Local Rank riddle

[Sundance_Kidd]

Here is a very odd scenario which to me makes very little sense.  How can a site rank on Page #1 of Google for let's say "Boston party planner" yet on Page#2 for "party planner Boston"??

Would love some insight on this one.

thanks,

Chris

[AndrewAtMGXCopy]

That is very odd, especially how far that jumps. I have a few hypothesis for you:

1. I've noticed that local business keywords that I'm interested in tend to shuffle a lot (and I doubt local businesses do that much SEO to make the rankings different). I haven't come across any literature explaining why that is.
2. Exact match keywords in (a) your on-page SEO or (b) your anchor text, (c) your competitor's on-page SEO, (d) your competitor's anchor text. If your competitors are outdoing you for that exact match keywords, they would beat you. Each exact phrase is its own competition.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Christian,

Are you talking about local pack rankings or organic rankings for these two terms?

[Sundance_Kidd]

organic, thanks.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Christian,

Thanks for the clarification. Without actually being able to review the specific site, my bet would be that you're dealing with a basic issue of keyword prominence. How your website is optimized and how links/citations pointing to it reference the business is likely the cause of what you're experiencing. Google feels your business is more relevant to 'city + service' than to 'service + city' because of how the business is being presented and referenced. You might want to go through the website and evaluate how things like your title tags and internal linking are optimized, as well as looking at the anchor text of inbound links pointing to the website. Chances are, this has something to do with it, and it's not at all uncommon for a business to rank differently for different variations of their keywords. Hope this helps!

[Sundance_Kidd]

very helpful. Thank you very much!

Christian

[MiriamEllis]

So glad to help, Christian!