Google Local Search

[seomn]

I have a customer who is frustrated that Google local search seems to favor businesses that are closer to the center of the city. He wants to be on the local results area on the SERP with his (keyword + city, state).

His website is optimized, Google+ is using the keywords, more reviews than his competition and his MOZ local rating is 88.. It seems the only problem is his business is on the edge of town(same zip code). Google fills the local search area with businesses that are "downtown".

Is there a way to overcome this?

[DonnaDuncan]

How are his citations, relative to the competition?

[JVRudnick]

Yes...relation to the centroid of the search area is very important still (see the 2013 Local Search Ranking Factor Survey here at moz from David Mihm) as we well know...

And yes, we've had clients with the same issue too. One way that we handled that issue was to open up a "sub-office" for the client via a hot-desk at an Incubator site located across the street from city hall - ie AT the centroid! Took awhile for the updates to resolve...but the move up the Local search results happened...and they (and us too of course) were happy with the results.

Oh - they actually 'do' use the hot-desk - it's staffed by a marketing dept person every day and they 'award' the seat to a diff person each week as a sort of 'bonus'....ie the telecommuting opportunity as a reward. Works, it does!

[seomn]

Citations are much better than most and maybe equal to a couple of others.