How to compete against search terms that use geo-modifiers?
-
I should start by saying we are new to SEO.
We are introducing new “cycling tours” in new destinations and we are looking for a strategy to combat geo-modified keyword searches.
When people search for “cycling tours” they will anchor their search with a geo-modifier such as “cycling tours France” or “cycling tours Italy”.
Based in Australia we are keen to communicate to Australians searching for international cycling tours there are new Australian options that they may wish to consider.
The geo-modifiers required to find our tours (“eyre peninsula” and “carnarvon gorge”) are currently not on the cycling communities radar.
For example to find one of our new tours you need to use “cycling tours eyre peninsula” or “cycling tours carnarvon gorge”.
Currently the only solution we have found to let people know about our new tours is by word of mouth.
Is there an SEO solution?
-
Glad the reply was helpful, Chook1. You're in a tough spot and I wish there was an easier answer to give you, but know that I'm wishing you good luck in this venture. May your as-yet-unknown beautiful places for bike tours become world-class destinations in the future!
-
Thanks Miriam
You have a been a great help. You have understood our circumstances perfectly and your suggestions fall in with our general gut feelings. So there is a lot more networking ahead of us to build the awareness.
-
Hi Chook1!
From reading this thread, I'm understanding a couple of things. Please confirm that this is the scenario you are describing:
-
You offer cycling tours in parts of Australia that no one seems to be looking for.
-
You wish that when people search for something that they are looking for, like "cycling tours Italy", your pages about your tours in Australia would come up in the results.
If my understanding is correct then, in response to the above two points:
-
You have a demand problem rather than an SEO problem. Selling a product/service people aren't yet asking for (cycling tours in Carnarvon Gorge) means your initial focus has to be on creating awareness and a demand for this. It's like you've built a new invention that no one has ever heard of before. In order to turn your invention into a household word, you're likely going to have to advertise it via social media and other channels until the demand becomes real and people are actually searching for what you offer.
-
Google has no incentive to show Australian bike tours when people are looking for Italian bike tours. Anything outside of Italy would be irrelevant to the searcher, so this is not really a goal you should waste time on trying to achieve. Google Maps, mentioned in the ongoing discussion on this thread, will be of no help to you in Italy if your business and your tours are located in Australia. Google Maps is for local search marketing - not International marketing. So, rather, your best strategy is likely to be what I've described in #1 around building awareness/demand for what you offer. If you are trying to get Australians to take bike tours in little-known spots in the country, you will need to advertise in Australia. If you are trying to get travelers from other countries to come to Australia, you will have to advertise wherever those audiences congregate. As far as SEO goes, you'll likely want to try to develop relationships with whatever websites publish the most trusted info on bike tours for your target audience and see what you can do to start getting some press and links from them.
Does this help? If I've in any way misunderstood your scenario, please feel free to provide further details.
-
-
Hi Nigel
Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions the page structure you describe is something we are currently working on.
It is a pity there is not a way to recreate the traditional brochure stand that you find in a Visitors Information Centre where sometimes you discover an experience you would not have thought of asking for before walking in the door.
You mention that maps help the pages rank. Are you talking about Google Places or the general use of a Google map on a page? Currently we use Google maps to display a .KMZ file that shows the route we will be taking. Is this the same?
Thanks again
Mark
-
Hi Mark
If you are trying to get your Cycling Tours Carnarvon Gorge into SERPS for a Cycling Tours Italy search then you are barking up the wrong tree. Of course, they are going to add the place (Geo Modifier) because that is what they want.
I would have a drop-down menu which had a link
Cycling Tours South Australia>
Queensland>
Carnarvon Gorge
Tambourine Mountains
Etc...and all of the other places in Queensland where you run tours. Then build out each page fully with photos and local information.
Don't create pages with links, to links - put them in a logical menu structure otherwise the pages will be too many clicks away & people won't follow them.
You cannot do this so forget it:
“cycling tour Carnarvon Gorge” which is in Australia into the SERP when someone searches for “cycling tour Italy”
MAPS on the tour pages will help them rank.
Regards Nigel
-
Hi Joe and Nigel
I think I must be missing something.
Currently our tour to Carnarvon Gorge is near or at the top of the SERP if someone searches for “cycling tour Carnarvon Gorge”.
The problem we are trying to solve is that we are finding that no matter where a searcher is in the purchasing funnel for a “cycling tour” they seem to be adding a geo-modifier ie “cycling tour New Zealand” or “cycling tour South Australia”.
It would appear that people only search for cycling tours in locations that they have heard others have been to. As a result no one is looking for a cycling tour in Carnarvon Gorge or Australia as this location is nowhere near the usual cycling destinations.
If I understand you both correctly you are suggesting that if I am trying to get our “cycling tour” to “Carnarvon Gorge” into the SERP I should create a page about Queensland which has a link to another page about Carnarvon Gorge which then includes a link to our detailed tour page. Is this correct?
So what I do not understand is how creating the suggested page structure will help us get our “cycling tour Carnarvon Gorge” which is in Australia into the SERP when someone searches for “cycling tour Italy” which is in a completely different country. I do not think this is possible or am I missing something?
How will Google maps help with this?
As I mentioned previously currently the only solution we have found is to use word of mouth to let people know about our new tours. Am I wrong and is there an SEO solution?
Thanks
Mark
-
I would crate SEO locations pages siloed by state > location, take the effort to create unique content for each page. As Nigel Carr highlighted - images & AV will help drive traffic & engagement, Google maps have worked well for me in that past; also.
-
Thanks Nigel
Our issue is that we do not offer tours in the countries where people are looking.
Rather we are trying to open up new touring routes where both Australians and international travellers do not traditionally look. So our problem is that when people anchor their search with a geo-modifier such as "cycling tours England" we do not get a look in.
We run local tours in our home town and in this instance a local page as you describe including the geo-modifier works perfectly.
The down side of geo-modified searching stops people from finding options they had never thought of and serendipitously finding our new offerings.
Regards
Mark
-
Hi Chook1
I would set up 'City pages' or in your case 'Country Pages' which target the different places you offer cycling tours.
For example:
websiteurl/italy-cycling-tours
Then fill the page with highly detailed content and alt texted photos & maybe videos of the tours you offer in that country.
Make them local specific and you will see traffic. It works like a dream.
Simple to implement and highly effective.
Regards Nigel
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
-
Can we compete for both videos and text results?
Hi, We have a ecommerce website that performs very well for our brand pages on the text results including the reviews snippet. Our brand pages also include embedded videos. Until now we have always ranked poorly on video results. Our videos are hosted over youtube. In order to boost our video result we have recently submitted a video sitemap to help crawlers find out our videos. The result is the following : our brand pages are now only competing in the video results space. Instead of showing as a text result with our reviews snippet, it shows as a video in a carrousel widget. Within the video tab we are ranking top. We have experienced a drop in CTR since then. Moz have reported a drop on all our brand keywords for text search although the video widget shows our brand there. Is there a way to compete for both videos results and text results, making the choice to keey the review snippet widget? Is the video sitemap useful only to compete within the video space? Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mattam1 -
What to try when Google excludes your URL only from high-traffic search terms and results?
We have a high authority blog post (high PA) that used to rank for several high-traffic terms. Right now the post continues to rank high for variations of the high-traffic terms (e.g keyword + " free", keyword + " discussion") but the URL has been completed excluded from the money terms with alternative URLs of the domain ranking on positions 50+. There is no manual penalty in place or a DCMA exclusion. What are some of the things ppl would try here? Some of the things I can think of: - Remove keyword terms in article - Change the URL and do a 301 redirect - Duplicate the POST under new URL, 302 redirect from old blog post, and repoint links as much as you have control - Refresh content including timestamps - Remove potentially bad neighborhood links etc Has anyone seen the behavior above for their articles? Are there any recommendations? /PP
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ppseo800 -
Duplicate content. Competing for rank.
Scenario: An automotive dealer lists cars for sale on their website. The descriptions are very good and in depth at 1,200 words per car. However chunks of the copy are copied from car review websites and weaved into their original copy. Q1: This is flagged in copyscape - how much of an issue is this for Google? Q2: The same stock with the same copy is fed into a popular car listing website - the dealer's website and the classifieds website often rank in the top two positions (sometimes the dealer on top other times the classifieds site). Is this a good or a bad thing? Are you risking being seen as duplicating/scraping content? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bee1590 -
Is Tumblr being used as a social algorithm for Bing and Google?
Hi Y'all, Bing uses Pinterest as part of its image search by using pins of users...But what about Tumblr? Is Tubmlr still a good source for a ranking factor when pointing an image link to your blog? Our industry is pretty boring, so we would get a few clicks here and there a month, but nothing compared to Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest...but overall is Tumblr a good backlink every time a blog is posted for search algorithms?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn1240 -
Organic search traffic dropped 40% - what am I missing?
Have a client (ecommerce site with 1,000+ pages) who recently switched to OpenCart from another cart. Their organic search traffic (from Google, Yahoo, and Bing) dropped roughly 40%. Unfortunately, we weren't involved with the site before, so we can only rely on the wayback machine to compare previous to present. I've checked all the common causes of traffic drops and so far I mostly know what's probably not causing the issue. Any suggestions? Some URLs are the same and the rest 301 redirect (note that many of the pages were 404 until a couple weeks after the switch when the client implemented more 301 redirects) They've got an XML sitemap and are well-indexed. The traffic drops hit pretty much across the site, they are not specific to a few pages. The traffic drops are not specific to any one country or language. Traffic drops hit mobile, tablet, and desktop I've done a full site crawl, only 1 404 page and no other significant issues. Site crawl didn't find any pages blocked by nofollow, no index, robots.txt Canonical URLs are good Site has about 20K pages indexed They have some bad backlinks, but I don't think it's backlink-related because Google, Yahoo, and Bing have all dropped. I'm comparing on-page optimization for select pages before and after, and not finding a lot of differences. It does appear that they implemented Schema.org when they launched the new site. Page load speed is good I feel there must be a pretty basic issue here for Google, Yahoo, and Bing to all drop off, but so far I haven't found it. What am I missing?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdamThompson0 -
Using Folkd for Video Backlink
Hi Mozzers, What are your thoughts on using www.folkd.com for video SEO? We have a few company videos and would like to possibly get a backlink by either embedding one of our youtube videos on our site or self hosting the video. Are bookmarking sites like this spammy?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0 -
Can I use rel=canonical and then remove it?
Hi all! I run a ticketing site and I am considering using rel=canonical temporary. In Europe, when someone is looking for tickets for a soccer game, they look for them differently if the game is played in one city or in another city. I.e.: "liverpool arsenal tickets" - game played in the 1st leg in 2012 "arsenal liverpool tickets - game played in the 2nd leg in 2013 We have two different events, with two different unique texts but sometimes Google chooses the one in 2013 one before the closest one, especially for queries without dates or years. I don't want to remove the second game from our site - exceptionally some people can broswer our website and buy tickets with months in advance. So I am considering place a rel=canonical in the game played in 2013 poiting to the game played in a few weeks. After that, I would remove it. Would that make any sense? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jorgediaz0 -
Geo-Domain Centralization - Helps or Hurts a Long-Term Campaign?
I have a client with nearly 100 geo-specific domains (example: serviceincity.com). The content is mostly duplicate, however they weren't affected by Panda or Penguin, and most of the domains have a PR2-PR4. Doesn't mean they won't eventually (I know). My strategy is to centralize all the city domains and 301 them to their main website (example: brandname.com/locations/city/). However, their IBL profile shows at least 50% of their IBLs coming from the geo-specific domains, which makes centralizing quite a scary thing for short-term ranking. Having these domains is obviously not scalable from a social media or video SEO perspective, and we all know that in the long-term brand rules and domaining drools. Before I suggest they that they 301 these domains, I thought I'd get feedback from the community. Will all that 301 redirecting give more weight to the primary domain's visibility and sustain the ranking at a page-level, or will it send a flag to Google that the site might have been using it's own network of websites to game results? (which wasn't the case, the owner was just hyper with dominating in each city). Thanks in advance for your feedback.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stevewiideman0