A site is preforming well for 1 local term, but with a slight change to the term it dosnt rank.

[Sam-P]

Ive got a site thats currently ranking #2 in the local 7 pack listings for the search term : "garden design [city]" but is not ranking at all for "garden designer [city]" (note the "er" at the end of designer). The search traffic for these 2 terms is pretty much the same, and id like to get the site ranking for "garden designer [city]".

The only thing i can think of is thats different is that in the <title>tag for the homepage of the site we have "Garden Design [City] - .....", is there any other way i can try and up the local 7 pack ranking for my site other than changing the title tag ?</p> <p>Im thinking of running a link building campaign for the phrase "garden designer [city]", but apart from that i cant think of anything else that could help up my rankings for this, any ideas ?</p></title>

[MiriamEllis]

Hi There! This is pretty typical that Google will show different results for different search terms ... even when to our eyes the terms are so similar. Building your authority for the second term will be your best bet for being seen as a relevant answer on the 'designer' term. Changing your title tag could help, but it could also make you less relevant for the pack in which you've achieved that great #1 spot, so I wouldn't be inclined to go that route. Rather, I would do an audit of the sites that are ranking well for the 'designer' term to see what is making them strong enough to do so. I would then try to up my efforts in the areas discovered, whether this would involve tweaking SEO, publishing new content, improving social signals, earning links or what have you.

In a nutshell, I wouldn't recommend taking steps that could work against the #1 ranking you've achieved for term one, but rather, would set term two as a new, separate goal and create a plan around it that could help me earn greater visibility in this second pack.