Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Peter,

But still no local aspect to the rank tracking?

I was hoping that with having David Mihm on-board, the Rank Tracker would also allow for Local Rank Tracker?

Any idea when this feature would be implemented?

Just checking...

Cheers

Greg

Hi Tim,

You could use Whitespark's in the meantime even though it is a bit pricey...

https://www.whitespark.ca/rank-tracker

Hi Darlene,

I found your question rather interesting as I have also been looking into the entire Local SEO thing recently.

I opted to go for localised pages on the main site though:

http://www.jhbathrooms.com/showroom/stockton-on-tees

Couldn’t you rather use your microsites for back-linking purposes in an attempt to boost your main site’s DA (and pages PR)?  You could probably get away with more aggressive linking techniques towards these microsites without putting your main site at risk?  Or am I wrong in assuming this? I would love to see other people’s opinion on this…
I am rather an SEO newbie, only being back into SEO for about 6 months after a very long absence. Used to do SEO back in 2000-2001; remember Alta Vista and Webposition Gold anyone?

Cheers

Greg

Hi Elissa,

Just checking... the competitors that are outranking you, might they have a local presence in the area your searches relate to?

If there is a local element to the products/services you are promoting then there is a plethora of reasons why a competitor could outrank you...

And, with most search now being "local" this could very well be an argument.

David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors (2012), that aggregates data from several experts within the industry, only ranks "Quality/Authority of inbound links to Domain" in 14th position.

Hope this helps a little?

Hi Blaine, Dana,

Good remark Dana.  These competitors that are further away from the Centroid are the interesting ones to study since they probably have done something very well in order to overcome the bias... number of reviews (keywords in reviews?), great citations, incoming geographic anchor text, etc.

Hi Blaine,

Can you please explain what you mean by "how far in distance local intent reaches"?

In the case of Google, your browser (desktop) will by default detect your location and then return results based on this. So if it detects that you are based in for example "Burnley" it will return pages and "places" (Local Pack) that are relevant as to your search (keyword) and location. There indeed is a Centroid Bias whereby Google will privilege organisations with a physical address closer to what Google Maps considers the centre of the location (town/city) your search originates from... Is this what you were referring to?

You probably knew all this already and I just stated the obvious... which then in turn means I probably didn't understand the question

Cheers

Greg

Hi Paul,

Just looked at some old Q&A of mine...

Whitespark.ca now offer a Local Rank Tracker
https://www.whitespark.ca/rank-tracker

A bit pricey but does the job.

Cheers

Greg

Hi John,

I can tell you have actually already done quite a lot in order to make sure your site ranks well.

I won't repeat what others have stated before me, but just wanted to mention a couple of things that might help a little... and as we know, every little helps

• Use a structured format for your address Schema.org, or other microformat.
• Structure your URLs in such a way that the location is mentioned within the URL (make it easy for Google to crawl and for your customers to navigate). You might have to rethink the site architecture a little.
• Create content that is optimised both for keyword and location (separate pages for every combination) > Local Landing Pages!
• The above will also allow you to have optimised Title and Description tags.
• Try to obtain Reviews that actually mention the keyword of the service your are trying to rank higher for.

Hope any of the above helps?

Cheers

Greg

Hi Brett,

To be honest I think I learned most by really taking the time to read through David Mihm's "Local Search Ranking Factors" for 2011 and 2012.
This information compiles the industry's expertise, resulting in quite a good hypothesis as to what one should do in order to rank with guidelines as to your website, Google+ Local page (even though introduced after the 2012 survey), citations, link-building, etc.

Lock yourself away for an hour or two... an open plan office is not ideal to chew through all the info

http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml

http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors-2011.shtml

Hope this helps?

Cheers

Greg

Hi Paul,

Many thanks for your feedback.  This confirms what I thought...

Proxies are obviously a simple but not easily scalable solution for whomever would want to create such a Rankings Report tool.

Looking forward to seeing somebody come up with a solution to this.

Cheers

Greg

Hi Megan,

Many thanks for your feedback.

Hmmm, can you please confirm that this would equate to having your browser (Google UK) set to this specific location?  I have trouble believing that just adding the name of the city would generate similar results to actually doing a mobile search while in that specific city?

Again, many thanks in advance for your feedback...

Cheers

Greg

Hi,

Just a quick question.

I am looking for a Rankings Report tool that allows a user to not only provide a list of Keywords, but also a list of Locations for which to check Google UK's ranking results.

In practice, I would like to be able to enter 6 names of Towns next to my keyword list and get "localised results".

Many thanks in advance,

Cheers

Greg
PS: first Q within the Q&A, so please apologise for any potential "stupid questions"