Use National keyword ranking or Local?

[btreloar]

I have a few clients who only serve in-state customers. Am I better off checking rankings Nationally with geo-modifiers in the keywords (Plumber  NI) or set my keywords up as Local for NJ without geo-modifiers (Plumber)?

I've been doing the former, but am wondering If I've set it up sub-optimally.

[7thPowerInc]

If you are using the Rankings for Tracked Keywords report keep in mind that Yahoo and Bing statistics will only show for NATIONAL. Google and Google-Mobile will show national and local.

[btreloar]

Thanks, 7thPowerInc.  To show Yahoo and Bing results I'd need to set up both National AND Local keywords? I ask because I'm perilously close to my total keyword allotment.

[OddDog]

If this is for a Plumbing company, their customers are coming from the local area and they should prioritize these results.  There will also be a large number of customers who search for "plumber near me" or non geo-modified keywords that you still want to be measuring.

I would recommend setting them up in the latter fashion: Local for NJ without geo-modifiers (Plumber).

[MiriamEllis]

Good discussion going on here, for sure, about a very classic question!

If the customers of a business are local, you want local keyword volume. But it's historically been very hard to get that. Have you heard that this is a groundbreaking new feature of Moz's Local Market Analytics? It sounds like it might be just what your clients with this model need to do really insightful keyword research. And, it's a feature that just hasn't existed since I started in local SEO some 15 years ago.  We're treading some new ground.

You can learn more about Local Market Analytics here: https://moz.com/local-market-analytics-announcement and please let me know if you have any further questions about this.

[btreloar]

Thanks, Adam. I've been tracking traffic for Google, Yahoo & Bing, however Yahoo & Bing is pretty insignificant compared to Google traffic. But for a client like this, national rankings for non-Geo keyword phrases is very likely to be zero.

Would you suggest abandoning Yahoo & Bing traffic reporting? Or trying to have it both ways (which entails adding more keywordsa and running up against my limit)?

[btreloar]

Thanks, Miriam. I'll look at your linked article.

I've been doing on-page optimization for state and sometimes counties and sometimes focused towns. So typically I've been tracking rankings for state-modified keywords and perhaps one of the counties and/or one of the towns believing them to be representative of all optimized counties or towns.

Should I abandon those tracked geo-modified keywords and replace them with their non-geo equivalents? That would cut significantly back on the number of tracked keywords, giving me more breathing room between the total number of keywords I'm tracking and my limit under my Moz plan. But I fear losing the historical rankings for the keywords I eliminate.

[7thPowerInc]

Bill,

We set all our keywords for both. When we approach limits then we trim out any underperformers.

Take care,

Dave

[btreloar]

Miriam, unless I misread it, the article you linked is mostly for keyword analysis and selection. I'm comfortable with  work in that regard; I'm just weighing the change for tracking visibility; whether to replace geo-modified national tracking with non-geo-modified local tracking.

If I do that, will historical visibility and the rankings bar graph continue to display or will everything reset to the date I make that change?

[ChiarynMiranda]

Hey Bill,

In terms of Moz Pro, we consider the keywords to be a set of search term+locale. If you decide to target localized keywords, you would have to either add new location based keywords in addition to the national, which would retain national history and add new localized data on top of the national data going forward, or you would need to delete the national keywords and add the search terms as location based terms, which would change the dataset going forward. We don't delete you history from prior to deleting the keywords, but you would have to set the timeframe in your Rankings section to prior to the deletion to see the historical data and you wouldn't be able to see the newly added localized keyword data at the same time.  There wouldn't be a 1:1 comparison between the keywords that were tracked nationally vs. the keywords tracked locally.

It is also important to note that Moz Pro does not currently include localized search volume and that is only available for keywords tracked as national. Local volume is currently only available in the Local Market Analytics tool that Miriam mentioned.

[btreloar]

Thanks, Chiaryn —  I'm considering deleting my geo-based national keywords and adding non-geo local ones. Do I understand correctly that I will be able to view historical visibility and ranking for the old keywords and new visibility and ranking starting with when the new keyword phrases are added – but not both at the same time?

Thanks!
Bill