Can SEOMOZ do Local SEO ?

[CertifiedSEO]

Most of our clients are local but we can not get local or regional (for example VA State or Washington DC) SERP results within SEOMOZ. it would be nice to create custom search profiles based on region (State or County) and track SERP within SEOMOZ.  Ranking reports and even keyword difficulty analysis etc. within SEOMOZ are misleading for local web sites.

SEOMOZ default site setup assumes every business doing SEO serves all over the US. I think it will be very beneficial if we have a choice to select State or County of local web sites during initial campaing set up at SEOMOZ.

what do you think? do you know any work around of this problem?

Thanks,
Lewis

[Gyorgy]

Hi Lewis,

Tracking correct local search results requires proxies in every state and city which is a significant cost. Basically they need a proxy server in every city because Google identifies local searches on city and suburb level too. Having computers all over the US running keywords ranking reports is simply too expensive.

If they had proxies in every state, then which city should be targeted? For example: California. LA or San Francisco ?

[MatthewEgan]

I pull my local rankings locally.  Or rather, our interns do.

[EnhancedPath]

While I understand Gyorgys point, for what it's worth Google does allow you to change your location to see the results from other areas (see Change location link on left side). If in a new style of Campaign (Local Campaign) was made available, that paired that "Change location" functionality with: ( using Local Ranking Factors as a reference + Moz's own research)

• Ranking - Showing map and what position/pin you have for various local searches at that location
• Places Page Factors - Showing Errors/Warnings/Notices for the various Places page optimizations that can be done to a site
• On-Site Factors - Showing Errors/Warnings/Notices for the various on-site Local optimizations that can be done to a site
• Off-Site Factors - Showing Errors/Warnings/Notices for the various off-site Local optimizations that can be done to a site

Would it be a perfect solution?, perhaps not, but that would be a pretty powerful tool to have, and a very welcome addition to the Pro tool set here.

I have faith in Rand and the Moz Staff... something tells me they have been working on something like this for a while now Brian

[CertifiedSEO]

What can I say Matt.. grow up and read my question again and answer if you can...

[CertifiedSEO]

Thanks Gyorgy.  I agree the cost will be too high to do this.  I think we have to continue to use  FF toolbar and create custom local search profiles and track the resulst manually so far.  http://www.seomoz.org/blog/big-update-to-the-seomoz-toolbar-for-firefox

I heard AuthorityLabs is working on it (not 100% sure about it though)

[CertifiedSEO]

Thanks Brian, very good input.

[MatthewEgan]

Excuse me?  All I said was I have our interns pull the rankings manually, not have them pulled by an automated tool.

How does that imply I need to grow up?  You pull them manually in order to give the most accurate, non-national, non-personalized results.

I even agree with your post that things like SEOmoz' Keyword Difficulty tool is biased towards national brands as sometimes you're going to get geo-specific results that are augmented by Google Places and as it stands the current national rank checker isn't capable of capturing that data or adding in that zip code or city variable that pulls data to a specific set.

Not sure where your hostility is coming from at all.

[Gyorgy]

Yes, Google allows you to change location but it seems like the search results are still different, probably because Google uses your IP address as a variable.

I use a VPN provider which has 50+ servers around the world and use their VPN servers as proxies.