalised to UK version Ensure hreflang is enabled to point Google to correct local page versions Ensure local backlinks point to localised pages If anyone can help, it will be much appreciated. Many thanks all.
Local Website Optimization | | Katarina-Borovska0 -
What is the best way to differentiate and optimize two similar websites's SEO?
What is the best way to differentiate and optimize two similar websites's SEO, having in mind that they do not produce content?
Local Website Optimization | | EmmaGeorge0 -
Does having a host located in a different country than the location of the website/website's audience affects SEO?
For example if the website is example.ro and the hosting would be on Amazon Web Services. Thanks for your help!
Local Website Optimization | | IrinaIoana0 -
What is the best way for a UK company to source SEO Support to boost SERPS in USA Google?
We are a niche web retailer with a world leading product and as such are probably the best option for USA customers (even though we are based in the UK) up to 18 months ago google agreed and placed us high for USA searches and we had good business as a result however since penguin (or around that time anyways) google increased our SERPS for more local markets (UK and EUROPE) and decreased our ranks for USA with a consequent reduction in our USA sales We want to improve rank again in USA (and Canada and Australia and Russia) but need specialist help What's the best way to source that? (short of someone saying they know exactly how to do that) ant recommendation most gratefully received Tom
Local Website Optimization | | tomnivore0 -
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 -
Local SEO HELP for Franchise SAB Business
This all began when I was asked to develop experiment parameters for our content protocol & strategy. It should be simple right? I've reviewed A/B testing tips for days now, from Moz and other sources.I'm totally amped and ready to begin testing in Google Analytics. Say we have a restoration service franchise with over 40 franchises we perform SEO for. They are all over the US. Every franchise has their own local website. Example restorationcompanylosangeles.com Every franchise purchases territories in which they want to rank in. Some service over 100 cities. Most franchises also have PPC campaigns. As a part of our strategy we incorporate the location reach data from Adwords to focus on their high reach locations first. We have 'power pages' which include 5 high reach branch preferences (areas in which the owners prefer to target) and 5 non branch preference high reach locations. We are working heavily on our National brand presence & working with PR and local news companies to build relationships for natural backlinks. We are developing a strategy for social media for national brand outlets and local outlets. We are using major aggregators to distribute our local citation for our branch offices. We make sure all NAP is consistent across all citations. We are partners with Google so we work with them on new branches that are developing to create their Google listings (MyBusiness & G+). We use local business schema markup for all pages. Our content protocol encompasses all the needed onsite optimization tactics; meta, titles, schema, placement of keywords, semantic Q&A & internal linking strategies etc. Our leads are calls and form submissions. We use several call tracking services to monitor calls, caller's location etc. We are testing Callrail to start monitoring landing pages and keywords that generating our leads. Parts that I want to change: Some of the local sites have over 100 pages targeted for 'water damage + city ' aka what Moz would call "Doorway pages. " These pages have 600-1000 words all talking about services we provide. Although our writers (4 of them) manipulate them in a way so that they aren't duplicate pages. They add about 100 words about the city location. This is the only unique variable. We pump out about 10 new local pages a month per site - so yes - over 300 local pages a month. Traffic to the local sites is very scarce. Content protocol / strategy is only tested based on ranking! We have a tool that monitors ranking on all domains. This does not count for mobile, local, nor user based preference searching like Google Now. My team is deeply attached to basing our metrics solely on ranking. The logic behind this is that if there is no local city page existing for a targeted location, there is less likelihood of ranking for that location. If you are not seen then you will not get traffic nor leads. Ranking for power locations is poor - while less competitive low reach locations rank ok. We are updating content protocol by tweaking small things (multiple variants at a time). They will check ranking everyday for about a week to determine whether that experiment was a success or not. What I need: Internal duplicate content analyzer - to prove that writing over 400 pages a month about water damage + city IS duplicate content. Unique content for 'Power pages' - I know based on dozens of chats here on the community and in MOZ blogs that we can only truly create quality content for 5-10 pages. Meaning we need to narrow down what locations are most important to us and beef them up. Creating blog content for non 'power' locations. Develop new experiment protocol based on metrics like traffic, impressions, bounce rate landing page analysis, domain authority etc. Dig deeper into call metrics and their sources. Now I am at a roadblock because I cannot develop valid content experimenting parameters based on ranking. I know that a/b testing requires testing two pages that are same except the one variable. We'd either non index these or canonicalize.. both are not in favor of testing ranking for the same term. Questions: Are all these local pages duplicate content? Is there a such thing as content experiments based solely on ranking? Any other suggestions for this scenario?
Local Website Optimization | | MilestoneSEO_LA1 -
Local SEO: City & County Pages
I'm working on developing some local pages for an HVAC company. They cover two counties, so I was planning on having two county pages, then linking them to individual city pages to keep the menu simpler and not cluttering it up with a couple dozen city pages for people to slog through. Has anybody ever done county pages before for local SEO? Or at least seen them? Just curious to see if there's any real benefit overall for have separate county pages, or if I should just stick to city pages.
Local Website Optimization | | ChaseMG0 -
Listing bundle info on site and on local SEO page.
We just finished a new telecom site, and like all telecom sites (think AT&T, Verizon, Suddenlink, etc.), we allow people to put their location in and find internet and phone service packages (what we call bundles) unique to their area. This page also has contact information for the local sales team and some unique content. However, we're about to start putting up smaller, satellite pages for our local SEO initiative. Of course, these pages will have unique content as well, but it will have some of the same content as what's on the individual bundle page, such as package offerings, NAP, etc. Currently this is the URL structure for the bundles: domain.com/bundles/town-name/ This is what I'm planning for the local SEO pages: domain.com/location/town-name-state/ All local FB pages, Google listings, etc. will like to these location pages, rather than the bundle pages. Is this okay or should I consolidate them into one?
Local Website Optimization | | AMATechTel0