Ranking nationally but not locally

[TimKelsey]

Hi everyone,

I'm working with a client that has a strange situation. He's ranking for his target keyword on a national level but when searching locally, he's in the 100s (see attached).

Any idea what could be going on here? He did have an old domain that got hacked that is redirecting to his current domain.

Thanks,

Tim

lmSSXdT

[JordanLowry]

What does your clients local citations look like? When did their site get hacked?

[RyanScollon]

Hey,

Just had a quick look and my only guess is that Google is super-localising the organic rankings for people in Fresno? I don't think that is the 100% reason, but as your client is not exactly smack bang in the middle of Fresno, I think it is showing closer businesses before you. But that doesn't explain why you aren't even in the top 5 pages? Very strange!

It might be something to do with your links, as the few that you do have are what I would call over-optimised. So you might be highly authoritative for those search terms that mention the location Fresno, but I would assume all other local ranking factors are weak which would explain why you don't show. But I'm just guessing, never really seen anything like this before.

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Tim,

Your client is physically located in Clovis, so ranking in the local packs in Fresno would not be a good goal to set for him. If you take a look, your client is ranking #2 in the local pack for 'it support clovis' https://www.google.com/search?q=it+support+clovis%2C+ca&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Given that your client is about 9 miles away from Fresno, and should not expect to rank in the Fresno local packs, you have two paths to suggest to him:

1. Build organic content on the website specifically geared toward work he is doing for Fresno-based businesses. Goal here is organic rankings.

2. Invest in Adwords for Fresno traffic

Hope this helps!

[PatrickDelehanty]

Miriam does it again!

[MiriamEllis]

Haha, thank you, Patrick!