How to Rank in the Local Pack Across Your Entire City (Study)

Spread the love

How to Rank in the Local Pack Across Your Entire City (Study) 3

I did some Local SEO research on how to rank in the Local Pack across your entire city, not just from your office location. It was published on the AttorneySync blog today. Here’s the gist of the study:

Often a business will spot check their rankings in the Local Pack or organic to get an idea of where they may rank and what competitors are ranking around them. Many times, the business will see themselves in the Local Pack because they are using Google to search keywords from their office. If a potential customer is half a mile down the road, will they see a similar result? Probably not.

It is easy to rank in the Local Pack with a well optimized Google My Business profile when you are within a few feet of your office building. What strategies can be implemented to help law firms rank well beyond their front door?

The TL;DR version is this:

Many businesses are able to rank for key terms in the immediate area of their office, though it is much more difficult to rank for those same key terms if you were to search 3 blocks away. The key to ranking in the Local Pack in different areas of your city are the quantity of links, linking root domains, and Google Reviews.

A few items which did not make it to the AttorneySync blog.

I analyzed 7 of the best ranking Chicago area law firms and noticed a few items:

  • All 7 firms had at least 40% of their anchor text as branded terms, website, or the lawyer name
  • One of the firms was over 90% and only had 40 LRD’s – I’m going to keep an eye on this firm to see what happens in the future
  • At least 60% of the links were “Follow” – I don’t think follow/nofollow means much of anything, just thought it was interesting
  • Only 1 firm seemed to be focused on local links (links in the city, surrounding suburbs). The other 6 had a mix of news sites, niche directories, guest blogs, and other trash
  • 6 of the firms (not the one with 40 LRD’s) had significant scholarship links

Read the rest on the AS blog.