What is the best way to do Advanced Local SEO Prospecting ?

[sergiuliano]

How important is the local ranking of the targeted URL in the Local SEO Prospecting process ?

As example,If you are looking to get a review/backlink/citation for a keyword as "best steaks" which is ranking different depending on the user city location, best ranking forums/blogs on the local search results, are not the ones which you can identify by running customized google searches as:

"best steaks" Chicago intitle:forum

or

"best steaks" Chicago intitle:blog

but you can find them only by changing the search location to the targeted one and running simple queries as

"best steaks" or

"best steaks" intitle:forum

so from my POV those ones have the biggest Local SEO Authority and by receiving a backlink/review/citation from one of them will give you advantage against your competitors which are only getting reviews from generic local directories everyone else is using.

 

[Nyagoslav]

Sergiu,

One important note here would be that if you are a steak restaurant in Chicago you'd not necessarily want links from sites/pages that are related to steaks, or steak eating in Chicago. In fact, in the vast majority of the cases these sites/pages would be owned by some direct local competitors, and the chances of getting links from direct local competitors is very often close to zero. That is why you might need to broaden your scope and look for sites/pages related to:

- sites related to steaks in general - recipe sites, blogs, forums
- sites related to Chicago in general - travel guides, blogs, forums
- sites related to restaurants in general - food blogs, food forums, local guides

Hope this helps!

Nyagoslav

 

[sergiuliano]

Thanks for the answer.

Your examples are very clear. Which one do you recommend are the most important search results to get reviews from?

the ones checking for:

"targeted keyword + location" ex:

"steakhouse Salt Lake City"
"travel guides Salt Lake City"
"food forums Salt Lake City"

or the searches on

"targeted keyword" + location set in browser ex:

"steakhouse" location set to "Salt Lake City"
"travel guides" location set to "Salt Lake City"
"food forums" location set to "Salt Lake City"

I am asking this because the results are different and from my POV google consider the "keyword only" searches as having a bigger impact on local search results.

 

[Nyagoslav]

I think both are fine. Here is why:

When you search for "keyword + location", Google is showing results that are relevant to "keyword + location". So if you search for "steakhouse Salt Lake City", Google will display results relevant to this keyword. At the same time, if you search for "keyword" and set your preferred location to "Salt Lake City", Google will display results related to "keyword", which should also be related to searchers in Salt Lake City. However, usually the sites that are relevant to "keyword" for searchers located in Salt Lake City, are actually the same as the ones that are relevant to "keyword Salt Lake City". Because who would want to rank for "keyword Salt Lake City" unless their product/service WAS relevant to this "keyword" for the searchers located in (or around) Salt Lake City, right? Why the results might be different is because in some cases Google might determine that results that are more globally relevant to "keyword" could also be relevant to searchers in Salt Lake City. And in this cases, the results that are relevant to "keyword Salt Lake City" would generally be pushed lower.

 

[sergiuliano]

...Why the results might be different is because in some cases Google might determine that results that are more globally relevant to "keyword" could also be relevant to searchers in Salt Lake City. And in this cases, the results that are relevant to "keyword Salt Lake City" would generally be pushed lower.

The thing is that search results are more than 80% different in most of the cases. Ex:

Here are the search results compared between "car rentals Liverpool" and "car rentals" searched from Liverpool:

http://i.imm.io/KDo6.jpeg

The way sites ranks should be the same, but as you can see from the image above they are pretty different.

So, having in mind that according to Google Trends there are about 4 times more searches on the keyword alone with the location set on the city name than searches on "keyword + city name" my question still remains , which kind of keyword shall I target and via which link prospecting type?

 

[Nyagoslav]

Indeed, the results are different, but if you look at the bigger picture, you will notice that:

- All but two of the results in the 7-pack are different (yes, they are in different sequence, but the differences are minor). The two that are different are:
1. nationalcar.co.uk/liverpool-car-hire vs. nationalcar.co.uk/Spw/630/uk...
2. enterprise.co.uk/.../gpbr=u312 vs. enterprise.co.uk

- All but 1 (just 1) of the domains is not the same across the two result pages: avis.co.uk

- As I mentioned in my previous email, the results for "keyword" in specified location tend to be more "generic" than the results for "keyword + location". That is why there are so many homepages ranking for "car rentals" when location is set to Liverpool, compared to the results for "car rentals Liverpool".

So going back to your question: both methods of finding opportunities are fine and it is hard to say which one would be better. Regarding targeting - I'd target the longer tail (a.k.a. "keyword + location"), and normally the results for "keyword" with set location will come naturally. I know that you already know about my article on the topic, but I'll post it for reference for the ones who might have not seen it:

The Two Types of Local Search and How Local SEO Should Reflect Them | Local Search Marketing Blog by NGS

It covers some ways to make a site relevant to a location.

Nyagoslav