How Far is Too Far to Show Up in Local Results
-
Hi everyone,
I have one client that is located about 45 minutes (25 miles) outside of a large city and I can't seem to help them rank within that large city. They're a relatively new business in the service industry (meaning they'll travel to an individual's residence) and in the surrounding cities closer to their physical location, they rank extremely well. In this large city, they have 3 keywords in the top 10, 2 snack pack rankings and then everything else is below 51!
I have a feeling that distance depends on many things, but I am wondering if anyone has ever figured out how far away is **too far **to be considered local by Google. My feeling is that sure it would be nice to rank locally for this large city as it would open them up to a really large customer pool, but that maybe 45 minutes away is just not local (I know I personally don't consider that "local").
Again, I understand that ranking locally depends on a really wide range of factors, but I'm considering only distance in this question.
Thanks so much!
-
Hi Kaitlin!
The radius from which Google draws local and localized organic results is really dependent on competition. There won't be a single answer to your question, because it's going to be different in each case. For example, if you are located in a very rural area with few options, Google will reach out beyond the borders of your town to adjacent towns to return results to make up a full set of results. In some cases like this, there won't even be a 3 pack, but solely organic results.
When you are dealing with a large city, you are much less likely to see this outreaching behavior on Google's part, because they will have plenty of results right near the user within the city. The only exception to this would be if the business is offering something very unusual and there are few or no competitors inside the city.
For a Service Area Business, the rule of thumb is to go for local pack rankings for their city of location and organic rankings for their service cities. It's rare for a service area business to rank in the local pack for any city where they lack a physical location, unless, again, they are offering something very rare.
Doing research on Maps will help you determine the general radius from which Google is drawing results for a particular query, but it's extremely important to remember the user-as-centroid phenomenon, especially when dealing with cities. Google will show different results to users at one end of the city than to those at the other end of it. Educating clients about the fact that there are no static rankings is vital these days
Hope this helps!
-
Thank you! That's where my mind is too on this- I agree on all points!
-
Ranking in a city 25 miles away for a new business is quite a challenge, even if you do ongoing local SEO. Competitors in the city are probably doing local SEO too and are more important from Google's perspective. Why would Google show a business from a different region if there are many local, trusted service providers?
Getting a local address and optimising that listing might be a cheaper and more effective solution.
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
-
Local search traffictwo locations
Hello, Can I ask for some advice? A client of mine is located in two cities. The first one was his original city and he has lots of traffic for various search terms and is very happy. He then expanded and has a branch in a second city. We created a unique landing page for it and a Google My Business page, built citations and it is ranking quite well (on first page for the two keywords that we targeted). But traffic is not great as city 1. His main navigation has a list of services and also a locations tab which has the two locations. The services pages are all unique and target specific keywords and I added location to the end of them - : e.g. **SERVICE KEYWORD CITY 1, CITY 2. ** A search for SERVICE KEYWORD + CITY 1 is on first page and lots of traffic. For SERVICE KEYWORD + CITY 2 it is on page 2. How would we increase the traffic to the second city? Should we create sub pages of the services he provides with the location set as city2 only (and keep the original ones only as city 1)? These would kind of duplicate the services pages we already have so we would have the problem that we might be duplicating stuff. Since SERVICE KEYWORD CITY 1 are doing really well (he's either first or second) I am loathe to change it too much but not sure how to get more keywords for city 2 without duplication the services pages. Any advice?
Local Listings | | AL123al0 -
Google Local Result- Competitor Ranks without an Address. Why is this happening?
My client is in a fairly competitive local market and there is a competitor who has ranked locally for around 2 years, but they have no actual address on their Google business listing. Just city and state. The listing is always top three and it does have their website listed, but directions aren't even available as there is actual no address. The listing is extremely keyword dense (basically spam but they actually created a business with the spam name). Citation Example: Keyword dense business name, phone number, city and state only Have you seen this? Can you explain why this is happening? Is this against the rules/anything I can do? Thanks!
Local Listings | | mgordon0 -
Google Local listing variations
Hi Moz People, I sometimes receive rich snippets (relating to my services) with my Google Local listing and other times I do not. Specifically, if I search my company name ("Marketing Implementation Clinic" as per Google+ Page name) I see the a list of services with the local listing (see the picture attached). However, if I search a derivation (say "Marketing Clinic Melbourne"") I see a very simple local listing without the services snippets. Are there explicit guidelines on when these snippets would be returned? LPk6tmq.png?1
Local Listings | | luke-hamilton0 -
Is getting a top position in a local results block acheiveable if you are outside of the central zone ?
Most of the keywords / phrases we are targeting have the city (London) appended to it ie. service name London, service name in London etc. The business of the site we are working on is located in London, but not in central London. Because of this i think the site is not being ranking as well as it could be (compared to other sites that in the centre or nearer to the centre with seemingly lower profiles, including have no reviews on their Google + Pages). The site itself is relatively strong fluctuating between 3rd and 5th spot for the target phrases in the organic listings, but because of the local block which sits under position 2 our site always towards the bottom of the first page. We've submitted the site to all the relevant local directories and listings sites, got 3 google reviews on the Plus profile and added the correct local html schema markup to any of our sites pages where our address is mentioned, but still we are sitting at around #12 on the local listings block (when you click Map results for...) at the bottom of the 7 local listings. So the site dosnt seem far off being on the front page, but I feel ive exhausted the optimisation i can do, any ideas how i can make any gains in these local listings ?
Local Listings | | Sam-P1 -
Google Plus Local - Business address, regions covered/served
Hi If you have a client whose business address is not the same as the regions they serve/cover then how do you set this up correctly in G+? So listing (& preferably website too via the G+ places connection & onpage local address schema) do help local search query listings in the target areas ? Also schema too if possible (i.e. how do you add areas/regions covered if outside of actual business address area) ? Is the only way round this to set up serviced/virtual office addresses in your target market regions ? Surely there's a way to have a business listed in areas outside of its actual address. Its a physical business but is not bricks & mortar beyond the admin office. All Best Dan
Local Listings | | Dan-Lawrence1 -
Is there a way to get your local SERP by zipcode?
I have multiple stores across various zipcodes and i'm having difficulty trying to provide an average Positioning on SERP by region. I do know that your SERP varies by region because different areas use different vernaculars. Does anyone know of a way that I can provide a SERP for keywords/terms by county or zip code?
Local Listings | | rpaiva0 -
Does anyone know of a Google My Business reporting dashboard that shows impressions and clicks in bulk?
Right now, it appears the only way to access reporting data is by clicking on each individual location and then navigating to insights. We're managing nearly 300 different locations and need a tool that makes it easier to retrieve performance data.
Local Listings | | Deluxe0 -
Is a Competitor Claiming My Clients Yahoo Local Profiles?
I am working with an Insurance agent and he has Google Alerts setup on his company name. He has received two alerts where his name only appears in the URL. If you click the links they bring you to a competitor's Yahoo Local profile page with their name and info. If you look at the URL it has his company's name and city in the URL. Could a competitor be claiming his listings and then changing the business name, phone, address and URL to their own? Does the URL on Yahoo Local listings stay the same after a business changes their name? This has happened with two of his listings in two different cities, he has two offices in one state. But not with the same competitor, it has happened with two different companies. Any idea what could be happening? I would be happy to PM the URLS, I just don't want to post them publicly here. Thanks!
Local Listings | | MainelySEO0