undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    What is your Brand Authority?
    Moz

    What is your Brand Authority?

    Check yours now
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • SEO Q&A

      Insights & discussions from an SEO community of 500,000+.

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Local SEO
  4. Local Website Optimization
  5. Research on industries that are most competitive for SEO?

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

Research on industries that are most competitive for SEO?

Local Website Optimization
3
8
2.4k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • Kevin_P
    Kevin_P last edited by Jun 12, 2018, 4:53 PM

    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.

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
    • MiriamEllis
      MiriamEllis Subject Expert last edited by Jun 14, 2018, 3:17 PM Jun 14, 2018, 3:17 PM

      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.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Kevin_P
        Kevin_P @MiriamEllis last edited by Jun 14, 2018, 2:54 PM Jun 14, 2018, 2:54 PM

        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.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • MiriamEllis
          MiriamEllis Subject Expert last edited by Jun 14, 2018, 2:39 PM Jun 14, 2018, 2:39 PM

          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?

          Kevin_P 1 Reply Last reply Jun 14, 2018, 2:54 PM Reply Quote 0
          • Kevin_P
            Kevin_P @MiriamEllis last edited by Jun 13, 2018, 11:20 PM Jun 13, 2018, 11:20 PM

            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.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • MiriamEllis
              MiriamEllis Subject Expert last edited by Jun 13, 2018, 4:45 PM Jun 13, 2018, 4:45 PM

              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).

              Kevin_P 1 Reply Last reply Jun 13, 2018, 11:20 PM Reply Quote 0
              • Kevin_P
                Kevin_P @NickW816 last edited by Jun 13, 2018, 9:57 AM Jun 13, 2018, 9:57 AM

                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!

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • NickW816
                  NickW816 last edited by Jun 12, 2018, 5:44 PM Jun 12, 2018, 5:43 PM

                  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.

                  Nick White
                  SEO Services KC
                  https://seo-kansas-city.com/

                  Kevin_P 1 Reply Last reply Jun 13, 2018, 9:57 AM Reply Quote 2
                  • 1 / 1
                  1 out of 8
                  • First post
                    1/8
                    Last post

                  Got a burning SEO question?

                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                  Start my free trial


                  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.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • SMCCoachHire

                    More pages on website better for SEO?

                    Hi all, Is creating more pages better for SEO? Of course the pages being valuable content. Is this because you want the user to spend as much time as possible on your site. A lot of my competitors websites seem to have more pages than mine and their domain authorities are higher, for example the services we provide are all on one page and for my competitors each services as its own page. Kind Regards, Aqib

                    Local Website Optimization | Aug 8, 2021, 10:42 AM | SMCCoachHire
                    0
                  • BFMichael

                    In local SEO, how important is it to include city, state, and state abbreviation in doctitle?

                    I'm trying to balance local geographic keywords with product keywords.  I appreciate the feedback from the group! Michael

                    Local Website Optimization | Nov 13, 2017, 5:07 PM | BFMichael
                    0
                  • mkbeesto

                    Subdomain vs. Separate Domain for SEO & Google AdWords

                    We have a client who carries 4 product lines from different manufacturers under a singular domain name (www.companyname.com), and last fall, one of their manufacturers indicated that they needed to move to separate out one of those product lines from the rest, so we redesigned and relaunched as two separate sites - www.companyname.com and www.companynameseparateproduct.com (a newly-purchased domain). Since that time, their manufacturer has reneged their requirement to separate the product lines, but the client has been running both sites separately since they launched at the beginning of December 2016. Since that time, they have cannibalized their content strategy (effective February 2017) and hacked apart their PPC budget from both sites (effective April 2017), and are upset that their organic and paid traffic has correspondingly dropped from the original domain, and that the new domain hasn't continued to grow at the rate they would like it to (we did warn them, and they made the decision to move forward with the changes anyway). This past week, they decided to hire an in-house marketing manager, who is insisting that we move the newer domain (www.companynameseparateproduct.com) to become a subdomain on their original site (separateproduct.companyname.com). Our team has argued that making this change back 6 months into the life of the new site will hurt their SEO (especially if we have to 301 redirect all of the old content back again, without any new content regularly being added), which was corroborated with this article. We'd also have to kill the separate AdWords account and quality score associated with the ads in that account to move them back. We're currently looking for any extra insight or literature that we might be able to find that helps explain this to the client better - even if it is a little technical. (We're also open to finding out if this method of thinking is incorrect if things have changed!)

                    Local Website Optimization | May 20, 2017, 10:43 AM | mkbeesto
                    0
                  • Treefrog_SEO

                    Can PPC harm SEO results, even if it's off-domain?

                    Here's the scenario. We're doing SEO for a national franchise business. We have over 60 location pages on the same domain, that we control. Another agency is doing PPC for the same business, except they're leading people to un-indexable landing pages off domain. Apparently they're also using location extensions for the businesses that have been set up improperly, at least according to the Account Strategists at Google that we work with. We're having a real issue with these businesses ranking in the multi-point markets (where they have multiple locations in a city). See, the client wants all their location landing pages to rank organically for geolocated service queries in those cities (we'll say the query is "fridge repair"). We're trying to tell them that the PPC is having a negative effect on our SEO efforts, even though there shouldn't be any correlation between the two. I still think the PPC should be focused on their on-domain location landing pages (and so does our Google rep), because it shows consistency of brand, etc. I'm getting a lot of pushback from the client and the other agency, of course. They say it shouldn't matter. Has anyone here run into this? Any ammo to offer up to convince the client that having us work at "cross-purposes" is a bad idea? Thanks so much for any advice!

                    Local Website Optimization | Nov 16, 2015, 7:25 PM | Treefrog_SEO
                    0
                  • NAHL-1430

                    Local SEO for National Brands

                    Hi all, When it comes to local SEO in 2015, I appreciate that having a physical location in the town/city you wish to rank is a major factor. However, if you're a national brand is it still possible to rank for local searches when you're based in one location? The reason I ask is that, although our service is national, the nature of what we offer means that it is not inconceivable that people would search for a local variation of our top keywords. Other than the standard things - location in the content, the H1/H2s, title tag, meta description, url etc. - is there anything national businesses can do to help? Thanks in advance. John

                    Local Website Optimization | Oct 19, 2015, 5:12 PM | NAHL-1430
                    0
                  • ChaseMG

                    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 | Jan 15, 2015, 5:25 PM | ChaseMG
                    0
                  • Red_Spot_Interactive

                    Subdomain versus Subfolder for Local SEO

                    Hello Moz World, I'm wanting to know the best practices for utilizing a subdomain versus a subfolder for multi location businesses, i.e. miami.example.com vs. example.com/miami; I would think that that utilizing the subdomain would make more sense for a national organization with many differing locations, while a subfolder would make more sense for a smaller more nearby locations. I wanted to know if anyone has any a/b examples or when it should go one way or another? Thank you, Kristin Miller

                    Local Website Optimization | Feb 12, 2015, 1:03 PM | Red_Spot_Interactive
                    0
                  • DanielBernhardt

                    Does the Location of my Server effect my SEO?

                    Does the geographic Location of my Server effect my SEO? HELP US! We are arguing for 3 weeks already. My partner has mentioned multiple times in the past that  "since 2013 google does not require your server to be in the country you are targeting for seo"
                    And that actually all they care about is if its a good and fast server - not where its physically located in the world. I am a strong believer that the geographic location of your server directly effects your SEO ranking... lets say if you want to target www.google.ru for your seo, best you have a server located in Russia for hosting your website.. WHO IS RIGHT? Choose the winner and base the facts.
                    If anybody has the correct answer and information to base it on it will help us alot - and maybe even spare some unnecessary violent between us two! we found some articles across the web, sadly they are all dated back to 2012.... Thanks in Advance for all the help guys!

                    Local Website Optimization | Jul 18, 2014, 6:01 AM | DanielBernhardt
                    0

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.