Local Targeting without the city’s name

[Web3Marketing87]

Here’s an interesting one for you guys: We show up on page 1 for “Edmonton web design,” (our website is http:web3.ca), however when you search for just “web design” in our city, we don’t seem to show up at all. I know Google is now placing a higher percentage or local companies in a search. So my question is: how can we show up better for a local search that is just “web design”? Does this just come down to domain authority & content or are there other key local factors at play?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Anton,

Because of the nature of your business (web design), you fall into a funny category in Google's handling of the SERPs. If you were a plumber or a doctor, the answer would be simple, but Google hasn't shown local results for queries like 'web design Edmonton' since 2010. Both website design and SEO firms all got knocked out of the true Local index at that point, and so, your efforts for rankings actually have to be viewed as organic, rather than local, because of this oddity.

What are you seeing when you simply search for 'web design' from an Edmonton-based device? Are you seeing organic rankings of any local companies, or are they random, national businesses. When I search for web design from my computer, I don't get any companies in my town (despite the fact that my own website design company is located there!) What I do get is big, monster design firms and entries from things like Wikipedia giving definitions of the term 'web design'. So, that leads me to view a search like 'web design' as a really broad search. I'm not doing a technical analysis of each of the top 10 listings, but whatever their authority is, Google is showing them to me, and it appears to have nothing to do with my locale.

Do this same search yourself, and I would bet you are seeing the same. If so, this means that ranking for the broad term 'web design' would be a matter of major organic SEO work (and probably not something most web design companies are even aiming for) simply because of the scope of the competition. Now, if you are seeing something different than what I'm describing, that would be worth noting, too. If Google is showing Edmonton-based companies for the broad search, that would be very interesting to me to know.

At the end of the day, regardless of what Google is displaying, everything must be viewed from an organic mindset rather than a true local one, because of Google's handling of web design firms.

Hope this helps!

[Gordon_Hall]

Hi Miriam,

you say " If you were a plumber or a doctor, the answer would be simple". How so?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Gordon, By that, I meant that standard Local procedures relate to typical business models like those. Web Design firms, however, fall into a category of their own, and Google handles them differently than they would almost any other local business model.

[Gordon_Hall]

I wasn't aware web design companies were treated differently.

I've just typed web design into google here in Manchester, UK, and the top 5 spots are taken up with Manchester based companies....

Maybe it's different in the states.

[Web3Marketing87]

From what I've been seeing, it depends how your browser is set up. For instance, if you have geotargeting turned off on your phone, you will get much broader results, however, I have seen the same local results (just like Gordan) When searching from my desktop. So that still leaves the question: how can you perform better on a local search without the city's name? That is - from a computer where google has your location set to your specific city (Edmonton in my case). We will see what effect a new website for http:web3.ca will have.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Gordon, Thanks for your reply. The results you are seeing are organic, though, not local, right? If they are actually local, that's big news. But, even if they are organic, then, yes, that is different than how I see this broad search handled where I live in the US. No local companies...just (presumably) big companies.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Web3 Marketing,

I'm finding it challenging to provide a really good answer to your reiterated question, because, to me, 'web design' just isn't a local search, because Google doesn't view it that way. If personalization is having a localizing effect on some devices, signed in/not signed in, turned on/turned off, then, yes, we can sort of say that Google is giving some local treatment of this as they would to all queries, but overall, I think this has to be viewed organically rather than locally.

That being the case, your organic SEO is likely going to boil down to a mixture of the traditional age+content+links+authority, etc. Of these, I would imagine that your content strategy would be really crucial in sending a strong message of locale, so that, in those instances where you are seeing some effect of localized personalization happening, you might gain an edge. The trouble is, are your potential clients seeing these types of SERPs or are they simply seeing the common, broad results for this broad search term?

[Gordon_Hall]

Hi Miriam,

I guess I'm simply showing my ignorance by asking the question how can I tell the difference?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Gordon,

Thanks for coming back for further clarification, and I apologize if my response was too vague to be properly understood. Let me try to explain this better.

When you do a search for something like 'pizza manchester' or you do a search just for 'pizza' from a Manchster-based device, Google will typically show you 3 types of results. One will be the traditional organic results that have been around forever. There will also be PPC AdWords results, right?

But there will be a third type of result for this specific kind of query, and that will be the true local results, which are accompanied by the grey tear-drop shaped pins with letters in them. Those are the local results, currently most typically linked to the business' Google+ Local pages. They are governed by different data and are really separate from the traditional organic results.

Google may show only one result like this on a page, or they may show 3, or 7, etc. The display has changed many times over the past half decade, but basically, the idea here is that these must be viewed as totally distinct from the other types of results on the page, as different factors govern them.

What we were discussing earlier is that, back in 2010, Google stopped showing true local results for website design and SEO firms. So, you'll get organic results for these queries, not local ones.

I hope this makes better sense.