Learn how your website ranks from different locations.

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Are you curious to see how you rank when someone searches from their mobile device from a different city/town?

You might be top of the tops for your location, but you might be down the page from another

Google Local SEO has a massive impact on search results today.

Ahrefs probably has the most comprehensive Local SEO guide if you want to read in more detail.

Local SEO

The thing is that if you want to optimize for Relevance, Distance, and Prominence.

We all know that Google is trying to do is provide the more accurate search results to the searcher if the fastest time possible. This is especially true for serviced based companies. Google wants to be able to give the best and closest option to you in your search results

You might rank well as a website for the keyword, but if Google is providing location dependent results then you might only appear in search results where your office is

The Tool

Test search from different location using the tool isearchfrom.

  

Using the Tool

Using this tool you can imitate a location. Say you want to compare, Vancouver with North Vancouver. Or Burnaby with Abbotsford.

http://isearchfrom.com/

1. pick your country
2. choose your device
3. type your keyword
4. enter your city

Eh Voila. I have now searched from Abbotsford for my keyword

Why this is important?

Companies with multi location operations, they need to have exposure in all areas where they conduct business. Especially if the service spans a 20Km radius.  

Franchise operators will need this tuned in for the same reasons.

For instance, a service area that you are not located in physically, your main tool for optimization is content. You should simply write a lot about that area. We found that often, this leads to forced pages that have little to do with the business at hand. It’s clear that these pages are only added for SEO reasons.

Examples

WestSide Pest control have their HQ in downtown Vancouver, but they have built multiple landing pages that are area-specific with locations built into the URL

Advice for businesses with multiple locations

If your business operates more than one physical location, it’s essential to create a unique page for each one. Including a unique page for each location helps your customers (and Google) avoid conflating contact information between them. It’s also the best way to expand your local ranking potential to multiple cities.

If you operate a handful of locations, link to the contact page for each one from the footer of each page of your website.  If you operate more than a handful, link to a store locator page from your primary navigation or other utility menu.

 

If you want to target a specific area, what can do you combat this?

1.     Adwords is one method, by targeting those areas.

2.     Creating a landing page with geo located information – example above. They created a URLs with their specific service areas etc

3.     You could open up a virtual office in the location you want to do business.

And finally another great resource from Search Engine Land on how to dominate local SEO

Hope you enjoyed it

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