How to rank local keywords?
-
Hi guys,
I have been enjoying here to be a part of the community. A simple question:
I have some local low volume keywords and want to rank on 1 with all. I have set up pages according to the keywords such as "california plumbers" and page is /california-plumbers.html
To rank these types of keywords I am doing local listing and adding these particular page instead of "home page". Am I doing right? Would classifieds and local listings are suffice to get these keywords on 1 spot of Google? What else can I do? Can you suggest me some queries to find "deep local directories or classified or other stuff whereby I can target my pages?
Thank you in advance for ideas.
-
Dear Nicholas,
Thank you for this. I will certainly find some relevant resource and fit into the web content. Is it possible if I place an external link of competitors or any other relevant resource to my website then they can also link to me?
Absolutely, I can design some pictures and employ these sites.
Regards
-
Kate,
Sorry, I should have clarified, when I say external link I mean a link on your website page that goes to a resource or website outside of your website. For example, you can link to a plumbing tips resource website, a Wikipedia page that defines an uncommon industry term you mention, or perhaps the state website for California, California tourism website, etc. So it is on your website that goes off of your website, but if it is a relevant external link Google can give you a slight boost in rankings.
Building inbound links (links outside of your website that point to your website) naturally with the naked URL is a great way to go. If you have original pictures, videos, or creative web design, I am a big fan of utilizing content sharing websites like Behance, Ello, and Visual.ly to build links. You can also find some high quality directories that are non-paid that provide dofollow links; such as TopRatedLocal, Contractors.org, ResellerRatings, and Company.com.
-
Hi Kate,
If you are marketing a business in the payday loans industry, your challenge is more complex than many other business categories face, due to Google taking punitive action in the past.
If the business is virtual rather than physical, you cannot do Local SEO. Unless the business has physical offices where staff make face-to-face contact with customers, you cannot build out local business listings on platforms like Google My Business, Facebook, Yelp, etc. Instead, you'll have to focus on organic SEO and PPC. Here's a recent article specifically about your industry: https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/05/22/a-review-of-the-payday-loans-algorithm-in-2018/
-
Dear Ellis,
Thank you for the kind words and understanding my strategies :).
Yes, I meant by that. Actually, I have not a plumbing business but referred to it just as an example of local business. I run loan business which has 6 states. Those specific pages I want to target in local listing and classifieds. I hope I am going good. With this I can put that particular url as a naked and no need to build anchor text.
When you say surrounding you are referring I should search with zip code such as in Nevada "89101 + local listing"?
I am just targeting specific page in those listings such as https://paydaysunny.com/california.html
One more question: can I edit my existed listings and add rest of the locations? For example: I have added one location in these listings but when I look at my competitors I notice that they are getting link for all locations from one business listing directory. Is it feasible?
I am referring to organic traffic. But I think it is possible when keywords will be on TOP.
Waiting for your inputs.
-
Hi Kate!
We're so happy to have you here. I want to be sure I'm clearly understanding your strategy. When you say you are building local listings, do you mean you are building local business listings for the state of California? Local business listings are address-specific. So, if you are marketing a plumbing company with a physical location in, say, San Diego, CA., you can create local business listings surrounding this, but what you cannot do is create a local business listing for a state. Please, provide a little further detail here about how you are handling local business listings.
Also, can you let the community know whether you are referring to organic or local rankings in terms of your goals?
Thank you!
-
Very nice Nicolas,
I have added these keywords in the title tag and tried decorate the page with H1 title by adding keywords.
When you said "external link" you mean links from other websites such as Google map, youtube video?
I am trying to build links naturally just putting naked url. But I am getting only many paid directories or classifieds? do you have any queries I can use to get these links or any list would be helpful?
thanks
-
I would recommend focusing on on-site optimization first. For the example you used- "/california-plumbers", you can include "California Plumbers in the Meta Title and H1, as well as a couple times within the content. It may also help to include variations of your keyword such as "plumbing contractors in California" or "local California plumbing repair" in an H2 and throughout the copy. Adding images, a video, map embed, internal links, and external links on the page can also help to boost its relevance.
Once you feel the page is more optimized, but not spammy or keyword stuffed, you can build internal links to it from other pages on your website. Also, keep in mind that building high-quality links to your overall website and doing technical SEO things like improving your website speed can also have an inherited positive effect on the rankings of your internal pages.
Hope this helps and best of success!
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
-
Not Showing Up in Local Pack - Possible Possum Filter?
We have a medical practice client who isn't showing up at all on local category searches for their zip code. Wondering whether it's a Possum algorithm filter, and if so, how we can resolve this. The client is named Wall Street Dermatology, and is located in the same building as two other medical practices in the same dermatologist specialty. They share the same address (65 Broadway, New York, NY), but have different unit numbers. My client is Suite 904. To be clear, these are entirely separate businesses that are not affiliated with each other. They happen to be located in the same building. When running local searches (for example, in US zip code 10004) for the category term "dermatologist", my client is not appearing at all. The two other practices are appearing just fine. In fact, one of the competing practices has not only their practice listed, but one of their doctors individually and even one of the physician assistants. My client, Wall Street Dermatology, isn't showing up. IMO, the GMB profile is robust, with more reviews than competitors, and more content overall. While there's SEO work to be done, the citations and link profile exceeds some of the other practices who are showing up in "dermatologist" (use zip code 10004) searches. Google is showing profiles of dermatologists who haven't even claimed their profiles or have websites.One more thing: For a two-week span, the business was showing up in the 3-pack for "dermatologist" after making upgrades to the GMB profile. This was a first. So they've been there before. However, they made some changes to NAP. 1) added the providers name to the business name: "Business Name: Provider Name". 2) Updated "Suite" to "Ste" in order to match USPS. After that change, the business fell off entirely again.Note: We do appear on searches for the business name. And we do appear for some secondary keywords (for example, "Cosmetic Dermatology"), but not for the main keyword. Is this related to Possum (https://moz.com/learn/seo/google-possum)? Is Google confused that my client is related to the other practices in the same building? Any suggestions?
Local Listings | | sponnu01230 -
Tracking Google Local Click-Thrus (Maps)
We've expanded our business to be in multiple cities. We are tracking our local rankings in each city and have Adwords campaigns for those cities with location extensions. We have a separate contact page for each city but haven't setup landing pages for each city which would be fairly tricky as our services are identical for each city. So really the landing page would be almost identical to our home page content with maybe a photo of the city and the city's name thrown in here and there - definitely a risk of duplicate content detection. What I'm wondering is if anyone knows if there a Google Analytics report we can run to show us links from our Google Places for Business Listing segregated by location? My guess is that we would need to make each URL for each Google Places listing unique to that location, like http://www.oursite.com?{name of city} Or is this not even necessary by using some report settings in Google Analytics? -- update -- Well this is a 7-year old article but I suspect it might still basically hold true? In other words, it's not easy and straight forward. What I'm wondering is, if I use the ?{cityname} URL only in my Places listings URLs, well, let's make it ?place={cityname} then really all I need to do is run a report filtering by URL contains ?place= Can it really be that simple because if it is, then this old article and others like it seem to be really over complicating the strategy for simply seeing your googe places listing traffic in total and by location? https://moz.com/blog/tracking-traffic-from-google-places-in-google-analytics Furthermore, if we plan on eventually building home pages for each location, maybe the better URL structure would be mysite.com/places/{city name} and just do a 301 to the home page until the custom page is built. The big question then arises if we are only using this URL in our Google Places listings does it have any farther reaching effect on Google's organic view of our website? In other words will it try to add a unique Google Places URL to the organic results database? Will it cause a suspension of the Google Places listing? If we create the URL as an alias to the home page instead of a 301 will it risk dupe content penalty. Wait a sec... if we use a 301 won't that render tracking in Analytics useless as it's only then going to count the pageview for the home page and not the original URL, right? I guess we could use an alias and then in the robots.txt dissallow indexing of any URLs with /places/ ? Now I think I'M over complicating things. Seems like the best/easiest/safest method is to just a ?place={city name} to the Google Places URL. Then once we have unique places landing pages, just go update the URL in all our places listing.
Local Listings | | Wizkids9640 -
Reliably Tracking Google Snack Pack Rankings
I have yet to find a way to reliably see my "snack pack" standings without going all out and using a VPN. I have moz pro and it looks like I can only track organic and local organic rankings. Anyone have a solution?
Local Listings | | zact10240 -
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!
Local Listings | | KaitlinNS0 -
Ranking for "personal trainer agency london"
Hi all, I have a client who wants to rank for "personal trainer agency london" They are a .com site with offices worldwide and they have 1 contact page per location. I've been registering their UK address across Yell, Yelp, G+ etc but I wondered if that would be enough to get their rankings moving for the "london" related terms or should I be creating a landing page related to "personal trainer agency london" specifically? I don't feel comfortable doing it this way as it goes against what I believe is good SEO. They have other services they offer so I don't want to end up having to build a "london" related page for every service and then every location. Surely I can make their Personal Trainers page rank for location terms? Any thoughts HUGELY appreciated!
Local Listings | | Marketing_Today0 -
Multiple locations and local directories
Hello, A client has opened a new office in another city. I have created a local landing page for this city. Now I want to build citations for it. However, I have already set up directories like Yelp/Yell with the primary/original address in the original city. Is it OK to set up new citations using the new city local address. The company name stays the same obviously. So I will have duplicate listings on the directories for the same company. Will this work? Thanks for any help
Local Listings | | AL123al1 -
Google Local Business SEO
Under "http://moz.com/blog/everybody-needs-local-seo" Q) There is a paragraph saying "If your business has multiple locations, you should have a unique location landing page for each Google Plus Local listing." Does it mean that for each of my shop (location), i have to create an brand new google plus page for it? Q) There is a paragraph saying "you're dealing with a single location, then we're talking about your home page - but these elements should also be locally optimized on product and services pages. City and state in the title tag. City and state in H1 heading" For example, if my country is australia, i have to create a page within my website and the it is optimised to the keywords "Gold Coast | Australia" in my 'product and services page'?
Local Listings | | kevinbp0 -
Google+ Local and a Google+ Company Page
I have an established G+ company page but also want a G+ Local listing in order to appear on Google maps. The company does have a physical address, phone number etc. to qualify for a G+ Local listing. No current local listing exists to claim. Should I: a) Switch the currrent G+ company page to be a G+ Local page; or b) Create a new G+ Local page and keep the G+ company page; or c) Ignore G+ Local and create the listing through Google Places Thanks
Local Listings | | bjalc20110