Will local optimization effect international ranking?
-
Lets say a company serves Canada and US customers regularly, but they are based in Canada. They currently have no local optimization or confirmation of their location on their website.
If I were to begin local optimization (google my business, local content, link building, schema etc), would Google recognize this website as a Canadian business and remove rankings in the US that it is currently appearing in now without any locational information?
-
Hi Miriam,
Thanks for your great reply. It is a fairy tricky situation. In this case, we're dealing with a B2B manufacturing company and currently the lions share of their business comes from the US. Rankings on important keywords are roughly the same in the Canada and the US.
We're currently trying to weigh the benefits of whether establishing the location of the firm and building that credibility would out out-weigh the potential risk of Google then penalizing ranking in the US.
Thanks again for your help!
-
Hi Aaron,
This is a bit tricky, actually. Let's say you are Whole Foods - an international corporation. Your corporate headquarters are in Texas, but you've got stores in the US and Canada. Being headquartered in Texas does not prevent your branch in Calgary from showing up in Google's local pack of results because you have a physical location there. No sweat!
What you are describing is a different situation. It sounds to me as if you are offering virtual services to US-based customers from your headquarters in Canada. Is that correct? If so, then there is some chance that strongly localizing your business to a particular city in Canada might in some way alter Google's perception of you business as a best answer for US-based-or-related queries. We're talking about organic queries here, presumably, rather than local ones, though, because if you don't have US offices, you're not ranking in the local packs for US-based-or-related queries. So, in the long run, if your organic content and authority are currently strong enough to show up for searchers in the US, chances are, they will continue to do so, but it is not out of the question that strongly localizing your business to a city in Canada might in some way impact this.
I'm afraid I've never seen a trustworthy study done to prove how much impact, if any, this type of marketing might have on a business in your situation. In your shoes, what I'd do is try to find a comparable business - one that is headquartered in Canada but also appearing for US-searches and see if they appear to be doing well both on the local level for their city and on an organic, international level with their general content. My gut feeling is that the impact would not be very big, but I wouldn't rule it out completely.
It would be great if a community member who has been in Aaron's situation could comment on their own experience!
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
-
I have a site with a lot of subdomains and I want to see what keywords each is ranking for.
Do I have to enter them manually, one at a time, in the keyword subdomain search or is there a way to submit a list of subdomains and have Moz generate a report of the results?
Local Listings | | thallstd0 -
Good service that helps optimize and create citations to google map listing?
Hi guys, Anyone know good service that helps optimize and create citations to google map listing? Also is there recommended WP theme that helps the ranking on google map? Thanks in advance!
Local Listings | | Tariq_Jameel1 -
Removing a duplicate local listing in same city
Hello, I see three locations for a client. Two legitimate which I have ownership of, the third is a duplicate of one of the locations. Ithink it is harming rankings and I want to get rid of it. It is service area business. Things keep changing, but how will I remove it? My client obviously set this up a while ago and it is left with wrong or missing info. When I click on the business under "more listings" on maps there is a chance to "edit it" AND "claim it" but not delete it. When I strart to claim it I go through adding in everything but then I worry I am legitimising the duplicate. How do you get rid of it? Thanks
Local Listings | | AL123al0 -
Average Percentage of Clicks on Google (Adwords vs Local 3 Pack vs Organic)
Does anyone know the allocation, percentage-wise, of clicks that go to Adwords vs Local 3 Pack vs Organic on Google Search (average)?
Local Listings | | OhYeahSteve0 -
Do Citations help will all local rankings/Pages on my website or just the page it's linked to
Hi All, My ecommerce site has different category/landing pages for each of my branches . I'm currently getting some more citations done as wondered the following Is it a general rule to say, that the more citations you have the better as long as they are consistent and free? Given that I have different categories /landing pages showing the NAP of my individual branches along with unique content, should all these extra citations help with local rankings across my whole site or is it usually just helping the specific localized webpage it's pointing to ? I can get a company to help me do my citations but to do all the branches, it is going to be quite expensive. Is citations quite a big individual SEO factor in local search as opposed to on page seo factors etc etc. Any advice greatly appreciated. thanks Peter
Local Listings | | PeteC120 -
Is there any data about how user interact with the local 7 pack listing, do they scroll past it or use it like a normal SERP ?
Does any one have any data about how users interact with the local 7 pack listings in regards to position to CTR ratios, do everyday users tend to scroll past it to the normal SERPs as they might do with adwords ads (as the local pack is formatted slightly different to normal SERPs) ? bMvtUSe.png
Local Listings | | Sam-P0 -
Why would a domain rank well in some markets and poorly in others?
We are having an issue with our SERP results. Basically here is what’s happening. We offer training in 47 cities. Our main sales page is [http://example.com/product/city-name]. Whenever we change our location preferences in Google, and that URL format is the landing page for our main 3 keywords, we rank no worse than 15. Most of those are on the first page. However, if that is not the landing page in the SERPs, we rank poorly. Depending on which keyword is used, one of three URLs will ALWAYS appear instead of the desired city-specific landing page, and we rank somewhere between pages 6 and 9. The other landing pages, depending on which keyword is used, are http://example.com (home page), http://example.com/product (without the city), or http://example.com/product/san-francisco (regardless of how close this is). Out of the 141 keywords, there have been between 9-25 keywords that have this issue. Having all 3 of these keywords in the top 10 for each city is the number one priority from our CEO. We have noticed if a page starts moving down the ranks, once it goes past 15, the landing page changes. Anyone have any ideas what could be causing this, or how to fix it? Any insight into this is much appreciated!
Local Listings | | PM_Academy0 -
Local SEO citations
Hello all 🙂 I've just started doing some local SEO citation stuff, using Whitespark. I'm wondering if it's a good idea to run different searches/listings for different keywords for the same business? For example, 'digital marketing manchester' and 'website design manchester' - or would you simply just do one keyphrase? All help appreciated!
Local Listings | | Seabrook
William0