Local Competition Analysis

[waynekolenchuk]

Hi Mozzers,

I've been mainly B2B focused, and am used to estimating the amount of work necessary to best competition for organic results, but now I have a local client.

I need a method to estimate the amount of work necessary to get listed in the one-box for my chosen queries.

Can someone point me in the right direction? Any help appreciated.

[OlegKorneitchouk]

Process is fairly similar... search for your target keywords and do competitor research (check their backlinks and on page optimization). This will let you know how difficult it may be to rank for a specific keyword.

In general, local business rankings can be greatly improved with proper on-page optimization, places page optimization and being submitted to all the major business directories (check out yext.com and getlisted.org)

Best of luck!
Oleg

[KeriMorgret]

Hi Wayne,

I'm going through older questions and just ran across this one. I'm not sure that it's even called the one box anymore. I'm going to ask Miriam to jump in here with some tips and links for you that'll help you with what's current in local.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Wayne, There are some good tools out there for what you want to do, but I need to let you know that getting a one box result is not generally a Local SEO goal. Google seldom displays a single result for common queries. In general, what you want is to go for the highest ranking in the local results (the grey pinned results) whether Google is displaying 2, 3 or 7 results for a given query. My favorite local search competitive analysis tool is from 51 Blocks, and it's free: http://www.51blocks.com/online-marketing-tools/free-local-analysis/ It's really nice. You may also want to check out the suite of tools offered by Whitespark.ca, especially when it comes to the art of citation building for local businesses. So, the job here is to set common goals (a high local ranking) for specific terms and then create a plan that will typically incorporate a mix of on-page work and off-page citation creation, review acquisition and other factors. Hope this helps!