Editor’s note: Since this post was published in December, we’ve made some awesome improvements to the local rankings feature in Moz Analytics:
- We have begun supporting 18 new countries.
- Based on your feedback, we have made it easier to add locations to existing national keywords.
- You can now create campaigns with local keywords and benefit from faster data.
As always, please leave any feedback you have in the comments below, and keep on rockin’ those local rankings! 🙂
Today we are thrilled to launch
local rankings as a feature in Moz Analytics, which gives our customers the ability to assign geo-locations to their tracked keywords. If you’re a Moz Analytics customer and are ready to jump right in, here’s where you can find the new feature within the application:
Not a Moz Analytics customer? You can take the new features for a free spin…
One of the biggest SEO developments of the last several years is how frequently Google is returning localized organics across a rapidly increasing number of search queries. It’s not just happening for “best pizza in Portland” (the answer to that is
Apizza Scholls, by the way). Searches like “financial planning” and “election guide” now trigger Google’s localization algorithm:
This type of query underscores the need to track rankings on a local level. I’m searching for a non-localized keyword (“election guide”), but Google recognizes I’m searching from Portland, Oregon so they add the localization layer to the result.
Local tends to get lost in the shuffle of zoo animal updates we’ve seen from Google in the last couple of years, but search marketers are coming around to realize the 2012 Venice update was one of the most important changes Google made to the search landscape. It certainly didn’t seem like a huge deal when it launched; here’s how Google described Venice as part of the late lamented
monthly search product updates they used to provide:
- Improvements to ranking for local search results. [launch codename “Venice”] This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.
Seems innocent enough, right? What the Venice update actually kicked off was a long-term relationship between local search results (what we see in Google local packs and map results) and the organic search results that, once upon a time, existed on their own. “Localized organics,” as they are known, have been increasingly altering the organic search landscape for keywords that normally triggered “generic” or national rankings. If you haven’t already read it, Mike Ramsey’s article on
how to adjust for the Venice update remains one of the best strategic looks at the algorithm update.
This jump in localized organic results has prompted both marketers and business owners to track rankings at the local level. An increasing number of Moz customers have been requesting the ability to add locations to their keywords since the 2012 Venice update, and this is likely due to Google expanding the queries which trigger a localized result. You asked for it, and today we’re delivering. Our new local rankings feature allows our customers to track keywords for any city, state, or ZIP/postal code.
Geo-located searches
We can now return rankings based on a location you specify, just like I set my search to Portland in the example above. This is critical for monitoring the health of your local search campaigns, as Google continues to fold the location layer into the organic results. Here’s how it looks in Moz Analytics:
A keyword with a location specified counts against your keyword limit in Moz Analytics just like any other keyword.
The location being tracked will also be displayed in your rankings reports as well as on the keyword analysis page:
The local rankings feature allows you to enter your desired tracking location by city, state, neighborhood, and zip or postal code. We provide neighborhood-level granularity via dropdown for the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. The dropdown will also provide city-level listings for other countries. It’s also possible to enter a location of your choice not on the list in the text box. Fair warning: We cannot guarantee the accuracy of rankings in mythical locations like Westeros or Twin Peaks, or mythical spellings like Pordland or Los Andules.
An easy way to get started with the new feature is to look at keywords you are already tracking, and find the ones that have an obvious local intent for searchers. Then add the neighborhood or city you are targeting for the most qualified searchers.
What’s next?
We will be launching local rankings functionality within the Moz Local application in the first part of 2015, which will provide needed visibility to folks who are mainly concerned with Local SEO. We’re also working on functionality to allow users to easily add geo-modifiers to their tracked keywords, so we can provide rankings for “health club Des Moines” alongside tracking rankings for “health clubs” in the 50301 zip code.
Right now this feature works with all Google engines (we’ll be adding Bing and Yahoo! later). We’ll also be keeping tabs on Google’s advancements on the local front so we can provide our customers with the best data on their local visibility.
Please let us know what you think in the comments below! Customer feedback, suggestions, and comments were instrumental into both the design and prioritization of this feature.
