Organic, Paid and Local Returning Out of State Results

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Organic, Paid and Local Returning Out of State Results

jmollins

3:15 pm on Aug 13, 2014 (gmt 0)

Local businesses, specifically in the HVAC niche, are showing up in out of state/across country searches on Google. This is happening in organic results, paid results and local results.

Doing a search for "heating company in Northport" from a Northport, NY location yields organic and paid ads from both NY and from Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Similarly, doing a search for "HVAC company Long Beach" from Long Beach, NY are showing up exclusively for Long Beach, CA in organic, paid and local search.

Clients are also starting to get a lot of impressions (no clicks yet) for our PPC ads out of the target locations/out of state. Is anyone else noticing any abnormaliites?

jberry803

5:40 am on Oct 17, 2014 (gmt 0)

Yes. I have a Roofing Contractor that experienced a STEEP drop in SERPs. In some cases he's now on page 2 (Was 1st link 1st page) and in some cases now on page 5. What's replaced him? A thrift store in a neighboring town, roofing contractors 4 hours away in another state, etc...

This particular company has had the same domain name for the last 12 years and has typically ranked high for all major competing keywords locally in the industry.

I have not received any penalty warnings from Google thus I have to assume it just doesn't like his content..

BUT.. When looking at the pages that Google has replaced him with on page 1, it makes no sense. The number 1 link has one paragraph of text on their whole Home page and most of the rest of the page is branding from Yellow Pages (Who created the site for him) By all means, the site doesn't have H1 tags, keywords are very broad, images have no alt tags, and the user experience on the site SUCKS..

I've thought about bringing Microsoft Frontpage back out of the relics and creating a new site for my client with no SEO in mind. My thoughts are that his rankings will improve based on the results they're serving now.

Good luck..

On another note, after the latest algorithm update, several of my other sites saw nice boosts. I'm a local web dev / SEO guy so I try to stay up with changes in just about every industry that applies to locations around me. I definitely see people in different markets struggling while others seem to be relishing in the newest updates.