Do Local Search Efforts (Citations, NAP, Reviews) have an impact on traditional organic search listings (without the A, B, C mapping icons), but rather the traditional listings?
-
Are citations, NAP, Reviews, and other local search efforts impact traditional SEO listings? Can one elaborate?
-
Hi Donna,
yes I agree with you completely. If the marketplaces saturated for instance if you ever tried to rank for attorneys it's not easy.
I no that Google is now taking your KML file from Google maps and long with your longitude and latitude to mark the map that is important information that you should have
(The latitude and longitude is not being used by Google as to my knowledge yet however the KML is and needs it)
I have a client that is a very competitive market right now in the city of Toronto not a extremely large city but not the extremely small city either and we're doing very well with local its not easy to do but you can rank with older companies thought to be an institution that could not be removed from Google's first place especially with universal ranking
-
I agree with all of the above and just want to add that those local links can make a big difference to a small business in a non-competitive market. Now if you're a SEO company trying to rank for SEO in Seattle, forget it. But if you're a in a niche market in a small community, it can make a real difference.
-
Nice answer from Keith! I'll add to this that, from a purely organic perspective, most structured citations (i.e. citations built on local business directories) do contain a link to your website or a landing page on your website. Given the role links play in organic, I'm sure these help a little, though I can't quantify how much. It may not be a whole lot, given the predictability of these types of links for local businesses. Your website is your strongest organic ranking factor if you are a local business, so it needs to be great!
-
If you're looking for somebody to verify what Keith said I agree with him 100%
http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors
http://searchengineland.com/13-semantic-markup-tips-for-2013-a-local-seo-checklist-143708
sincerely,
Thomas
-
Ok, yes and no... Wait.. let me explain! : ) Really, it depends on how you look at it. Citations, NAP, Reviews, in general are not going to affect your traditional organic SERP placement (except on a local level). However, think about this from a promotional perspective. If your business has a stronger local presence because of your local citations, NAP, and reviews, you're probably more likely to get link love from other bloggers who see your website as more authoritative (if you're pushing out great content consistently on your blog with a good social promotion strategy). Part of your efforts will be to find unsolicited citation opportunities from local "niche" websites who usually pass great authority. These niche local sites have a huge impact on your local optimization and traditional organic listings.
So, yes their is significant impact on your traditional organic presence by doing proper local SEO but there is no real value passed from typical citations that you'd find from getlisted.org or reviews to your traditional organic presence.
http://moz.com/webinars/how-to-be-a-local-search-superhero
great mozinar to learn more about local search.
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
-
Adding Copy on Inventory Listing Pages
Hi All, We manage a number of auto dealer websites which have their new & used inventory listed on them. There's a separate page for new, used, and CPO inventory, and on most web platforms any filtered inventory subpages are canonicalized back to one of the main inventory pages. Our question is - should we install unique copy on these to-level inventory pages? We're already installing unique meta and H1s and feel like copy could help these rank for more searches but we have a couple hesitations: Most big retailers like Amazon, Zappos, etc don't have copy on these types of pages. Putting the copy above the inventory would distract from shopping behavior, but installing it at the bottom of the page would hurt relevance. We'd appreciate anyone's insight or past experience here! Is it worth taking the time to write unique copy for these pages? Thanks everyone.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ReunionMarketing0 -
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 -
List of SEO "to do's" to increase organic rankings
We are looking for a complete list of all white hat SEO "to do's" that an SEO firm should do in order to help increase Google/Bing/Yahoo organic rankings. We would like to use this list to be sure that the SEO company/individual we choose uses all these white hat items as part of an overall SEO strategy to increase organic rankings. Can anyone please point me in the right direction as to where we can obtain this complete list? If this is not the best approach, please let me know what is, as I am not an SEO person. Thank you kindly in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RetractableAwnings.com0 -
404's - Do they impact search ranking/how do we get rid of them?
Hi, We recently ran the Moz website crawl report and saw a number of 404 pages from our site come back. These were returned as "high priority" issues to fix. My question is, how do 404's impact search ranking? From what Google support tells me, 404's are "normal" and not a big deal to fix, but if they are "high priority" shouldn't we be doing something to remove them? Also, if I do want to remove the pages, how would I go about doing so? Is it enough to go into Webmaster tools and list it as a link no to crawl anymore or do we need to do work from the website development side as well? Here are a couple of examples that came back..these are articles that were previously posted but we decided to close out: http://loyalty360.org/loyalty-management/september-2011/let-me-guessyour-loyalty-program-isnt-working http://loyalty360.org/resources/article/mark-johnson-speaks-at-motivation-show Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | carlystemmer0 -
Google displaying a content box above the listing link for top ranking listing in SERPs
Hi, In the attached Google SERP example the first listing below the paid search ads has a large box with a snippet of content from the relevant page then followed by the standard link. Does anyone know how you get Google to display a box like this in their SERPs? I checked the code on the page and there doesn't appear to be anything special about it such as any schema markup. It uses standard list code. Does this only appear for particular types of content or sites, such as medical content in this case? Is the content more likely to appear for lists? Does it only appear for high authority sites that Google has selected? We have a similar medical information based site and it would be great to try to get Google to display a similar box of content for some of our pages. Thanks. Damien ZmPJVSl.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | james.harris0 -
Anyone managed to change 'At a glance:' in local search results
On Google's local search results, i.e when the 'Google places' data is displayed along with the map on the right hand side of the search results, there is also an element 'At a glance:'
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DeanAndrews
The data that if being displayed is from some years ago and the client would if possible like it to reflect there current services, which they have been providing for some five years. According to Google support here - http://support.google.com/maps/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1344353 this cannot be changed, they say 'Can I edit a listing’s descriptive terms or suggest a new one?
No; the terms are not reviewed, curated, or edited. They come from an algorithm, and we do not help that algorithm figure it out. ' My question is has anyone successfully influenced this data and if so how.0 -
Impact of SSL - switching from http: to https: on organic rankings?
Hello, just paranoid, but thought i'd ask. We are installing an SSL certificate on a site ranking very well organically in all the engines. This will change our site from http:// to https://. Is there an risk to our rankings in doing so? What might I need to consider? Changing my htaccess redirects to https: instead of http;? Any ripple effects from switching to a secure site? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seagreen
Greg0 -
The Site: search and Flow of PageRank
It is my understanding that if I do a search for site:mydomain.com the results are like every other SERP in that the most authoritative pages are ranked higher. So obviously I would expect my homepage to be first (in most cases), then followed by main category pages, etc. My question is has anybody ever seen disturbing results when doing this (i.e. pages that should have no authority outranking main category pages)? Is this always an issue with site structure or can you think of other factors that may cause this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | purch0