Marketing Monday: How To Rank Higher In Local Search Results & Competitor Searches
Originally Published December 2020
In normal times, you want to rank higher in local search results. I mean, people who are searching on Google, geographically close to your business. With COVID, this desire is probably MUCH higher than usual, right?
You may also want to rank when people are searching directly for your competitors names in Google.
That’s what I’ll show you how to do today, and what kind of results you can get.
Let’s learn How To Rank Higher In Local Search Results And Competitor Searches, together.
Also, be sure to check out our video on “How To Rank Higher In Local Search Results And Competitor Searches” if you prefer to watch rather than read.
1. How To Rank Higher In Local Search Results
Something we’ve been doing for a year or so here at Cohlab is building City Pages. This isn’t like Target or Walmart having hundreds of pages, one for each store. This is a local strategy for small businesses.
The key for local small businesses with maybe one or just a couple locations is to build 10 or less so you don’t annoy Google or make them think you’re spamming. Let’s take a look at an example here.
This is one of our clients, a moving company.
We’ve taken their website, converted it into WordPress, and added City Pages for their concentration areas
They already rank well in St. Cloud and Waite Park, Minnesota, from previous work we’ve done, so they’re focusing on surrounding cities, places their competitors are based in, and other regional areas they serve.
We add in specific maps, including local Google My Business maps if they have them, specific copy for that city and surrounding area, local reviews, specific photo galleries of work they’ve done in that area – basically as much local information as we can get.
For us, we’re seeing results like this in our focus areas, comparing total users from each city from September and November 2020, to the same period in 2019:
- Sartell – up 188%
- Little Falls – up 163%
- Sauk Rapids – up 80%
- St. Joseph – up 167%
- Willmar – up 200%
- Alexandria – up 200%
These pages will help you appear in Organic Searches. To appear in Google Maps, you’ll need to set up Google My Business locations if you have legitimate addresses for your business. You can see how to do that in another video above my shoulder.
Our client sits nicely at number 1 in Organic Search across a number of these cities, including St. Augusta, St. Joseph, Sartell, Sauk Rapids, Waite Park, St. Cloud, and Kimball. Rankings continue to climb in other cities, but due to them being further away, it’s harder to break in against competitors in those searches.
DISCLAIMER
When you’re working on appearing for a competitor’s name in search results, make sure you’re not doing anything illegal, like slandering their name, engaging in libel, or doing any kind of lying or stealing in order to execute this strategy. You don’t want to get in trouble.
2. How To Rank Higher In Competitor Searches
Something else we’ve been doing for a while is building out competitor comparison pages to rank in searches for our competitor names.
This is the same client, a moving company.
They have a number of clients across Central Minnesota they compete against. They’ve agreed to take the drastic action of trying to dominate Google Search Results for their competitors names, which might not be the best idea if you’re in an industry where you’re friendly with your competitors. Also again, you have to be careful to do it legally.
So what we did is we look over the competitors website, maybe even place a call if we need more information, and create a thorough and fair comparison page of the competitor vs. our client.
You can see it’s detailed, has various sections, the competitor gets their logo credited and a description as well.
For us, we’re seeing results like this in our focus areas, comparing appearances in search traffic from September and November 2020, to the same period in 2019:
- Mover #1 – 118 v. 0
- Mover #2 – 70 v. 6
- Mover #3 – 44 v. 0
- Mover #4 – 138 v. 0
- Mover #5 – 171 v. 4
- Mover #6 – 88 v. 54
- Mover #7 – 55 v. 0
When searching for competitors, our client now appears in the #1, #2, #3, or #4 spot. When searching for our client, no competitors appear at all, giving us a distinct advantage.
If you want to try these strategies out, go right ahead. If you want somebody who can help execute them and track them, give us a call.
Marketing Monday: How To Rank Higher In Local Search Results & Competitor Searches
I hope this video on how to rank higher in local search results and competitor searches helps you build your business even bigger in 2021!
Check out our other Marketing Monday videos in our YouTube playlist to help you learn how to develop your website and handle digital marketing for your company.
Cohlab
Cohlab Digital Marketing