Search Engine Optimization

In order to rank in Google Local 10 box, you must be physically located in the city you’re targeting. The further you are from the perceived city center (Google decides that), the harder it is to rank.

We had two clients in the same industry, competing for similar keywords. One of them is located close to the centroid (client A), while the other one is another city (client B). Client B has a lot more links than A, and of way higher quality, yet it never shows up in the 10 box, and even struggles in organic search, with a more powerful backlink profile.

This is my guess, but the address and local citation factor has been incorporated into the regular search, at least to some extent, whereby location close to the centroid will not only help you rank in Google 10 box, but in regular search results for keywords that include city name. This was just my observation.

It is contradicted by another project I am working on, where a website outright dominates Google for “keyword city name”, even though it does not have an office, or even a phone number in that city. The site has over a 100 top listings for different Canadian and American cities.

So what is right? Is location an important factor in ranking for “keyword + city”. Yes and no. The website that dominates its keyword in every city has over 500,000 inbound links, where the smaller site (client B), only has 300 - 500 links. So based on their link data we can make the conclusions:

• Physical location in the city is an important factor for websites with relatively low domain power.
• Physical location is not a factor for highly authoritative websites with hundreds of thousands links.

If you are a small website owner located outside of the city, then try the following:

• rent UPS box
• rent a phone line from a business somewhere downtown

The small expense should help you rank on search results, and cover itself with additional business you will get from that ranking.