SEOmoz Keyword Ranking - Does it work for local search?

[Czubmeister]

I was just wondering how SEOmoz calculates keyword rankings up and down every week.

Shouldn't there be a way to have SEOmoz calculate rankings on a Local and Non-Local Basis?

For example I have "Local Dentist" as a keyword in SEOmo for my dental client. SEOmoz shows that we are not in the Top 50.

| Local dentist | Not in Top 50 | | Not in Top 50 | | Not in Top 5 |

If I change my location in Google browser to the zip of where the office is located, we
show up in position 14(for the home page) & 15 (for an inside page)

How can I show the keyword rankings to my client if the keyword ranking report doesn't reflect searches done in my clients local area?

[BrianJGomez]

If you use keywords with a Geo identifier (for example: "San Diego Local Dentist") you'll see a little map icon (like the google places map pin) for all your local maps SERPs. Currently from what I've seen, there's no way for the Keyword Ranking Tool to know if you're a local brick and mortar business without some sort of geo identifier in your keyword. Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong.

[kenneth_martin]

Hey Bob,

bjomer13 pretty much nailed it but let me provide some more clarification.

We do need a "Geo Identifier" or specific location in order to provide local results. This is because we are unable to determine where a user will be submitting there search from. For example, I'm in Seattle and if I search for the keyword "pizza" and someone in New York performs that very same search we will both get very different Google Places results. This is because Google is capable of determining the general location that the person is searching from based on their IP address. If we were both perform a search for "Seattle Pizza" though we would get pretty much the same Google Places results for pizza places in the Seattle area. These results will be quite similar to the results I would get if I just searched for "pizza" because Google knows that I am in Seattle.

For rankings you will be provided with a number that the keyword ranks for if it is in the top 50 organic search results and you will have an icon if universal (Google Places) results appear in the SERP for that keyword. If your site is in the local results then you will have tick marks on top of the universal results icon indicating you are indeed in those results.

To learn more about rankings check out our help documentation here:

http://www.seomoz.org/help/rankings

Hope that helps!

Kenny