Local ranking (keyword) strategies

[thenikster]

Hello SEOmozers,

I've been working on improving all components of my SEO skills for the past 6 months. I have definitely had some great victories and some gray defeats.

My newest challenge is local ranking for a home improvement company. My target is to rank them locally with Google within the top 7 results. I have managed to do so, but only for one keyword "windows and doors CITY". My campaign, in terms of anchor text has a wide variety of long and shortail keywords, I have not concentrated on the above keyword.

My question is, how do I go about to rank this website in the local results for all other keywords "windows CITY", "window replacement CITY", etc...

What I don't understand is how Google picks up which keywords to rank the website locally for, and which ones to ignore.

Any information will be well received.

Cheers,

Nikster

[neuralcorp]

Nikola,

I just posted the exact same question within 60 min of you.

Ping me in you get some ideas.. results etc...

[Marcus_Miller]

First thing you want to do here is do some research.

1. Keyword Research - find the keywords you are interested in (obviously)

2. Do these keywords generate local results blended in with the main results?

3. If so - research the current ranking sites.

• How are they categorised
• what citations do they have?
• what do the citations look like?
• How is the actual site optimised for these terms?
• What is their organic ranking for these terms?
• What is their backlink profile look like?

A good way to dig into the competitors is to simply google their name, postcode and then remove their site from the results. This will get you started:

"Competitor" AND "Post Code" -site:http://www.competitor.co.uk

4. Think reviews - get reviews on your Google listing and also on any other relevant sites (looking at the local listings you should see external review sources mentioned if there are any worth considering).

--

Ultimately, you are going to want to do some local SEO - citations, local backlinks etc but you first want to make sure you have all the basics in place and the site and google maps listings are all correctly categorised. Then, get busy on those citations and get creative - anything can be a citation so think

• Press releases
• Q&A Sites
• Videos and Image descriptions
• Social profiles
• forum profiles & sigs
• Guest post bios
• article bios

Obviously, go after the directories where you can get listed. Look for any local directories or sites for citations and for industry specific directories.

Also, make sure you get the basics right. Get the name, address and postcode on every page of the site and make sure it is consistent with the Google listings. If you already have some citations, audit them and make sure everything is consistent there as well.

That should be enough to but in a nutshell dig in, research, find out what the successful people are doing and do more of it.

Hope that helps!
Marcus

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Nikster,

Marcus has given a terrific reply. I'll add just one tip. I think 51 Blocks' competitive analysis tool offers great insight into why different businesses might be surpassing your own for various queries. The tool is free and I recommend you give it a whirl:

http://www.51blocks.com/online-marketing-tools/free-local-analysis/

[Marcus_Miller]

Cool, never came across that tool, will give it a whirl.

[thenikster]

Thank you for your answers and advices.

@Miriam, very nice tool, I tested it yesterday.

My problem is not with keyword research or citations format or placement. I just want to figure out how Google chooses which of my keywords to associate with my local rankings. For instance, I can rank locally for "roofing replacement Toronto" but not for "roofing Toronto". My keyword building campaign has concentrate on both keywords (plus others) equally. However, one is nowhere to be found on local search :).

What do you guys think about social shares, likes, pluses etc...do those play any role in local rankings?

Thanks again.

[MiriamEllis]

Great! I think you'll like it!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Nikola,

The reason I'm suggesting the above tool is that I think you need to research competitors who are managing to rank for both keywords to discover if they are doing something different or better than your business is. The answer to your question may lie in this research.

If Google is providing local results for both keyword phrases and you are appearing in one and not the other, there is some reason why Google is considering your company as a relevant result for one query but not the other. This isn't something that can be diagnosed without research into your unique company and your unique competitors. Perhaps a competitor has a better optimized website, more links, different types of citations, more frequent/fresher relevant content, more reviews, an older domain than you. There is a lot to explore. Thus, my recommendation of competitive analysis.

Regarding social media, yes, this likely plays some role in your local rankings, but the extent of that role is unknown. Clearly, Google is moving more and more towards social factors (think Google+) but the weight of these factors is not really clear.