Does anyone have stats or know where I can find stats on searchers who use geolocated queries versus geomodified?
-
My client is a franchise business and they want their location landing pages to rank for every one of their 60 plus locations nationwide. They are performing extremely well for geomodified terms. The argument is that people rarely ever search using the city name. Are there stats to back up whether this claim is true, and if so, do you know where I can get a hold of such data (outside of searching in Keyword Planner... unless that's the answer!)
-
Hey Kevin,
Mike & Phil would be good guys to reach out to, for sure. I'm glad if my reply was somewhat helpful and I'd love to see more recent data on this. Good luck with your client!
-
Kevin, Thanks for this, I did call Stat and spoke to them. They are more of an enterprise SEO solution and were not able to speak to the search data that I'm looking for here particularly. But I appreciate the comment and the lead!
Miriam, thanks once again for your thorough response, and for the links you shared. I think this is ultimately a very important study for local marketers, seeing as geolocated terms are a completely different play. Our solution was to build article/informative content for the query in question, and then use the Google Geolocation API on the website to guide the user to their nearest location. That way, we rank for people who are searching for the general geolocated query (we'll say "plumbing repair" to run with your example) and in most cases, the second organic result is the franchise location page for that city.
We're trying to convince the client of the value in ranking #1 with the article content page—but they're not convinced. They want the location page as the first result for geolocated queries in every city. Then of course, they want multiple results for cities where they have multiple locations, which is another story.
I'm going to reach out to Phil Rozek and Mike Blumenthal about a recent study regarding geolocated versus geomodified search data for local businesses, because I think it raises an important distinction. I personally always geomodify my queries—I don't leave the work to Google. I find I get better results. But I don't know if I'm in the minority, or not. As I say, my client is #1 for every city when the geomodifier is added to the keyword. It would be great to have data to back up the importance of having that real estate.Thanks again for your great feedback!
-
Hey Kevin,
I don't find that Keyword Planner is terribly helpful with local terms. Now, obviously, if your clients are hotels or other distance-type businesses like that, people are going to be using a ton of geomodifiers because they are located in one city but then looking for lodgings in another, but if the industry is plumbing, or something like that, likely you'd see less use of city names, in queries, particularly on mobile devices.
Your question has made me go searching around for any recent statistics on use of geomodifiers and what I'm coming up with is pretty old:
marketing-blog.catalystemarketing.com/google-places-seo-geo-modifiers.html
http://www.ngsmarketing.com/the-two-types-of-local-search-and-how-local-seo-should-reflect-them/
If anyone in the community has done or knows of a more recent study, please do link to it.
A very good indication that users use geomodifiers in looking up all kinds of local businesses can be seen in the 'related search' results at the bottom of Google's SERPs. For example, If I just look up 'plumbers', the related search results are returning me 8 suggested terms 3 of which contain city names. So, that would be something to look into for your client
Sorry not to be able to turn up any really recent data on this. It would certainly be good if someone would do a new study!
-
I talked to GetStat at MozCon this year and believe that they can help you out on this. No guarantees though. Good luck!
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 Site stuck on page 2 for years. Can’t penetrate page 1! Help!
Hey there Moz community! This is the first time I've ever asked a question here so please forgive if I slip up on any etiquette. I manage a website for a small Orlando Florida family law and divorce law firm who are targeting search phrases that include those "Orlando divorce attorney" variants. The site is located at https://www.affordablefamilylawyer.com/ If you run a search for "Orlando divorce attorney" along with close variant search terms our law firm website for about the past two years has hovered at the top of the second page of google but has never actually penetrated page 1. When you examine metrics such as page authority, domain authority, trust, and other traditional metrics it tells you that our site should be on page 1 but alas it's not happening. We have, however been featured quite often in the three pack for the local listings for the target search terms. Though valuable, our goal has always been to be featured in the top three of the organic search results. To add to the confusion we have a practice area page located at https://www.affordablefamilylawyer.com/orlando-divorce-lawyer/ dedicated to divorce and expected that page to rank for these divorce attorney search terms but it will not rank for the search terms and instead our homepage ranks for them every single time regardless of how we swap around the optimization on the page. Never had any manual actions. any help you guys can offer is greatly appreciated and I really appreciate your time!
Local SEO | | Seanthewood1230 -
Free Local Search Marketing Tools You're Using These Days?
Hello to our wonderful community here! I'm updating an old list of free tools to use in a local search marketing campaign. The original list was created before there were quite so many paid tools in our industry, and it definitely needs an update! I'd like to ask, are there free tools you find yourself using these days in marketing local businesses? These could be related to any aspect of your campaigns. I'd love it if you'd share your favorites with me, especially if they are things you feel others might not be aware of but which are working really well for you! Thanks for any suggestions you can provide.
Local SEO | | MiriamEllis1 -
How Can i improve Domain "Moz rank and Domain moz trust".
Good Evening , I have few quick questions for you . Please find the attachment . 1.) How can i improve Moz rank and domain Moz trust ? 2.) if you see the numbers , Mine is 0 external links and 0 followed root links domains , How can i work on it to improvise my stats ? 3.) Mine domain is dental clinic ( dentalxyz.net ) , there are other dentalxyz.com and dentalxyz.ca . When i type my my domain name it's shows irrelevant information like other location office. In addition , my youtube channel and facebook name is also different , It's not showing on google search. 4.) I'm trying to upgrade my old nice to new niche. how can i use this moz keyword tool? Where can i use that keywords. 5.) Has anybody tried buying back links from blackhatworld ? Fkmu4am
Local SEO | | hemantt0 -
Please tell me why we can't outrank a competitor with such poor metrics
Hi ! New here I'm trying to help a customer rank in the 1st page on a low-mid competition term in a specific city. I did a comparison of both URL in MOZ "Compare link Metrics" & we beat them on 85% of the metrics. They are on the 1st page, often top-3, the closest position we can get is about 13-15. The only higher metric they have is Domain MozRank & MozTrust + equity passing link (??) We are running WordPress with Genesis, they are running a custom site. See attached printscreen of the report. Help ! b60HidT
Local SEO | | JohnF80 -
Is using emoji's in meta descriptions a good or bad idea ? - I haven't seen it used much hence my query
Hello Mozzers, We need to redo some of our meta descriptions as our CTR's are not to good. I've noticed one of my competitors using emoji's which I personally think looks pretty good. They are using the Phone icon and ticks - as calls to action etc However, I can't see hardly anyone else using them on general serps ...so I am wondering , is it a bad idea ? thanks Pete
Local SEO | | PeteC120 -
.ca for Canada-specific business currently using .com?
I work for a Canadian company and we are re-doing our website (corporate and branch sites) and the question has come up if we should change our current main domain from .com to .ca for local SEO benefits since we don't target an international audience. We own both versions but the .ca re-directs to the .com and we use .com in all our marketing materials. My understanding is that we can specify in Google Webmaster Tools that the focus of the site is Canada and I feel that switching to the .ca as the main domain isn't necessary, but I was wondering if there are real SEO benefits to make us seriously consider the change? Thanks, Taira
Local SEO | | ArborMemorial0 -
How Can I Outlink Web Designer Link Building from Their Clients' Footer
_I used open site explorer to view the backlinks for a competitor of an agency I work with. They have ten times as many links, if not more, than we do, and I noticed there were only a few more domains linking back to them. As I dug deeper I noticed these links were coming from the footer tag they put on their clients' sites like "Site Designed by __." If a site had 20 pages, they had 20 links back...weird and annoying that it counts. They have more clients for web design than we do, so their bulk linking could continue to outrank us. Any suggestions on how we can outrank them locally? We are in the midst of redesigning our entire site to build out more pages and have much better internal linking. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks everyone!
Local SEO | | Michael4g0 -
Is there a tool out there that can help me determine how people in a particular area search for things?
I'm attempting to create geo-specific landing pages for a client. For example if I'm targeting southern Milwaukee very specifically I'd have to target Oak Creek, South Milwaukee, Bay View, etc. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to create landing pages for every one of those. Is there a tool to help with this issue? The tool I use right now is this http://www.5minutesite.com/local_keywords.php I like it for getting the names of every city/village/town in the area. However, it doesn't answer the nagging question ... how do people search for services in those areas?
Local SEO | | tunatraffic1