You may be ranking well in one area although in another area in the world this may not apply. This is a common problem for sites. This is a short guide on how to diagnose these issues and use the right strategy to get higher up the ranks.
Confirm rankings which are accurate:
Google will automatically get your location when searching and you cannot specify a certain location so this means you will have to try the following tactics on how to search in a specific location.
- Google’s AdPreview Tool – this tool allows you to specify and set particular location.
- The ampersand-near-equals parameter (&near=) – this is not totally accurate but it’s good enough to get some results. The ads don’t usually work well but the other results are close. For countries, you can use another one. You can either go directly to the country code Google, so for the UK Google.co.uk, or for New Zealand Google.co.nz, or for Canada Google.ca.
- Rank tracking with a platform for supporting location-specific rankings – some don’t have this. Searchmetrics will include it if you use the enterprise version.
Look at which sites are ranking and what features they have:
Look at who is ranking in the locations that you may not be ranked and see what factors they may have that brings them up there.
- What links do they have? They may have location specific links from websites that are in that location, local directories and local chambers of commerce.
- Are their service areas more hyperlocal? On a map, if this is the city, do they serve that specific region? You serve a broad set of locations all over the place, and maybe you don’t have a geo-specific region that you’re serving.
- Do they localize listings that might push all their data too? Those could be things like directories, Google Maps and Bing Maps, local data aggregators, TripAdvisor, Yelp, etc.
- Do they have Google maps rankings? If this website is ranking particularly well in Google maps for a certain area or region whereas you are not, that might be another signal that hyper-local intent and hyper-local ranking signals, ranking algorithm is in play there.
- Are they running local AdWords ads? AdWords are not directly connected to Google rankings although it tends to be the case that if you bid on AdWords, you tend to increase your organic click-through rate as well. Therefore, buying local ads can sometimes increase organic click-through rate as well. It can also brand people with your particular business.
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