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?
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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?
-
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.
-
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).
-
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!
-
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/
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 SEO Over Optimization
We are targeting a bunch of services for our local business that works in and around their location. I'm concerned about over optimization and need some guidance on whether these points should be resolved. The company is based in a city and works mostly in the city but also in the surrounding areas. Currently, the site has 6 services pages (accessible via main nav) targeting the same location i.e. “Made Up Service London”, “Imaginary Service London” (with URLs and H1 tags etc. in place containing this location). However this is soon going to become 9 services pages, I am concerned that the repetition of this one location is starting to look spammy, especially as its where the company is based. Initially, I also wanted pages targeting the same services in other nearby areas. For example “Made Up Service Surrey”, “Imaginary Service Essex”. This has not happened as the info available has been too sporadic. I was going to add links to relevant case studies into these pages to beef up the content and add interest. To that end, we came up with case studies, but after a while, I noticed that these are also largely focused on the primary location. So out of 32 case studies, we have 19 focused on the primary location again with URL’s and H1 tags etc containing the location keyword. So in total, we have 25 pages optimized for the location (soon to be 28 and more if further case studies are added). My initial feeling was that the inclusion of pages targeting services in other locations would legitimize what we have done with the main pages. But obviously we have not got these pages in place and I question whether we ever will. What is my best course of action moving forward?
Local Website Optimization | | GrouchyKids1 -
Welsh Language Keyword Research
Helping a friend with some keyword research, their business is based in Wales. I am not a Welsh speaker, whats the best way to do Keyword Research?
Local Website Optimization | | GrouchyKids0 -
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 | | SMCCoachHire0 -
Does having an embedded Google Map still count as a positive SEO signal?
I know this was true a few years ago, however is there still an advantage to having an embedded map vs. a pop up map in 2017?
Local Website Optimization | | BigChad21 -
Should I use pipe in title tags for local seo?
Hi, I've created a bunch of landing pages for local areas, reading, windsor, slough etc for the title tag I have for Windsor Emergency Electrician Windsor - BrandName should I be using a pipe in the tag to further help search engines learn/identify the location? Emergency Electrician | Windsor - BrandName Thank you Kev
Local Website Optimization | | otex1 -
Subdomain for ticketing of a client website (how to solve SEO problems caused by the subdomain/domain relationship)
We have a client in need of a ticketing solution for their domain (let's call it www.domain.com) which is on Wordpress - as is our custom ticket solution. However, we want to have full control of the ticketing, since we manage it for them - so we do not want to build it inside their original Wordpress install. Our proposed solution is to build it on tickets.domain.com. This will exist only for selling and issuing the tickets. The question is, is there a way to do this without damaging their bounce rate and SEO scores?
Local Website Optimization | | Adam_RushHour_Marketing
Since customers will come to www.domain.com, then click the ticketing tab and land on tickets.domain.com, Google will see this as a bounce. In reality, customers will not notice the difference as we will clone the look and feel of domain.com Should we perhaps have the canonical URL of tickets.domain.com point to www.domain.com? And also, can we install Webmaster Tools for tickets.domain.com and set the preferred domain as www.domain.com? Are these possible solutions to the problem, or not - and if not, does anyone else have a viable solution? Thank you so much for the help.0 -
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 | | ChaseMG0 -
Same blog, multiple languages. Got SEO concerns.
Hi, My company runs a small blog in swedish. Most of the visitors are our customers/prospects. We will write about generic concepts regarding our business and the occasional company news story. However, I have quite a few ideas for articles that could be interesting to a lot of people, and I'm tempted to write those in english for better exposure. I would love it if that exposure could boost my companies authority. How should I go on about this? Can I somehow tell search engines that a certain part or page of the site is in another language? Should I translate our entire site to english and post the english post in a separate blog feed? Any insight is welcome. Thanks in advance!
Local Website Optimization | | Mest0