Ranking with an address outside of town?

[whiz]

Let's say I'm targeting "dentist Town A".

A dentist in Town B sits a quarter-mile outside of the Town A border. This dentist serves the Town A area and naturally gets a lot of business from Town A.

Is it even worth trying to rank for "dentist Town A" if you have a "Town B" address?

I've generally avoided these because I don't trust Google and I would assume this dentist loses significant juice just for being outside the Town A limits.

Anyone have any insights on this?

 

[Digitaldar]

One of the biggest factors in determining map rank is the proximity of the searcher to the business. If I live in Town A but on the western edge of such and your dentist is in Town B, which is west of Town A, there is a good chance that your dentist would be visible for such searches.

You could perhaps use Google Ads or Facebook for zip code targeting and see what the performance is like and then use that data to influence your SEO a bit more?

 

[adammaxum]

This depends on the competition because you're likely only going to be able to ever rank organically (under the maps) in city A.

So organically, yes, you can try. Map wise, you'll never show up top 3.

 

[amerios]

Hi Whiz,

Question, what services does your dentist client provide ? Now, of those services, which are listed on website ? Next, GMB catorgy competitors analysis. Dig into gmb page and find out what cats. are listed for both.

On your dentist client GMB page add subcategories of all services provided and match those cats. to website.

More, does your dentist client have a GMB map of their website ?

Lastly, radius on GMB page have you checked it ?

Thanks

 

[JoyHawkins]

With dentists I'd say it's probably extremely unlikely that you can get people to rank outside their own town. The issue is that there is usually a dentist on every corner (high density) so unless there are very few dentists in town A it's not likely your client will ever rank there.

I've found Google Ads to be pretty effective for dentists so if you don't have that channel set up for them yet, I'd suggest it.